Rainbow Omega Dinner 2011

Last night was the third annual Rainbow Omega benefit dinner, held once again at the Davidson Center at the Space and Rocket Center. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, there was no dinner held in Huntsville last year; so, this was the first event in town in two years time. As expected, it was a successful evening with lots of folks present. My count had 64 tables of eight people each, which is 512 people, a pretty good turnout. I don’t know what the number has been in the past, but I suspect this was Huntsville’s most successful turnout.

I wasn’t feeling very well last night, but went anyway because this is always a special night for Jackie’s family, which is also my family, and I love Little Mickey dearly so I like to go and show my support for him. Little M is a resident at Rainbow Omega, which you may remember from the past two benefit dinners (I wasn't blogging in 2008, but here is 2009). I somehow managed to not get a photo of me and Little M with my camera, but I think his dad, Uncle Mickey got one so perhaps he will send me a copy.

I got to the Davidson Center about 6:45 or so and found my peoples and we got settled in at our table. This year at our table was Jackie’s mom and stepdad, Ms. Kathy, me, Jackie, Jackie’s dad and Jackie’s half-sister Lindsey and Lindsey’s friend Katie. The dinner was quite good this year. As always, we started with a salad and the main course was a Rosemary chicken with some potatoes on the side; and not just any potatoes, there were purple potatoes too! I’ve seen these in the store but never bought them and they taste just like regular potatoes but certainly doesn’t look like them. Dessert was cheesecake and was really quite good. Of course, I’m on a sweets kick as of late, so that could have had something to do with it. Who knows?

After we ate, I started feeling even worse; you know how it is when you have a chest cold, it’s always worse at night. I seriously wanted to go home right then and there, but also didn’t want to be rude and leave. Plus, a lot of folks were really excited about the speaker, Andy Andrews. I personally had never heard of this Andy Andrews fella, and kind of wanted to see what he was all about. He has written some books and is also a motivational speaker so I was really prepared to be uplifted into going out and conquering the world; only it didn’t really work like that for me.

Andy (sure, we’re on a first name basis) was all over the place with his thoughts. I mean he would jump from one subject to the next without any warning and my foggy congested head had a hard time keeping up to the point that it was annoying to me to listen to him talk. I felt the same way about his speech that I do about movies like The Hangover, I just want you to get to the point already. Don’t get me wrong, he was funny at times and at other times had a good thing or two to say, but for the most part, I had a hard time following along and would have much preferred a speech with a better flow to it. I asked Jackie what she thought and she agreed that he was all over the place but she thought he was a good speaker; and I mean he did speak to both Alabama and the Barners before they each won the national championship. So, perhaps it was just me and my longing to be in the bed and the fact that I felt like there was a ton of bricks sitting on my chest and my attention span of a gnat (thank you prednisone) that made me dislike the speaker. That’s what I’m going with anyway.

Needless to say, after Andy’s one hour speech (yes, one hour; I still can’t believe I made it through the whole thing) I decided to leave. There was only one more thing on the program that night which was the plea for donations. So, I left my donation with Jackie and headed for the car. I got home at 9:36 and was in bed with the lights out and Vicks Vapo Rub on my chest and feet before the stroke of 10:00. The Tide must have known something was wrong with me because usually when I’m gone at night she will pounce on me or find something to rub in my face and generally be quite irritating (I still love her though!) but last night she was a perfect dog and just lay down beside me and went to sleep. Of course it could have been the loud wheezing that scared her into submission.

At any rate, despite feeling terrible, it still turned out to be a good night. Next Tuesday will be Little M’s birthday and we will be celebrating this Saturday night by chowing down on some Mexican food – can’t beat that! I’m sure it will be an event worthy of a post because there’s always something crazy that happens, like Little M’s brother Scott dropping the birthday cake, for example.

If you want to learn more about or make a donation to Rainbow Omega, check out their web site here. It really is a great cause.

Our table

Jackie and her dad - doesn't she look lovely folks?

The purple potato!

No photos of me from the night - one I had my eyes closed and the other I had crazy eyes. I also forgot to mention that Christa made corsages for all of us to support Little M. So, we were all matching with our lovely corsages.