Dinner Time

QC reminded me of my plans to have people over for dinner once I move out. I still want to do it, but there is a problem of logistics that I never really thought about, and it was something that I'd deal with when it happened. I don't really know how I'd sort out who I'm going to have over when. I had this crazy idea that people would be lining up to want to come to my dinner parties.... but then I remembered that it's me cooking, and maybe people are going to be really cautious until I skill up.

I've mentioned before that I tend to segregate my friends. SEE people, 2nd floor people, WoW people, etc. Some people belong in more than one group, but everyone has one main group in my mind. What kind of groups would be interested though? I'm not planning to cater for a large group of people, maybe four at most, but two or three would be ideal. The problem with those numbers is that you end up having to decide who out of a large group would get invited.

I read an article saying that five is the ideal - so that you can break into smaller conversation groups of two and three. Three doesn't always work, as I explained previously (2 + 1). I'm guessing even though four is 2 + 2, and nobody is lonely, it doesn't quite lead to mingling. Does that mean that I should avoid inviting couples? Then which person from the couple should I invite?

Then you add in dietary requirements. I'm a mess enough as it is, but I think it would be wrong to constantly group Olek, Gale and RB just because they're all vegetarians/vegans. It's good that people have requirements though, it forces me to cook things that I wouldn't normally cook. I don't typically like Japanese food, but MrMan5.5 wanted to eat yakisoba, so I tried it out.

If I don't invite friends within a group, then you need friends that will play nice with other friends. I can imagine people meeting each other a few times, and then creating one of those blacklists. One of the things I hate most about organising group events is that some of your friends will have a secret grudge against one of your other friends. They won't say it out loud, but they'd prefer not to go to events the other person is going to. Rather than telling you this, they ask you who is going. Add to that, the fact that people will probably have a "required" list - ie. "I'll only go if X is going." Then you can't get a confirmation from anybody, because they're all waiting to see whether the others are going or not.

Or maybe everyone just hates me... T_T Either way, with so many comp-sci/soft eng types reading my blog, there must be some sort of algorithm for sorting out this mess!