Sunday, November 11, 2007

SAKtoberfest was a complete and utter... SAKcess!!

Enjoy a sampling of the music from SAKtoberfest, our 30th Anniversary celebration which took place on October 6th, 2007 across the street from SAK. It was a great day.

What a great time. What great shows! From the SAKtoberfest outdoor festival to the week's worth of shows culminating in some 3 awesome history making shows at the Lab on Saturday night.

Lots of great visits with faces we hadn't seen for many years. The SAKoberfest celebration on Saturday October was one of the most amazing parts of the whole 30th event. You can see some photos of the event. More will be posted and updated in the next couple of weeks. As we approached the date for SAKtoberfest, we were watching the weather reports rather closely. A week out, there was potential hurricane activity to the east of the Lesser Antilles islands. As the days crept closer we saw thankfully that there was enough wind sheer to tear that potential storm up and send the remains well to the south of us. But looming behind it – or beside it was a lot of warm humid air. Rains came late Thursday night and into Friday – and through Friday. The forecast was for more of the same through Saturday and even into Sunday. We made the choice to wait until Saturday morning to see what the weather would do before calling the festival off (which we would have done if it had rained through the morning like it was supposed to. But there was a little break in the clouds right over downtown Orlando so we went ahead with the set up. And then – it didn't rain. It never rained. Not throughout the whole day. There was rain in the area, quite a bit of it actually, but nothing where we were. There was sunshine (as you can see from the photos) and enough cloud cover to keep it from getting beastly hot. I've posted here a video of my time in the dunking booth. The thrower is my son Walker, and as you'll see, he drops his dad on the third throw. (He had some help, but if you watch closely you'll see he had pegged the target anyway and would have soaked his pop even without the helping hand of Herbie)

More on SAKtoberfest later. The SAK staff – Gina DiRoma , Keith Dickerson, John Hunter, and Dana Robbins all did an amazing job to make SAK 30th happen. I'm sure no one attending the weekend had any idea what all they were able to accomplish, but great and powerful and numerous kudos go to all of them. There were also many wonderful additional volunteers but an extra dose of gratitude goes to Jaimz Dillman for an impressive contribution of help as well.

So that kept us all very busy. Since then we've slowed a little, but now, much to our surprise – the Russell's are looking to buy a house! Oh my goodness! We had not been specifically looking but something opened in the market that got our attention, curiosity, and hearts. Although we don't have a deal yet with the sellers, we're hoping the negotiations will be successful. I'm sure I'll have more on that front as it develops.
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