For most of my party I was rushing around answering questions and getting whatever it was that people needed next. Between times on that I greeted guests and learned the news from people that I hadn't talked to for a while. Because of that I can't show you that many pictures.

I'd billed the event as "A Festivus Party" in the promotional materials, so that required me to put up a festivus pole. The spec online called for "a plain aluminum pole." I looked around for something like that and all I could find were a few beer cans. I thought about covering them with aluminum foil, but then I decided that would be "ornamentation", and take away from the "plain" part of the description. The other things called for in a festivus party are "festivus miracles", "an airing of grievances", and "feats of strength". From my point of view surviving the falling off the end of the Mayan calendar seemed like an adequate festivus miracle. I talked that up for a few days before the event to remind people the event was coming up.

  

Thank you Renee for the above pictures!

The airing of grievances was fodder for a circle. We got together in a circle and each took a few moments to air some grievances.  Spencer grieves because everybody thinks politics is just "talking heads on TV" when he thinks it should be a nationally shared sport. Bill was suffering angst because he had $12,000 burning a hole in his pocket and he couldn't decide how to spend it. Dana had fury because her presidential candidate had to spend eight hours in chains while the Republican and Democrat candidates got interviewed on national TV as if they were the only presidential candidates. Dora was bothered by some wine she'd spilled on her lower lip. Another guy had been run into by a car while out riding his bike and has ongoing health consequences from the accident. Renee did an awesome monologue of grievances.  Andrew is frosted because cars kill children. One of the pool players used his air time to say "awesome party". Some guy near the end said "I agree with everyone else" as his grievance.

        

Andrew brought his girlfriend. She doesn't ride a bike much, so she's a rare sight in my world. I got that "I need to take this picture" feeling when he reintroduced me to her. At another point in the waning moments some of the birds decided to pose for a group shot and I just had to take that picture. That one of Renee posing with the festivus pole I stole from Nona (Thanks Nona!)

I heard later that Frankie and Renee wrestled to honor the feats of strength requirement. Nobody that saw the match would tell me who won. For my money the real feats of strength were done by the people that rode to the party. Something like half a dozen (Kevin, Paul, Mario, Bob, and ????) participated in the pre-ride from San Jose that Frankie organized. Adina rode down from Menlo Park, and a few others like Barry rode in from somewhere else in Mountain View. I wish I'd taken a picture of all the bikes parked around the wall, but I forgot.

  

It was amazing, but that crowd on the couch hardly changed at all for ages. Don't know what they were talking about, but whatever it was must have been riveting. Actually, when I went back later there was one change. Now Dora was sitting at the right end of the couch instead of Dave.

  

Izzy brought Indie with her. Not many dogs have the (whatever it takes) to pass themselves off as reindeer (see the antlers?), but that wasn't his greatest asset. I saw that dog lap up more messes than anybody else by far. Thank you Indie for all the cleanup work! I told Izzy that he is welcome at any party where I'm the host.

During the cleanup phase there were trips back to my place laden with dishes and leftovers and so forth. I'd like to thank John, Isaul, Barry, Izzy, Nat, and Dora, for all the help they did getting the room ship shape! On a ferrying mission Barry remarked on the moon's awesome halo. Seems like the lunar version of a rainbow to me.

One difference between this party and my previous ones was that over the next couple of days I got a lot of messages the gist of which was "Thanks for inviting me to that awesome party!" Every one of those made me smile. Thank you everybody for being an awesome crowd!