Exhibit 5a | Creative Disobedience

As you may recall, at the beginning of the summer I had a fun barbecue in the concrete garden behind my house. Since then, I’ve been asked on several occassions to throw another one. Sadly however, summer passed into fall and the barbecue season ended. At which point the idea of a winter barbecue was discussed and wow, wouldn’t that be fun. Seriously, I had visions of fires in barrels and huge pots full of some sort of potent winter ale or meade, guests in over coats and matching scarves…It would be like an Old Navy commercial! After a missing Halloween (and much to my surprise the entire month of November ), it ocurred to me that it would be sweet to have my winter barbecue in December. A holiday barbecue perhaps with a light snow falling on the Christmas-tree-lighted tent…wow. I’d be the coolest party planner eva!

But then I came to my senses. I’m not going to impose on my friends this time of year – no party invitations from me. This isn’t me being stingy or not wanting to see my friends. It isn’t because I’m afraid no one will see how cool the idea of a winter barbecue is blow me off. Not planning anything is my little gift to my friends. You see, the month of December has turned into one giant party, and although that seems like it would be kick-ass, there is no need for me to add to the madness. In December nearly every weekend night and a large portion of the weekdays as well are booked long in advance. Office parties, house parties, tree lightings, and good ole generic holiday parties. If you have a significant other, then the number of events and obligations doubles. More often than not the events that you can’t miss are scheduled on the same days that your other has an event, making it impossible to line up schedules. Even when you step back and don’t plan anything yourself , you schedule gets filled.

When you were a kid, the month of December was the longest month of the year. The anticipation of the big “gettin’ stuff day” was enough to slow down each day to a crawl. When you were a kid, Christmas was about all the fun stuff – the carols, the Christmas tree and the presents. It seems to me that these days Christmas is about the parties, both the ones you attend and the ones you can’t make. Before you know it, Christmas is over and you’ve missed it. An extreme case is a friend of mine in the office who is one of those guys who “knows everybody.” Last year he had 28 party invitations between December 1 and Christmas Eve. He owned one bright red shirt which he called his “party shirt” which he washed in the sink every night in preparation for the next night’s party. By the time Christmas came around he was sporting huge rings under his eyes, like he’d been working non-stop. Not very festive.

This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy all the parties I’m invited too (although no where near that many). I love parties. You don’t have to ask me twice when offered free liquor and snacks. I just don’t like all the scheduling and the rushing around. So for the sake of all of our schedules I won’t invite any of you to my winter barbecue until after the holidays. Lets try and have some fun. But watch out people. I’m seeing a late January event in the works. Bring your ski gloves!