50 years

Yep, that's right, yesterday I turned 50. We had a party at our house. Those with kids brought them, and played badmitton (or something like it.) The rest of us had barbeque from a great barbeque/blues joint in Decatur called "Maddy's" -- real live hole in the wall with the best food and blues in the country. My brother and his wife, their son and his wife and kid, and my eldest neice and friends from as far back as the mid 70's came by, and my neighbors all around. Loads of fun. My brother and his wife called from Mexico where they retired for a while. (BTW Tom, I checked, and I was born on a Saturday, so nananbooboo.) The weather held and we just sat out in the yard until 9:30 or so when we packed it all up and went in. My neice stayed until nearly midnight chatting away. I got everything from a marshmellow gun, (2!) to some nifty lamps from Ikea, to new Spanish language learning CDs (my other new years resolution besides making a telescope is learning Spanish) to a great bottle of rum, scotch, belgian beer, and a lava lamp!

Much good beer, much good scotch. Had I known that's how you aquired such things I would have had more parties over the years!

Over night it rained like to beat the band. Several thunder storms rolled through, and in all the excitement I forgot to put the tarp over the rented tables and chairs, and left may car window open. Fortunately it has been windy today... very windy... gusts up to 25 or 30 mph, and normally around 12 mph all day long. It was very wierd, and reminded me of growing up on Long Island Sound where that is fairly normal.

After all the clean up, I finally got some quality grinding time in. And I made some videos about what I was attempting to do and why. Here are some links to them.