The rest of our day in Scottsdale

The rest of the day was spent the way Satan intended people to spend days in a green patch in the outer circle of hell. We sat by the pool. Ronnie was enjoying the new book and I was working my way through my physics-based philosophical discussion as to the nature and existence of reality. I guess that's not stated in the correct order but based on everything I read in the book, that shouldn't matter.

The book, Trespassing On Einstein's Lawn, which was written by the daughter of one of my colleagues and friends, is kind of brilliant. That I know a little bit about her and her parents makes it more interesting for me, but it's not a requirement for reading the book, nor is an understanding of quantum physics. The central question is, what is nothing? What is the fundamental nature of reality? That quickly turns into narrower questions, though only slightly narrower, such as is anything real?

It's also memoir of a young woman finding a path for herself and the story of her relationship with her father. It took me a long time to read, because I was actually trying to understand all the physics. But it's an enjoyable read even if you don't care to try.

The weather was absolutely beautiful. Sunny and dry and in the low 80s. This is a very bad thing this area. It's supposed to be rainy season and they've been in the middle of a very long drought that's going to make the summer absolutely miserable. Everybody around here should be hoarding water now. I'm serious. Dig a cistern and fill it. I offered to contribute the contents currently frozen of my backyard but nobody seemed interested.

Eventually, it was time for the evening party. We had the service in the morning, then our time to relax, and then it was time to party, or rather to watch a large group of 13-year-olds party. This kind of party requires the one he did remains of dozens of prehistoric creatures to create all of the plastic crap given away during these events. B'nai Mitzvah parties have turned into kind of a bailout for manufacturers of plastic things that are loosely referred to as novelties, though their novelty has mostly worn off. This one was no exception. Glasses, inflatable shoes and musical instrument, glowsticks, flashing ice cubes, hats, sunglasses, even flashing mouthguards, if you can believe that.

This was one of those parties run by a DJ and an MC. She was incredibly energetic and made all reasonable efforts to get everybody up and dancing. Her success in this endeavor decreased this evening went on and people got tired, but she never gave up trying. Here's the order of events:

First you find your table. This is keyed in this particular case by Broadway show. We were at the Annie table, which was populated by old family friends. A nice group.

Then the family of the bat mitzvah girl enters to prompted applause and great fanfare. The family then repaid our adoration by performing a short song and dance number for us. It was very cute.

Then comes the candlelighting, where the girls thanks all the people who helped her get to where she is today. This somehow included us, though our contribution to the event was mostly just showing up from far away. That was fine, she's a nice girl, she's been in our house and we're very fond of the family. That's what makes these things worthwhile, if anything does. This was followed by a rousing Hava Negila and the requisite listing of the chairs.

We actually had a little bit of real conversation with our hosts, who were sitting at our table. These are friends who moved to Arizona 20 years ago and we rarely see them and we all noticed that we were really happy to see each other. Things like this tend to happen in our stage of life. You see someone for a big occasion, determine if you're frustrated that you couldn't spend more time with them or happy that you didn't spend more time with them. If it's the former you try to make arrangements to see them again. Sometimes works out but sometimes does not. We are currently in the stage of hoping that it will work out.

So after the grand introduction and candlelighting, there are some prayers and then we started to eat. There was a sit-down dinner for adults and a buffet for the kids. I presume the food was different, but since out main course was breaded, possibly fried chicken breast pieces, it's quite possible the kids got that as well, but I'm sure they did not get scalloped potatoes and steamed carrots with theirs. I believe they also got pizza and waffle fries and cotton candy.

The rest of the evening was spent with activities for the kids and adults if they cared to join in which for the most part they did not. There was something called Coke and Pepsi which I've never understood, although I'm used to seeing it played such that people were eliminated and there's a winner. This time, as far as I could tell no one was limited and so everybody was rewarded with some additional plastic crap.

 I just should note, that because it's so flat here for the most part, that you forget that your altitude. We got out of breath fairly quickly dancing, but it didn't occur to me until this morning but that was why. Anyway, we watched the group play balloon volleyball which pretty much just meant to people holding a net and children and adults batting balloons back-and-forth to each other while the DJ kept yelling "too many balloons on the floor!"

 And that ended our evening. We went to bed knowing that we be headed home in the morning.