Independence Day - Reader's Digest Condensed Edition

Just got back and am dead tired, but I'll give you a quick version of my Fourth of July. Many fun photos to come when I get around to uploading them. In the meantime, here's what I did today:

• Got up early (by my standards) and went to see our hometown parade with my family, my brother's girlfriend, and her sister. The Takoma Park parade is always a fun and amusing spectacle. Basically, take politicians, old cars, clowns, horses, peace activists, the VFW, environmental activists, drag racers, gymnasts, anti-fur activists. Add in a bunch of bagpipers, a reel lawnmower brigade, and a steel drum band on wheels, and you get a sense of what we're talking about. Much fun!
• Then back to the house, where we all got drafted to prepare various parts of dinner. This was more fun than it sounds -- highlights include our discovery that pinapple crowns can be converted into fun, stylish hats with some strategic use of aluminum foil.
• A bit later my grandparents and long lost cousin showed up, and we ate all the traditional cookout essentials. (Homemade potato salad with my mom's secret recipe -- yum!)
• After eating and spending time digesting, looking at pictures, etc., my cousin and I decided to go downtown to see the fireworks at the Washington Monument. (The rest of the family went to the smaller, less crowded show in Takoma Park.) We drove over to the Metro (back in the land of subways - yay!) and went down the the Mall, and after strolling around and people watching for a while, we settled down on a hill almost directly in front of the Washington Monument. Great location, and when the fireworks started a bit later we could see them really well with the monument in the foreground. Afterward, we sat around for a bit to avoid the crowds, and then hiked about two miles around the city looking for a place to hang out. (We sort of missed the first two metro stops we were looking for, which explained some of the wandering. We ended up going to one stop, realizing we would need to ride one stop and transfer, walking to the next stop instead, and then getting stuck because the trains had gotten backed up. So instead we hopped a train going the other direction and barhopped in the Chinatown area for a bit. (Funny story about that -- I'll tell you later.)
• Eventually we grabbed a train and headed home -- just got back a few minutes ago.

Definitely a fun day. Now I've got to buckle down and work on schoolwork for the rest of the weekend. Ugh.