Our Saturday Night Dinner

Before our new president took charge a few cold
beers were consumed to help ease his minor case
of stage fright. The anxiety disappeared rather quickly, and Tony's first time leading the group was just about flawless.

We had fifty guests at our simi-annual dinner last Saturday night, but because we were less than fifty-five in attandance, we were moved to a much smaller room.

Tony announced that we had lost two members since our last dinner in March, Marvin Ferguson and Hal Fleming.

We also had two guests, Kanani Fong and her friend Alex in attendance. Kanani had told me she would not be speaking to the group, but something changed her mind and she gave a lovely speech to the men. Her first sentence was on the lighter side, she said there was no waiting in the ladies room due too our room and the room next to us being all men.

Four new members joined us, Sergio Burchfield, Randy Kantor, Manny Fornoth, and Art Garay.

It was noted that only eight of us in the group were still with the newspaper working, the remainder had either retired or taken buyouts.

As a tradition we give away free bottles of alcohol, but something odd happened, many of the tickets draw were not held by anyone. One of the men somehow had a ribbon of tickets, instead of just one ticket. We could have argued that he shouldn't be a winner, but allowed him to keep his free bottle.

The winners of the bottles were Eugene Esplin, Owen Brennan Jr., Orlando Salazar, Larry (Mercy) Brush, Charlie Colemen, and Jess Rodgers.

The 50/50 raffle was won by Owen Brennan, that young man is lucky.

As we ended the dinner I spoke to the group about our finances, and how we were falling behind by $3.50 per person at each dinner. Was I ever mistaken. Seems there was a price increase since our last dinner in March. I told the group we are paying $28.50 per person, but after reviewing the bill, we are now paying $32.10 per person.

It was decided we would no longer supply the free alcohol, which will save us over $267 per year. We did have five bottles of alcohol donated for our next dinner, so there will be another drawing after all.

I am seeking advice for another location, if you have a restaurant with a lower price please feel free to contact us with that information.

Here's our cashflow. Cashflow = income - expenses $1,690 - $1,605 = $85 in our account.

The dinner was a success.
Eddie