This is the place I'll make reservations tomorrow for lunch. It's an English-style pub in the East Village. We had to pin down Dave as to whether he was going to be in the office Thursday or Friday. It's his last week with the company as a part time employee. My department wanted to do lunch, because knowing Dave, he wouldn't want to hang around after work, anyway.

We pretty much decided this at the last minute, since the only thing the company did was get him a cake a couple of weeks ago at our monthly brunch meeting. Imagine me running around at 4:30, with a checklist of people I wanted to invite (on a holiday week, no less, when a lot of people are on vacation), asking whether they were available tomorrow, and wished to join us for a farewell luncheon for Dave.

Other than what's left of my department, I kept it to the Quality Assurance team, a few people in Database, the QA/client service liason, whatever programmers happened to be around, and our network administrator. Three people I wanted to invite were not in the office today, but will be tomorrow. If all three of them are available and wish to join us, there will be 16 people. That's a pretty good showing for a small company.

Sales and Support doesn't really work with Dave, and none of them have known him for years like the rest of us, so I didn't invite any of them. It's best to keep it to the FODs, or Friends of Dave. This should be fun. It'll be a good group of people.