I do believe in faeries

There has been a lot happening lately and I have done nothing to post about it.

First there was the Solstice Party. Back on June 17, we hosted an open house style party. People started coming over around three in the afternoon and the last person left around midnight. I think everybody had a good time. There were board games, good food and a really tasty sangria.  todd1971 and em_yrt both brought over house plants which were and still are, greatly appreciated.  Both plants came with stories.  todd1971  brought a pot with several different plants in it with the idea that whichever one lived was the one we were supposed to have :)  What a nice idea.  And em_yrtbrought a spider plant that was a very large cutting form her own plant.  Also very nice.  

Then there was a barbeque.  That was a good time, too.  Made even better because someone else did all of the cooking and buying of the food.  

Then there was the Fourth of July in DC.  That was way cool.  Bart and I went down to DC with a girl who is interning in my lab this summer.  While we were walking through the Festival of India and watching two women do a very cool dance, a police officer drove through the festivities in an SUV announcing that a big storm with high winds and hail was on it's way and that  we should all seek shelter in buildings.   Unfortunately, this announcement came at the same time all of the museums were closing so we couldn't go inside anywhere.  We ended up under a large overhang with maybe twenty other people and several motorcycle police.   The wind was fierce and the rain was hard, but there was no hail.  Liars.  The storm lasted all of thirty minutes.  After it was all over we headed back out to the mall to stake out a place to see the show.  Bart was good enough to accquire two plastic trash bags for us to sit on.  We found a great place that turned out not to be so great after we realized the the pretty tree was in our way.  At the very last second we moved closer to the monument and away from the tree to watch the explosions.  I really like fireworks.  We got home by eleven and were very tired from all of the storm dodging and festival attending.

Then there was the sweat lodge in West Virginia.  Again with the girl from my lab, Bart and I attended a workshop and sweat lodge here  www.abramscreek.com.   The workshop was worthless for me.  The "teacher" had nothing to say that I wanted to hear.  Her weird and wacky was way different than my weird and wacky and her "science" was just wrong.  Maybe I'll make a long post about the issues I have with the New Age movement later, but the crux of my problem is that most of what these people have to say sounds exactly like what bible people have to say except that the New Age people substitute energy/aliens/star beings/light beings for god or Jesus.  Grrr.  Why does the divinity have to exist outside of us?  

Anyway, the sweat lodge was amamzing for me.  Here is where my weird and wacky comes into play.  During the first round in the lodge I saw light orbs flying around.   At first I thought that maybe I was seeing flashes of auras, wouldn't that be cool?  But I soon realized that the orbs were materializing away from people.  I can't be certain what they were, but I can say that when one woman in the lodge with a particularly beautiful voice began to sing, all ot the lights pulsed brightly.  During the second round I saw few lights, but at two differnt times I saw a "shadow."  I put shadow in quotes because it was almost completely dark in the lodge, so the idea of a shadow being cast by anything is just wrong.  And here is the weird and wacky again, after seeing the "shadow" the first time, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Was that a bear?"  What the hell??  How could it possibly be a bear?  I had the same thought the second time I saw it, but that time I was pretty certain that I could see a bear muzzle.  I am just that way, I guess.  There were a third and fourth round, but I was too nauseated from the second round which took an inordinately long time because too many people like to hear themselves speak, and neither Bart nor our friend wanted to go in again either, so we went back to our campsite and made dinner.

I think that is a superficial overview of everything.  I'm sure you will let me know if I left out anything important.