Think Globally, Act Locally

After about a million years of getting ready the big day was finally here. For a long while I mainly took pictures of people as they showed up.

Jenn brought a couple of home made cakes. They were quite huge and very delicious. She also had a horror story about what happened to the first ones she made. She also was a huge help getting everything over to the clubhouse and cleaning my apartment ahead of time. It was great having her there.

Mason got a lot of mileage out of that puzzle. It started as part of the advent calendar I'd gotten from somebody on Nextdoor. It featured a puzzle of some sort for each day of advent. I tried a few of them and got frustrated and busy with other things. Ended up putting the rest of it on the table at festivus. When I got home at the end all of the puzzles were gone. My sister said it was a huge hit.

These guys were the first ones to use the ping pong table. It got a lot of use before the evening was over.

Thank you Jarek for bringing all that beer and the big cooler. The wonderful pictures of the event are also appreciated.

By this time the sound of people talking was like a babbling brook of background noise.

At the peak we had about a rack and a half of bikes that didn't have kickstands on the racks.

There were also quite a few that could stand on their own. Probably this was most of them.

Very nice picture taken by Jarek. I mean his camera robot took the picture but he pointed it and pushed the button. Thank you sir!

Next it was time for the airing of the grievances. That's the part where I get everybody's attention and tell them "If there's something you want to say to everybody, now is the time."

James's grievance is that Renee is gone. She used to be the life of the party and now her silence is forever. He got us to say her name together.

Megan is bothered by the fact that the schools are raising kids to be cogs in the machine.

JJ's grievance is all the obstructions in the bike lane. Parked cars, trash cans, yard waste; etc.

Nat's grievance was "I had a recipe that called for 'Juice of one lemon.' How much is that??”. It was not specific enough, and he blamed the shortcomings of that bowl of hummus on this ambiguity

Gatadero's grievance is "Trump is a monster, and we can’t simply resist anymore… we need to be radical".

Peter's grievance is "The sink area of this clubhouse smells of piss. Mysteriously like piss. A pisstery."

Matt is bothered by all the cast iron pans he sees being wasted. One should be a lifetime supply, but too many people are wasting them. If it looks crummy just reseason it. They all have plenty of use left in them.

Stephanie thinks if you can hold down any kind of job you should be able to afford a roof over your head and regular meals.

Barry is furious with the medical-industrial complex. He's lost two good friends to it in the past year, including the woman he brought to this party several times over the past few years.