A Long Awaited Party Post
Deb and I went to the wonderful blogger bash at the Weekend Pundit Manse Saturday. Traffic was sooooo bad getting there, far beyond the normal “I-93 needs widening on this stretch and people need to gain driving competence” southern NH slowdown, that we were getting rather cranky about having said we would go. Even the rest areas were crazy, with Deb witnessing the ultimate scumbag move of someone cutting off a pregnant lady going into a stall. Classy.
It was totally worth it, and traffic on the way home allowed me to look accurate about how close I’d said it was before we left. One highlight was the late day boat ride. I haven’t been in a boat like that for years. When I was young, my father owned a small motorboat for a number of years. We even rode down the Cape Cod Canal in it. That brought back memories.
I didn’t make a point of taking posed pictures of individuals who were there. Jeff Soyer had that well in hand, so for good pictures of many of us, you should go here. Jeff also took some nice scenery pictures and put them here.
I did get a nice, non-group picture of Chan and Deb:
As usual, click on the picture to open a larger image in a new window. As not per usual, most of the larger images are the full size produced by the camera, rather than being trimmed to modest file sizes and standard 800x600 resolutions.
I also got an individual shot of Jeff:
When I joked about blackmail material, I was only kidding. I think for this one the lighting and camera zoom were not my friend. Oh well. This picture the small version is a crop and resize, so clicking gets you the huge version with all the background in it. This is just as Jeff was cutting out on us all too early.
Jeff resembles a guy I worked with who, unfortunately, was hopelessly incompetent to be doing tech support at that level, but was a nice guy. Also pretty obviously closeted. It was rather surreal meeting Jeff as a result, but he was as cool as you would expect, “knowing” him from the blog.
This picture of a rainbow past the people on the porch came out unintentionally artsy looking, especially after I cropped it a bit:
I got a couple more of the rainbow. This one Deb set as her wallpaper today. Feel free, if you like it as much. If you look closely, you’ll see the rainbow has an echo:
For the sake of redundant repetition, here is another one of the rainbow, not as good as the above:
Here are a couple of the the yard where the grill was located, with Chan presiding over the cookery at the time. A whole slew of kids were there, in addition to adult bloggers, friends and family. They were remarkably self-contained and perfectly behaved, with older ones entertaining and watching out for younger ones. I wish I had half their energy.
In the above, you can clearly see Chan, Sol, his wife, and N.E. Republican. In the one above that you also get Bogie, her husband, and Mudge, sort of.
The rest of these are candids taken of people milling about and talking on the manse porch.
Let’s see… You can see Bogie, Chan, Jeff, BogieHubby, Sol, N.E. Republican, Deb, Deb, Jillian the pink hater, Submarine Tim, Geoffrey (sort of), Mrs. Sol, Submarine Dawn, random kids and the back of someone’s head in these three pictures.
I think that last one was what I ended up with at the end of an “oh shoot, what happened to the camera, why won’t it snap a picture” episode in which I had unwittingly hit something that made it record a clip of video.
Somehow I managed not to get a picture of WP founding blogger John Eddy, despite having talked with him at length. Oh, hi Dean! We got your greeting. Blah blah book mumble server mumble regular backups blah blah hoping it’s all better now. I also got no pictures containing MommaBear or PoppaBear, or the third Deb and her lovely family.
I’m looking forward to the next time we can get together with like-minded bloggers this way. It was a blast! I do believe that we solved all the problems of the world in a single afternoon, just like that. It’s the implementation that’s the problem.
Other posts on the bash:
Weekend Pundit
Solomonia
New England Republican
Dog Snot Diaries
Bogieblog
As noted, Alphecca and Alphecca too.
The camera lies! I’m really 6 foot 8 inches tall and look handsome…
Posted by Jeff Soyer on 08/08 at 08:10 PMAttention guys of the appropriate persuasion and any who might be on the fence or swayable:
Jeff Soyer may not be 6’ 8” tall, but he really is extremely nice looking, in addition to being smart, pleasant, interesting, and all that.
I got my Deb. Chan got his Deb. I think it’s time for Jeff to get a “Deb” of his own.
Posted by on 08/08 at 08:16 PMWho’s the dish in the gray T-Shirt?
Posted by Ian Hamet on 08/09 at 10:44 AMMrs. Solomonia, um… [pause to look over at Weekend Pundit] Michiko is her name. Not pictured anywhere is their absolutely adorable 3 year old daughter, Rachel. She was shy when I offered to take her picture.
You gave me pause, you know. Deb is also wearing a gray T-shirt. More obvious from the Alphecca picture of us than the above collection.
Posted by on 08/09 at 10:54 AMOh, I thought he meant me.
Posted by Geoffrey on 08/09 at 08:33 PMIn these pictures Deb’s shirt looks white. One must also keep in mind that my sight is mildly color-deficient.
Mr. Solomonia is one lucky schmuck. Then again, so are you.
And, Mr. Dogsnot, were my proclivities to run in that direction, I am sure I would think you a dish as well.
Posted by Ian Hamet on 08/09 at 10:48 PM
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