Like Christmas in August

I don't know how the junk I put up here can possibly compare to Brian's or Lori's. I don't travel to foreign countries to hit on married women and I don't get my e-mails forwarded to national organizations (I do believe I once wrote a letter to Tony the Tiger, though.) Anyway, since I haven't done anything worth mentioning lately, I guess I'll mention what I plan to do this weekend, which is have a great freakin' time.

Once a year, an arts and crafts festival called Park Ave Fest comes to my neighborhood. Now, the arts and crafts are neither here nor there, I don't know why people go shopping in case they see something they like but didn't know they wanted, its expensive enough to buy the things you already knew you wanted. But I digress. The main reason for Park Ave Fest is for jerks like us to throw huge parties, exceed the maximum occupancy set by the fire department for driveways and cook out some great food.

Last year, I woke up a little late (around 6am). I anxiously awaited anyone else to wake up, then finally resorted to playing music at my computer loud enough to wake people on both sides of the house. They weren't happy at first, and they didn't get any happier. But I did. Now I had people to hang out with. Here's a picture of me from exactly 9:49 am that day.

I realize that's a little early to be cracking my first beer, but this really is a special occasion. I'm like a little kid that day, bouncing my knees and running around like an idiot waiting for the good times to start. And if you look closely at the profile in this image, you can see what I used to look like when I was thin.

As you can see, more people started to show up after that, and I wasn't the only once excited. Here's a few more people getting started with a little drinking game around 11:42... still not noon but close enough. We call this game 'Baseball'. It's a combination of flip cup and beer pong. Leave it to Wikipedia to make just about anything worthy of a page in an online encyclopedia.

It's still early at this party, though, as you can tell from this picture of Jason Groat. His eyes are still open, and it looks like he could still probably form some kind of sentence. Plus, it's really not living up to much more than a barbecue at this point (although I didn't take any pictures of food either).

At around 12:47 the party hits a major milestone. Jaimie Beecher, the world class bartender at the Sports Page officially becomes the first woman at the party (at least as well as I can remember). It should be easy to tell from this picture why I spend so much time at the Sports Page.

The party really gets going around then, and random people who are walking around the neighborhood during the festival realize they just spent $42 for a blanket, or $19 for a birdhouse, or $4 for an ashtray made by someone's child. They see the party and remember that having a free beer can make up for the stupid mistake they just made, and more people show up when they see so many people having a good time. Works every year.

By 2:27 there's a good amount of people hanging out, enjoying the food, fun, and drinks. The kid in the center (Jason George) holding his arm in the air isn't legally retarded, but I am appealing the court's decision. And on the right you'll see me at 2:29 still going strong. For some reason, I don't have any pictures between 2:29 and 8:47... and nobody wants to see the pictures from 8:47, especially not me.

I'm already forgetting the point of this whole article, which may or may not have something to do with parties like this. This year I'll try to take more pictures... because I'm told we had around 100 people at the house at one point, and I don't have pictures of that here.

This is going to be the last year that I'll be living near Park Ave, which means I have to say goodbye to these parties. In a way, it's like I don't believe in Santa anymore. At least it wasn't Mom that spoiled this one for me.