Family Dinner with a Vengeance

One of the grand traditions that developed at 1524 during the time the three of us lived in San Francisco was the concept of "family dinner." Generally falling on a Wednesday, "family dinner" was a standing event wherein the three of us could catch up, check out a neighborhood restaurant or perhaps the same one (Park Chow, anyone?), and discuss the happenings of our lives—you know, like a real family, or whatever.

The dinner almost always began with a round of status updates, usually starting with Garett prompting Phil, "So, Phil, what's new in your life?" Each of us then answered that question in turn. The dinners then usually devolved into discussions of our notable successes and (more likely, at least for me) ignominious failures in the love department, and culminated in insults hurled every which way.

It has been over a year since we left 1524, but in a recent telephone conversation where Garett and I were updating each other about the happenings of our lives, we wondered what our elusive brethren back in SF was up to. And thus was born one of Garett's one great ideas out of ten: a conference call later that week via the magic of the "internets."

Frankly, despite being a huge technophile, I had never used Skype (or any other Internet telephony service) before, and so when we got the call going last night, it was novel and exciting much the way any new technology tends to be. The call lasted around an hour and spanned three time zones: Eastern (me), Central (Garett), and Pacific (Phil). I tried to get one of my Salt Lake City wives to respond (all of them are considered a part of 1524) so that we could have Mountain time representation, but unfortunately, I did not get a response in time.

The call was very much like our usual family dinners. Status updates; conversations about failures in the love department; insults; and idiotic (genius?) ideas. My personal favorite idea to come out of the call: that I should quit law school and move back to SF in pursuit of one or more attractive women I have met headed there in the past six months. Idiotic or genius? Time will tell.

The bottom line: the physical manifestation that brought 1524 together, i.e., that house on 8th Ave, might be a long gone memory (too bad we didn't torch it when we left), but 1524 SF the concept knows no end. Can't stop, won't stop—or something to that effect.