You are all invited to the Peter Miller Retirement Party

pam, anne, kristi and i want to have dinner. together. all at the same time. same table, same restaurant, same night of the week.

i know we can do it. we did it ... once. i think it was in march. we all got together at cafe brenda and laughed ourselves silly reminiscing about our years working together at the paper up in duluth. we told horror stories of a particular editor who plagued us, and kristi told us about the time the photo didn't arrive in the mail in time to run with a recipe and so she was sent home to prepare the dish and photograph it. (she does not cook.)

we drank a bunch of wine.

let's do this again, we said. let's not wait so long next time.

pam and i work together, but kristi and anne work elsewhere in the cities, and we almost never see them. so a couple of months later, we tried to arrange another date. i think it was kristi who sent out the first message. it turned into a lengthy back and forth. one of us couldn't make this date. another of us couldn't make that date. then pam's job changed, and she started working nights again, so we had to factor that in.

somewhere along the line, our messages started going to some guy at work who had a similar email to pam's--some guy named peter miller. each time, he'd politely send it back. this came to me by mistake.

we finally settled on a date--june 21.

and then almost right away we had to cancel. kristi was going to montreal that week.

we tried again. how about july 19?

um, no. i would be in montreal, myself, that day.

peter miller sent the message back. this came to me by mistake.

and so it went. day after day. we'd try to pick a date, peter miller would politely return the email.

i came in to work one morning and noticed posters all around the building: PETER MILLER RETIREMENT PARTY. THIS FRIDAY. man, i hope all our wayward messages didn't drive the poor guy over the edge.

peter retired and moved on with his life. meanwhile, pam, anne, kristi and i continued to flail about, trying to find an evening when we could get together.

eventually, we landed on aug. 2. downtown, thai restaurant, 6 p.m.

on aug. 1, the I-35 bridge collapsed. i was at work until midnight, and pam was there even later. we canceled the dinner for aug. 2, which we knew would be another late night.

in late august, we tried again. by email, we worked our way through the last two weeks of august, and straight through september, suggesting and rejecting dates. nope, not that night. nope that week won't work. kristi will be out of town. no, that week won't work, either. laurie's going hiking. pam's in new york. no, oct. 4 won't work, are you crazy? anne's child turns 13 that day. they'll all be at a water park.

by now, we were calling the elusive dinner the Peter Miller Retirement Party. we eventually settled on a day: it's scheduled for oct. 3, 6 p.m., at a Thai restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

please feel free to stop by.

we may or may not be there.