This was my second annual festivus party. I've been throwing a party a year for many years, but last years festivus party was the first time I ended up with a strong "I found my spot on the calendar" feeling. I started getting ready months in advance, reserving the clubhouse and everything else. I cooked two tubs of eggplant dip. I cooked another tub of beans, two trays of brownies, a loaf of ginger bread, and probably some other stuff.

I built a festivus pole. The spec calls for a plain pole, meaning one with no ornamentation. It has to be cheap, because the point of festivus is to honor the people in your world, not more stuff! I taped together five beer cans I had at the time. Total net investment: maybe a nickels worth of clear packing tape.

  

Drew was one of the first people to show up. He and his girl friend had a board game with them, Ten Days in Africa. Supposedly a round of the game takes about fifteen minutes. They were just roping me into a round of that when I was saved by other guests showing up with needs I had to tend to. No big deal, just stuff like "Do you have a bowl for this awesome turkey meat?" Gotta help people that show up with problems like that one!

After that I mostly enjoyed the process for an hour or something. Then it was clearly time to do the airing of greivences. I took a few pictures then.

I'd say there weren't that many people that were into speaking up during the greivences.  The political activists talked about gathering signatures to put candidates on the ballot. Both the Greens and Peace and Freedom were represented. Andrew did a rap on his anger about how cars kill children and bicyclists to. Renee did a homily to the Pope. Mostly people just wanted to talk, eat and hang out. I vividly remember the sound of interested conversation bouncing around the room, a great feeling for me.

Barry had big news. Last year his grevence was all about the people that were making it rough for him to get his new bike headlight manufactured. Now he has solved all those problems. To prove it, here is the light I ordered on kickstarter a year plus ago! Since the party I've used it riding home. It really is a great light!

One thing I wish I'd taken a picture of was the beer in the cooler when I went back for one fairly late in the evening. There were lots of different kinds, but they all had green labels. I thought "Wow! People know what my favorite color is."

At some point Renee took this picture and posted it on facebook. I hope she doesn't mind I copied it here!

Many people brought something else to put on the table. Fried chicken, Chinese food, cheese and crackers, another cake, chips and salsa. More beer. A bottle of wine. Steve was giving people shots of very fine Scotch or something like that. It was 4:20 on the porch for sure.

Somewhere in there somebody called the cops because we were too loud. The cops told us we have to keep the music down and the loud voices inside the clubhouse. We said "Yes, Sir!" and tried to honor that process. Mostly we did. He didn't come back and bother us again.

Around 11 PM the security guy came by and told us to be out of there by midnight. Then he came back about 12:30 and stood over us while we cleaned as fast as we could. It wasn't bad when we left.

The next day I got a call from Denley, who said I wasn't going to get my cleaning deposit back if I don't get the floor a lot cleaner than we left it that night. I went back and mopped the whole floor again. Now I'm hoping that was enough!