Holiday breakfast.

So, I just went to a holiday breakfast that school always puts on this time of year. I got there like a half-hour after it started, and ended up staying for like two-and-a-half hours, table-hopping with all the other people who wouldn't leave, and I ended up shutting the thing down with a bunch of black administrators from school, another white doctoral student, and a white professor, though she flaked and left before the rest of us.

One black administrator was talking about getting American Girl dolls for her grandkids for Christmas and how they liked them so much but they kind of broke the bank for her, and then when I asked her what she thought of them, she said they were a little consumerist like everything is nowadays for kids, and I was like, "But, at least aren't they better than Barbie?", and she was like, "Or Bratz, I am sorry, but those dolls are slutty."

Later, me and the white prof kept going up to get more biscuits from the breakfast buffet, and we kept saying how good the biscuits were. Finally, when the one prof was gone and the caterers who were tending the buffet were nowhere to be found, the same black administrator looked around to see who was listening, and then was like, "I am sorry, but those are not biscuits."

From that point on people started talking about cooking, and the one white grad student who was across the table from us was saying how growing up he did the cleaning and his brother did the cooking for chores, but now things are switched since his wife doesn't like cooking, and she does all the cleaning and he does all the cooking, including Thanksgiving dinner, when he did everything including homemade stuffing.

Some other black administrators down the table took up the theme, and were talking about oyster stuffing, and then the black FedEx guy who everyone knows came and sat down and had some breakfast since he was ahead of schedule, and he mentioned that he always added sausage to his stuffing.

Somehow, then, the white grad student across from me mentioned that he made his own pasta, and then the black FedEx guy mentioned that he had just bought a "Kwiz-a-nart" for three payments of $69.99 and that it did everything, and this one black administrator cracked, "Does it make pasta?"

Like I always do in these conversations, I bring up celebrity recipes and say how when you look at them a lot of them suck, like Ben Affleck's Chicken Piccata, but the one celebrity I've always wanted to make since it looks so good is Patti LaBelle's macaroni and cheese, which uses like three pounds of cheddar cheese and a gallon of half-and-half, which immediately everyone wanted to talk about.

"I add some sugar in my mac and cheese," the FedEx guy was like, "Because it's not like you taste the sugar in there, but if the cheese is bitter, it evens the taste out."

"What kind of cheese you use?", a black administrator was like.

"Once I used some sharp Vermont cheddar," the guy was like, "I thought I was all gourmet, but it was too bitter, and I said to myself, 'Boy, why don't you stick to what you know?'"

"Mmmmm-hmmm, that's why," the administrator was like.

"But why is she eating all that mac and cheese anyways?", another administrator was like, going back to Patti LaBelle, "That woman is a diabetic."

"She's got a recipe book out now," a third administrator was like, "She has a lot of recipes in there, including mac and cheese, and sometime she has one recipe for diabetics, and another for normal people. She shouldn't be eating that mac and cheese, though."

"No?", the FedEx guy was like, "That's right, she shouldn't be eating that, 'cause that's just an appetizer for her."