Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Food Coma after a Large Dinner

After a prominent guest speaker today, I was able to gorge myself on a dinner of very high quality at the faculty center (usually no grad student rifraff allowed). As a poor grad student, the opportunity for a free dinner invitation is always welcome. However, this evening offered especially appealing group conversation over drinks and appetizers, followed by a full menu of quality cuisine options and first rate bottles of vino. All the Byzantinists and Late Antiquity people went with a variety of elegantly prepared fish dishes consistent with the prominent Christian iconography associated with fish. The guest speaker actually made a light-hearted comment on the choice similarities reflecting areas of study. Maybe her assessment had something to it as reflected by the conspicuous contrast with the arrival of my dish. A couple hours before, I had just delivered my preliminary paper topic outline to this group. The outline emphasized the importance of gladiatorial games and spectacles in reinforcing Roman imperial order with the executions of Christians in the arena (I also was able to do it without getting bogged down in the quagmire that is Foucault). True to form, the arrival of my succulently juicy medium rare prime-rib dinner confirmed the bloodlust and brutality of my particular area of historical inquiry. In any case, this delicious dinner was followed by a most excellent dessert of the tiramisu variety and more vino. I hadn't eaten a quality meal in quite a while - it was good to gorge myself in true Roman fashion. Now I must lay around in a worthless fashion for a bit. Fine!

3 comments:

kungfuramone said...

Excellent! Although it is to bad that they didn't have succulent leg-of-arena-victim on the menu.

Matto said...

Hope you enjoyed the food stupor, sounds like the meal warranted it.

Dolce Vita said...

Huzzah to fine, free dinners and to well-deserved food comas!

If you avoided Foucault in the paper presentation, did you in the Q&A? (Maybe no Q&A.) After what you said about the job candidate, it sounds like your colleagues could have made you into a coliseum spectacle.