Need to learn to keep my mouth shut?

[Meadbh]

My girlfriends are like kumquat's friends. It's all a friendly "no, let me!" situation.

In business I like to know for sure beforehand who is paying. In particular, I make it clear that when I am issuing the invite, I am paying the bill. At least it's a tax deductible expense. But I would not be choosing a $100 bottle of wine!

 

[kcowan]

Sometimes involved? You and your friends are more my style. Life is too short to be cheap.

Must be a Canadian thing!

 

[braumeister]

This is making me feel good about my habits. When I have dinner out, it's almost guaranteed I will have at least one beer. The side issue is that I actively seek out restaurants that I expect will have at least a decent beer list.

For a really good 12 ounce bottle of beer, say a Chimay or equivalent, $9 or so seems to be normal. For a 750 mL bottle to split with someone, $18 is OK.
Those are what I would consider higher end beers.

For a normal dinner, it's much more likely to be a $6 bottle of a good microbrew. Probably two.

I am so grateful that I never got into the wine habit!

 

[HawkeyeNFO]

No Hudepohl for you, eh?

 

[Retch The Grate]

One of my favorite games is credit card roulette:
Get a small to medium sized group of buddies together, go out to eat and order whatever you want. At the end of the meal, everyone puts a credit card in a hat, and the waitress gets to take them out. Last one chosen gets to pay for the meal!

Usually this game is played visiting a new city or country while on liberty. And since drinking with Navy buddies usually follows the meal, it is customary that whoever won (lost?) the credit card roulette game doesn't pay for any beverages for the rest of the night.

We had a solid group of us at Wizards of the Coast that did that. Big pile of game designers who understand that if you all eat together frequently enough and order roughly the same cost food as each other, your EV is flat. Of course the best stories are from the crazy meals where somebody ended up paying a $2400 bill and the like...

And of course despite an even EV, there are the poor outliers who have lost every game they have played (3 in one guy's case, with the worst bill of that being $1200 I think).