Happy Anniversary.

Well, it's that time of year again, our big "Anniversary Sale" at work. So I'm stocking up on Odwalla Juice, and power bars to get me through the days, as well as saying goodbye to my hearing for the next couple of days as the crowds descend upon us and I'll be faced with the undying din of hundreds of people shouting to be heard over the other hundreds of shouting people.

 We'll also have a full house of Manufacturer reps to help with questions.

So to anticipate, we've been trying to get a little Rest and Relaxation here at "Shuchat Arms" Last weekend we had our first summer barbeque for the season. A tradition I'm proud to say that I started after my fire. 

Wait, ...I just got the irony of that....

So last weekend all of the residents of Shuchat Arms gathered in the back yard while I fired up my Smoker to enjoy a little extended family camaraderie and smoked meat.

I'm still a little worn down from fighting off a pretty nasty virus from two weeks ago, but nothing was going to stop me from enjoying the sumptuous smells of the barbeque.

As I said, we started this shortly after my fire as a way of celebrating the fact of getting through tough times together, and we just liked the idea too much to stop, so we've been doing this about once a month as weather permits, and Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time for this, is it not?

Polly the dog seems to think so. Strange dog, but she was more interested in the vegetables than she was in the meats.

So the stress has been building, but I've been managing, and the sale is over now by the time I managed to finish this entry. But I thought it would be good to get this out to you anyhow.  It's amazing how little time I've had, I thought there was more than 14 hours in a day, but I seem to be missing the other 10 somewhere. Have I been sleeping more than eight hours at a stretch? Am I snoozing at my desk whenever I sit down to write a sentence or two for this blog? Am I waking up looking at a screen full of "ddddddddddd....." repeated ad infinitum because the author wasn't conscious and couldn't remove his finger from the keypad?

 During the sale, we had a bunch of new "Tech Reps" from Sony and Canon, and they all are pretty wet behind the ears. One of these kids is completely addicted to RedBull and can't stop talking long enough to listen to me when I tell him to not try to talk the Dean of Russian Literary Studies at Stanford into going to a Hip-Hop party with him. 

Pimple faced Twerp.

Kids these days, they never listen.....wait a minute, where have I heard that before?

On a final note, this is the only picture I dared take of the entourage that followed Condoleeza Rice when she was playing Bridge. For the record, all of the OTHER cars you can almost see here all sport Obama Stickers. You gotta love Irony.

Visitors in the neighborhood.

No way am I going to tempt fate by taking pictures of this. I've got two blacked out Chevy Suburbans, and a blacked out sedan parked next to my building right now, along with a couple of C.H.P.s scattered around the block. It would seem that the Secretary of State is next door playing bridge with an old friend.

Stanford Pow Wow

It's been a busy week at work, the manager and his girlfriend have both been out of work on vacation leaving us even more shorthanded at work than we have been. So the idea of strolling through the Stanford campus with my neighbors seemed like a nice idea the other day,  when they proposed a trip to go to the Annual Stanford PowWow.

It was a nice day for it, as one of the campus' many Eucalyptus groves was turned into a temporary fairground, complete with fried dough booths, homespun crafts,  and a central exhibit pavilion.

As near as I can figure, this particular PowWow began as a an extension of the Native American movement of the late sixties and early seventies by a small group of Stanford Students who wanted to promote better acceptance of fellow Native Americans by the rest of the Stanford Campus, and more importantly, to make Stanford appear more attractive to other Native Americans.

So over the years, it has grown into a full fledged institution in its own right. 

During the event we saw tribes from all across the country represented, and to my excitement, including one from the Wampanoag tribe!

She was probably as surprised and excited to meet some one from Massachussetts as I was.

Now as far as I can tell, this was not an effort to re create "Period Authenticity" That's probably not a phrase these folks would ever use. The costumes worn in the dances were fantastic and absolutely mesmerizing, but they weren't even close to looking like they belonged in any time other than the early Twenty First century.

One of my favorites was a young girl wearing a gold Lame' dress covered with "Jingle Bells" which almost looked like it was modeled after what some one would have remembered an authentic Native American Dress might have looked like if you had only ever seen one once, as you were being hustled through a natural history museum late one afternoon, just minutes before closing while recovering from a particularly bad case of Rheumatic Fever.

But she still looked GREAT!

The dance was a lot of fun to watch. There were a lot of outstanding costumes and some of the dancers looked like they LIVED for cardio workouts! I haven't seen that much Knee movements since my days of skiing moguls as a ski bum.

 They also had a great way of handling "Gate Crashers" who got into the mood and joined the dance, despite the fact that they looked about as Native as Woody Allen. They wouldn't stop people from joining in the dance, they would just call them up to the main podium to get a T-Shirt. The recipients would usually dance a few more turns, but they invariably felt the need to sit out the next dance. I guess it's not as much fun to dance this way when you're trying to hold onto a shirt at the same time.