What Cinco de Mayo would be complete without a backgammon dinner party? And so, Saturday May 8th I hosted The Great 2010 Cinco de Mayo Backgammon Tournament And Santa Fe Rice And Beans Border Feast. This was my 56th backgammon dinner party since I moved in here to The Garrison in 2004!

I fixed Santa Fe Rice and Beans with garlic and Corona spiced and marinated chicken while everyone played backgammon and talked trash. It was a great time, and one of the largest gatherings in quite awhile: 12 of us enjoyed the evening together.

And I had a new camera to try out. The one I had was 4 years old and I just have not been happy with the quality of pictures that I have been getting out of it for the type of photography that I do. Marissa had suggested an Olympus 10X Stylus digital camera, and so I ordered that over the web. It came earlier in the week so we'll see how the new pictures come out. The movie of the night was the just released James Cameron's Avatar in Blu-ray. It was, to say the least, spectacular!

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Marissa and her fiance Gary were the first to arrive, and chatted with me for awhile as I did my food prep work before heading into the living room to start some backgammon.

I had Marissa take this picture of me with the Mexican Corona bottle poncho that I mentioned I got Wednesday at T.G.I. Friday's when we went there for a Cinco de Mayo dinner.

Rick and Tim were the next to arrive. At least Tim showed up with some form of Mexican gear!

Tim throwing Linda the evil-eye as she must have made some trashy comment about his game performace against Rick. As you can tell by her expression, she doesn't really seem to care much about what Tim thinks.

Stirring the sauce up!

A close up of the process. I had just added the chicken pieces to the mix of jalapano pepper, garlic, scallion, red onion, green chili peppers and spices. You could smell it all the way outside of the condo! Marvelous! And pretty soon everyone was wondering when the food would be ready! Patience!

Colin checking out my new chair. He approved....

Now it's Linda's turn to play Rick while Tim watches on and makes rude comments, although from the picture it really looks like he's gone to sleep over the dullness of the play. Nice....

Jim and Chris Nancarrow chowing down!

Colin and Marissa's friend Courtney pausing in the games long enough to eat.

Don't interrupt the children with stupid picture requests when they are eating....

A plate of good food and a Corona at the ready: how much better could it get?

A shot of the vegan cake that Chris had made specially for Brian, who unfortunatly was not able to attend as he had band practice somewhere down in Boston that ran later than he thought it would. The guys wrapped some up for him and will get it to him during Early Bird Sunday morning karate practice out on Four Tree Island in Portsmouth.

Most of the players patiently waiting for the photo ops to end and the movie to begin.

Chris and Jim and Rick are in movie position. Now if we could get the host into gear we could get Avatar going as it's almost 3 hours long and Rick has an early call in the morning for the karate class he runs.

And here's the whole problem with getting the movie going: the host is posing for archive pictures! Enough! Get the f'n movie going!

Marissa takes a few more shots as I load the movie into the PS3. Chris, Jim, Rick, and Eleanne.

I got the movie loaded and shot this of Gary and Marissa.

Another shot of Gary and Marissa.

This is a screen shot of Avatar I took after everyone had left and I was winding the place down before heading up to bed. A great party. Always.