60th Birthday (Observed)

[hrj]

 This year I decided that my June garden party (which I'm trying to make a regular event) would officially be to celebrate my 60th birthday. Because while it's fun to call the Medieval Congress my "birthday party" people aren't going to go to Kalamazoo just to celebrate with me. So, just in case there's any confusion, the party this weekend was not on my birthday, it was just the observed celebration. There was an annoying glitch with the facebook invitation system: I figured I'd save work by saying "invite my entire friends list" with the knowledge that 80% of them aren't local and I didn't expect them to accept, but facebook decided this meant "we'll randomly invite 20% of your friends list and leave out some of your local friends and family that you interact with regularly." So in future I will not be using this same approach. But I had over 15 guests at the point when I did a count, which was a comfortable margin. There were lots of interesting conversations. We played both the party games I'd planned before temperatures got too high for much beyond sitting in the shade. (Extreme bocce--which description makes sense if you've seen the terrain in my back yard--and balloon volleyball.) And I had a lot of fun with my own personal take on the "cake topped with roses" trope: