I had a wonderful dinner a couple nights ago with three men I work with and consider to be friends. Great food. Warm conversation. Plenty of playful joking. Some stories of faith and trust.
We were staying at the Legion’s Thornwood Conference Center, and decided to dine at one of the nearby restaurants. One of us (not yours truly) also had a technical challenge to overcome: a one-hour video to be sent over the internet to friends and family.
The Thornwood Conference Center is a beautiful place for learning, going on retreat and contemplating Our Lord. But the wifi is, well, less than inspiring.
So, our choice of dining venue had the usual requirements: good food, clean dishes, reasonable prices. And to that we added an unusual need: strong wifi signal with fast connection.
We did have a Plan B in recognition that there isn’t inherent compatibility between fine dining and quality internet service. Even with all of today’s technical advances, you can’t email spaghetti and meatballs. Thus, we were prepared to have a nice dinner, then drop by McDonald’s or Starbucks for coffee and wifi.
As it turned out, Plan A worked. We stopped in a nice Italian place and were able to order chicken, salmon, pasta and a side of wifi. That’s right, the man with the movie to email asked the perky waitress if there was any possibility of getting a wifi connection and she said “of course” and got him the access code and password.
In a matter of minutes, we were lingering over linguini and the movie was off to points in faraway lands.
As I said, it was a nice dinner. So when the waitress brought our check and asked how everything was, we rubbed our tummies and complimented the chef. And my movie-emailing friend told her the restaurant had superb wifi.
Actually, he was rather over-the-top enthusiastic about the wifi, as in “your restaurant has the great wifi of any restaurant anywhere in the world.”
I think she appreciated that, but I doubt the chef much cared. I told her the wifi didn’t come close to the pasta puttanesca.
