A belated Lammas post

I have not posted in a long time, mostly because I'm getting to the end of my accelerated degree, and everything in due in very short order. I have a major paper and several online exams left to go, as well as a presentation of said paper.
I'm taking some time to write between the incubation steps of my cell culture.
This past weekend, while I worked all Friday night after work and all day Sunday, on Saturday I took some time with my friends. We decided to celebrate Lammas together in Ocean Grove, NJ. We met up around noon and enjoyed the water on such a hot day. We caught up with each other and told about how our lives are going. Carri's ministry is starting to get off the ground. She's been doing several weddings, especially now that gay marriages are legal in New York. She told me about a couple of men that she married recently who had had a civil union for five years, but they'd been in a committed relationship for over twenty years. Can you imagine not being able to marry your true love for twenty years? Carri has also been doing baby blessings and services of remembrance. After we were done swimming, we went to a restaurant, Kaya's Kitchen, with delicious food and a fun ambiance. It being Lammas, or close enough to it, we asked Carri to say a blessing over the food, but she said it was already blessed as it came from the Earth. We considered the wisdom in this, and enjoyed our meal.
Generally, for Lammas, my standard celebration includes baking bread and drinking beer, sometimes making beer bread, to honor the God of the Grains that is cut down in this season's harvest (Lammas being the first of the harvest holidays), but this year I just enjoyed the Earth and the Sea and thanked them for what they had to offer me, and what they give me every day.
I was actually considering not going on Saturday, in light of the massive workload that I have, but as my friends pointed out, I would have just been spending my time upset that I wasn't at the beach celebrating the holiday, which is hardly productive. It's good to take some time, even at our busiest moments, or maybe especially then, to appreciate the blessings of the Earth.