That's Sree...

Wanna know where the party's at? Where the wild girls get together and let loose?

Book club, baby. Book club.

Last night's second official meeting drew five chicks from their child-infested homes (really, three child-infested, one merely husband-infested and one empty - mine - since my kids were at someone else's house) to Siam Orchid for drinks, Thai food and a little learnin'.

And ladies, what did we learn?

We learned that some catty, catty things are going on at M and G's work. Profound cattiness can only mean that lots of women work there, a phenom that leads to no other possible outcome.

We learned, via eavesdropping, that none of the other restaurant patrons knew how to read the damn menu, either. Our lack of linguistic skills must be how we ended up with a tableful of Thai food with Anglo-Saxon names like "hot pot," "golden bags," and "pork garlic." I forget what C ordered - something sweet and sour - but it came with a pretty flower made out of a carrot.

We figured out the date of our next gathering and agreed that it would not be at Siam Orchid, because at Siam Orchid? They count your drinks. At least, our waitress did, in a not-so-much-to-be-informative-as-to-passive-aggressively-scold kind of way. Two is apparently the acceptable limit. Ordering a third round made the girl positively ashamed of us. We learned this when she brought the drinks, setting M's down with a barely audible, "Here your drink, that's sree..."

There was some chatter at the table around this point about taking our party elsewhere for another round, a plan that did not materialize because - I can only guess, based on my own (embarrassing) nonstop yawning - it would have required energy. Instead, we hung around the Orchid, licking the bottom of our glasses for those last drops of liquor (...just kidding) and making quiet sport of the young couple across the way, clearly on an "early in the relationship" date.

Oh yeah, we did talk about the book we had read (at least most of us read it, not naming any names...C, who picked it in the first place...) and agreed on our next selection. That was nice, too...

And we did overstay our welcome - as the proprietors deserved after the drink-counting offense -outlasting both the first daters and several of the staff, each of whom cast a judging eye upon our corner table as they left.

Next time, party of 6 for margaritas? No counting allowed.