Thank You Andre, I'll Have the Veal Piccata

Huge development is my quest to reach all 7 continents. The President of my company asked me yesterday if I would be interested in attending a coastal engineering conference in Dubai. Without even hearing any more I quickly said that I would be interested. So now I get a free, week long vacation to Asia and all I have to do is hand out a few business cards and give a little presentation about all of the papers that will be presented. Piece of cake...I love public speaking. Actually, I just love any excuse to picture people in their underwear. So according to my calculations, I will have been to 6 continents before I turn 30!

So today's Deep Thought is a quick one from the archives. I have always noticed this little part of daily life and now I am writing it down for the whole world to enjoy and debate. Picture this: you go out to eat with friends and/or family and the waitress passes out the menus and takes the drink order. (Notice I said waitress and not server. I am not politically correct and never will be. Deal with it.) Anyway, you take a couple minutes perusing the menu, carefully eliminating each item based on the ingredients or the way each dish is prepared.

Hmm, don't like capers so the fish is out. Don't want to eat anything fried so the chicken is out. Don't like anything with a glaze so the steak is out. Finally you decide on the plain and simple spaghetti and meatballs and close your menu rejoining the table conversation. The miserable teenage (or even more miserable middle age) waitress comes over to take your order. But for some reason you get nervous. You have already decided to get the pasta, you have carefully selected the thousand island dressing on the house salad over the Caesar salad, and you even picked the steamed vegetables as your side.

It's your turn to state your selections and almost instinctively you have to reopen the menu despite the fact that you already know what you want. Sometimes you even feel compelled to point out your choice to the aforementioned miserable food service industry worker. Why is that? What happens in those couple minutes that causes you to completely forget what you want to eat. This is truly a gastrointestinal disorder that should be researched more.