Jr. Achievement Dare to Dream Gala

Soup please!  Cathi Hatch, Nicole Vogel, Pam Pearson

On Sunday evening, the Party Curmudgeon was under the weather so I attended the Junior Achievement Dare to Dream Gala at the Marriott Seattle Waterfront alone as a guest of Pam Pearson of KCPQ 13 FOX and her husband, Mike.  Pam has been on the board of Junior Achievement for several years and is a past board chairman.  Bright young JA students were on hand to greet and check in each arriving guest.

I was seated at the table between Nicole Vogel, who always makes me laugh with her irreverent comments and quick wit and the new KCPQ News Director, Jon Brady.  I also enjoyed meeting Marni Hughes and Matt Lorch, new KCPQ 5:00 pm news anchor people who were kept very busy at the event on stage and in the crowd carrying around the little Labradoodle puppy to be auctioned off, giving impromptu back rubs to encourage higher bidding, and serving as cheerleaders to help bring in more funding for a very worthwhile cause.

Matt Lorch and Marni Hughes

The event began with a high energy young magician and former JA student, Sterling Dietz who entertained the crowd with family friendly illusions.  Somehow, I can never figure out any of the magic tricks and continue to be amazed with each new trick.  Following Sterling's performance,  Pam was kept busy jumping up and tracking down the servers to get wine and food served to our table since somehow we were seated in what appeared to be the Bermuda Triangle where no servers ventured to enter.

Pam and Nicole and I held up our spoons to show that they were still unused midway through what appeared to be the soup course for the rest of the room.  Jon Brady was sitting in what was the especially unlucky seat at our table since he was almost never served when the rest of us finally received service.  At one point, he was stockpiling a small pile of sesame seeds that had fallen off his roll to consume while we were busy with the next course.  It just wasn't his night because even when his glass was finally poured with a generous portion of wine, it turned out that the wine was corked and it took us awhile to search for another server to bring us a different bottle.

In spite of the service issues, we all actually had a wonderful time together and were able to laugh about the challenges of the evening.  And of course, most importantly, we were all very pleased that needed funding was raised for Junior Achievement of Washington.