Tom, Jen, Collin, and Pat were sleeping in a hotel a few kilometers from Oshawa; we expected them to show back at Dar's and John's house around noon. This left us with some time before the partying went on.
Torsten and Nicole used the time for a walk to the creek in Oshawa. They saw a small, about half a meter long snake that was totally harmless, but it scared Nicole anyway.
John is a fan of the Lord of the Rings and Dar showed us John his sword. Nicole was thinking that the sword is two-handed, but John showed us all that it only takes one hand to wield it. (The fact that the second photo shows someone's neck close to the sword is a pure coincidence!)
And here's Cassandra, painting her jewelry box.
The flies seemed to like our pool very much. In fact, the pool was more effective than all our insect traps combined. Unfortunately, that meant we had to dump the water. The new lake near the tent was gone pretty soon too!
The party went on like the day before, except we didn't have to worry about food. We had a lot of leftovers from Saturday. And although Dar again explained to us that she didn't want any leftovers by the end of the day, we were still not able to consume all the food.
Everyone knows that tents are light objects, so they must be secured by strings. The strings are really good to have, because they ensure that the tent is not going to be blown away by wind. But each string also poses a danger for humans who get close to the tents, because the strings are hard to see, especially at night. And we've had a lot of strings around the two tents! Almost everyone tripped over the strings at least once. To minimize the amount of victims, we tried to make the strings more visible. Nicole put a few fragments of toilet paper on each of the strings; that worked great until all pieces the toilet paper slid down to the ground. John then brought Christmas lights that we used to illuminate the area around the tents, which helped a bit too. And John's and Dar's neighbor helped a little as well (although he didn't know about it), because the motion detector for his outdoor lamp was not working very well, so the light on his parking lot turned on every time one of us moved.
But despite all the light and all the toilet paper warning signs, one of us had a little accident that was much more spectacular than the rest - and it didn't even require a string to trigger the chain of events! Before you all read on, I must point out that Jen did not drink any alcohol on the party - not a drop of it.
When Jen was getting up from a chair, she somehow tripped on the leg of her chair. Because she didn't want to fall flat in front of all those people, she tried to grab the table to break her fall, but instead she ended up tripping on the table leg. She almost knocked the table over and continued going down, so she tried to grab hold of the next closest item, which was the tent pole. But she missed it and she landed square in the lounge chair, but she kept going and ended up falling sideways in the chair. As she was falling sideways in the chair, she again tried to grab the tent pole as she was still trying to not land on her bottom. But she still ended up on the ground, almost taking the tent with her again. Every time she tried to catch her fall or try to stand or, she kept losing her balance. Jen went ass over tea kettle! It was truly an epic fall! Unfortunately, she did it when all the cameras were hidden at a safe distance, so we can't provide any pictures with the evidence of what happened. You have to trust us.
As you can see from all the pictures and from all the text, partying requires a lot of energy, so we were pretty tired in the evening.
But fortunately for Nicole, there's one thing that can give her the energy back: it's sugar. This time, the sugar was in the form of a Pixie stick, a powdered candy packaged in a wrap similar to a drinking straw. And not just one, but four Pixie sticks! Although Torsten tried to hide the sticks from Nicole, she found them and she ate them all. She then had a lot of energy!
After eating the Pixie sticks, Nicole had the empty straws left and was thinking what to do with them. She connected them to make one long straw and called it the Arch of Happiness. And she started to poke Torsten with it, probably to make him happy.
Although Nicole called it the Arch of Happiness, other people called it the limp stick. Probably beacuse it really was a limp stick. That started another wave of hysterical laughter. The men laughed a bit too, but they could stop - unlike the women. Dar, Nicole, and Jen went on and on and on and on and on for fifteen minutes again. When it looked like they were done laughing, something else happened - perhaps someone moved a little - and they started again. And again. And again...
The weather at night is known to change and get a little on the chilly side even in summer, so everyone was advised to bring a jacket or a sweater. Collin indeed brought it and he had it with him on Saturday. He had it on Sunday too - but in his hotel room. After watching him shiver for almost an hour, Dar pitied him and lent him one of John's hoodies. While Collin was cold, other people were still warm - even hot. What a contrast. Speaking of which, there's also the contract between the people that were awake and those asleep!
Then Nicole and Torsten went to bed. They even tried to sleep... but we'll get to that later. And yes, it has something to do with a loud laughter again!
The partying went on until around midnight. Again, to make sure there's enough food, we brought some more. And we continued to laugh and to have a good time!
More pictures were taken, including pictures of people taking pictures. And including people in very nice slippers - they work very well to keep feet from getting cold.
But unfortunately all good things must come to an end. Tom, Jen, Pat, and Collin were leaving the next morning, so they had to go back to the hotel.
But wait, we're missing something. Yes, we're missing another fifteen minutes of hysteric laugh! For a reason unknown to the male party visitors, Dar and Jen started to laugh again. And again. And again. Dar said that men didn't need to know why she and Jen had laughed - but Dar also admitted that neither of them knew it anyway! And they were trying to stay quiet so hard that it made them laugh even more. And more. And louder. And more. After another fifteen minutes or so, both Dar and Jen were able to stop, although if you check the last picture carefully, you will see how difficult it was for Jen. You can see how hard she was holding the laugh inside her, how hard she was trying not to start again!
Nicole almost missed this round of laughing, because she and Torsten were already sleeping in their room. You can see the window leading to their room on the previous pictures behind Dar. But laughing women make noise, so in the end Nicole didn't miss the laugh completely.
Copyright notice: Text, images, and videos copyright by Michal Řeháček, Nicole, Torsten, John Philip, Darlene Sine.