The Fourth of July is always quite the thing here. We live right on the parade route. Our next door neighbor has his major party of the year on the Fourth, too, complete with Enormous Professional Musician Sound System and lots of people and vodka. This year, besides the extra fun of the Fire Arts people doing their explosion performance (where? Must you ask, Gentle Reader? WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY DID IT? ) in front of the Driveway From Hell, aka My Driveway, we also had The Guy In Back deciding to put in his two cents about the decibel level by pointing HIS “sound system” directly at our fence and thus indirectly at Party Central, and cranking it all the way up. Let me tell you, it was special. But, once I did enough deep breathing to realize that there was indeed a spot on the driveway where I could stand and just be vibrated through by all the sound, it was really fine and actually a lot of fun. On with hearing loss. The street is closed for the major part of the day so unless we want to leave at 5 a.m. which we always vow to do and then don’t, we’re kind of stuck in wall to wall people and cacophony. The two year old next door decided he didn’t care a fig about the parade either except the brief horse appearance, and spent most of his time pottering around our garden with the Partner, having discovered how to work our water hose and also the joys of watering cans. He’s already mastered the garage door opener and we spent quite some time watching him open and close the door. We assumed he was cackling with laughter as usual in these cases: It looked like it, but since you couldn’t hear yourself think, there was no ability or need to talk. It was oddly restful.
However, we did see two solar flares. Split second huge brightness followed by a blast of blistering heat. Nobody but us seemed to notice. But I think there WAS something to it, as the day was oddly enervating and I didn’t see a single person without a sunburn, which is somewhat unusual among this sunblock conscious crowd.
I made couscous (nice! sweated shallots and bell peppers before adding the water to boil the couscous in) among other things for dinner that night, which…well. I was quite happy with the unintentionally lovely shape the leftovers took on, unmolded the whole thing onto a plate last night to reheat in the microwave. And? voila. It exploded. So that’s how I know a) there WERE solar flares and b) try as I might to improve myself, nothing has really changed. Tootles.
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 