... summer 2007 barbeque ...

Dday’s here. Or rather summer bbq day is here. 115 “I will be there” responses on the evite. More like end-day. Well the preparation – it went something like preparation, preparation and more preparation. I won’t bore you with the details but some takes are definitely worthy of the mention – Diego and the 50 pound pickle jar, Alex monkeying around the park trying to set the tarps on the canopies with the angry deprived park lady breathing down his tail. I guess Tarzan in sunglasses was never that popular. The generator that never happened because angry fun hating person, see park ranger lady with deeply rooted issues, just happened to have an issue with fun in general. How about Marcela, Tiffany and the tomatoes. Big up to them. Who knows how much worse my burnt burger would have tasted if I didn’t have all the tomatoes and bbq sauce to soak it in … mmm bbq sauce … mmm Tony Tek’s jerk chicken. Big up to Tari, Dez and Alex for handling the smoke generating task with such tenacity and yet quite a high level of dignity.

Lovely day as always – we pride ourselves in being a California NSBE Alumni chapter. The Seattle chapter’s been thinking of moving south. Good call. We were lucky to have a pretty good location at Lake Almaden Park. The lake, the ducks, the wind, the grass, the beach, the volleyball pit, the people. Sounded a lot like the definition of heaven. It was a great day and unfortunately there were a couple of hiccups in the early setup stages – The park ranger wasn’t exactly in love with our generator nor did she appreciate Alex climbing up the canopies to set up the tarps. This all led to a majestic quest to acquire IPod and battery powered speakers to make up for the music deficiency which in itself turned up to be a two hour effort that came up short.

No need to worry though – a bunch of intelligent people ready and willing to mingle, next thing you know the conversation was … literally out of this world. A couple of people were going all off on rockets and you would have thought Jessica was ready to perform a stent installation operation right on the grill. Such intelligent people. Join NSBE and let it rub off on you. The lack of music didn’t hold anyone back – Football came first and Carlos was not shy on showing off those high school wide receiver moves. Seitu showed some promise of maybe making the JV waterboy all star team and Diego definitely throws worse than my little sister’s little sister. And of course NSBE is not without comedians … or not so funny volleyball referees.

“THIS TEAM MUST ROTATE”, “THE BALL IS FOULED”, “THIS REFEREE CAN BE BOUGHT” … these few sentences, or should I say SCREAMING SENTENCES describe Janelle’s tenure as volleyball referee. I won’t go into questioning her abilities as the last thing I need is a fine from USA Volleyball for decrying one of their valued refs. Volleyball though was comedy from Tari getting smashed on by Seitu. Let me rephrase that … Tari getting SMASHED on by Seitu. Joy had some serve moves, would have been nice if she kept the ball within the lines. Angela … Angela … I’ll skip the comments this time around to save her from crying. Ijeoma though came ready to BRING IT. Chenece … It would be kinda nice if you remembered what team you played on. Tiffany, Sean, Trish, Emeka and the rest of the crew did a great job cheering on the sidelines. It really added to the essence of the game. Plain magic. Dez, Akili, Rommell, Elvis and Tari – remind me again why it is that you don’t work as liars? These dudes argued everything from how much the total numbers of sand grains on one side of the court affected the game outcome to how many fingers most people are born with.

All was not lost though as in the world of double dutch you trip, we all know you tripped. Sand had nothing to do with it, there are no disputable court lines and no replay is needed. I take that back … a replay IS NEEDED to determine exactly how Tari jumped into that super tight space in between Elias and Janelle. Seitu was obviously frustrated on the sidelines as someone always tripped the rope before he could get to jump in and Ugo constantly tripped in up and pretended that she didn’t even know what happened. And why again do most of us work as engineers and not liars in courtrooms? Sean was getting pretty pissed at the kids who were throwing their shoes at the ducks and I thought that he was gonna pull a WWF move on one of the 50lb kids.

Unfortunately the day had to end and we closed it up with some dominoes, card and board games and not forgetting some soccer. I mean what kind of day would it be if Mohammed didn’t get a chance to show off the skills and you know Tiffany had to run over the dudes. She really tried to milk the “I am a girl I can play soccer, I am not physical move” … yea right. Its 2007 honey and girls do all sorts of things this century you know.

All in all it was a great day. We were honored to have the NSBE Region 6 Alumni Extension Chair Elect, Darrell Porcher, fly in all the way from San Diego just to attend the barbecue and we did get a whole bunch of new faces and people. Thanks to the Stanford SBSE crew as well as the San Jose State BASE representatives for representing the collegiate chapters. We are very excited to have kicked off the 2007-2008 year in such fashion and we do hope to see most of you around for future events. Remember we have general body meetings every 4^th Saturday of the month. Next one will be on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 10:00 AM to 12:00 Noon at Santa Clara University in BANNAN ENG, Room 326. Hope to see you there. For more pictures, check out our website.