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.

Evidently my commenting software got moody after the upgrade to the new Blogger. Supposedly I've fixed it now, so we'll see if things work right on this entry.

Update: Yippee -- I think it's back to normal now!

Homeward bound

In DC now, after spending a flight mashed between two people, one of whom was holding a crying kid who grabbed everything in arms reach.

Off to do fun Independence Day stuff tomorrow. Maybe I'll even have some cool pictures to post. Stay tuned...

Texas

Mil Millington is sad that the recent supreme court ruling has apparently turned Texas into a ghost town:

Before I start, I feel I ought to mention how sad it is that the Texan readers are no longer with us. As you know, the notoriously irresponsible Supreme Court has seen fit to tear down the safety barrier protecting society and thus Texas is now like a ghost state. Machinery lies idle; offices are silent; the streets of Dallas shimmer motionless in the summer sun. No one goes to work nor chats with friends nor watches television nor even browses the Internet. Because, whooping atavistically that the police are now powerless to stop them, the entire population of Texas has, since last week, been ceaselessly engaged in endless consensual homosexual sex in private so as to bring about the extinction of the vital institution of marriage.

Oh, and let me make it clear that I'm not just some dull-witted, homophobic idiot here by saying, "it's the children I'm concerned about".

This case was an impressive example of the Supreme Court doing the right thing. But don't even get me started on this little declaration from one of our esteemed senators. The court ruled that the government should respect individual privacy and not regulate homosexual acts. Frist somehow believes that this is a horrible ruling because -- get this -- people should have a "zone of privacy [...] in their own home." So he wants the government to regulate what people can do in their bedrooms because he wants to preserve their privacy. Huh?

There is water coming out of my ceiling. This is not a good thing.

Don't mess with the canned meat folks

The Hormel company is suing over the use of the term Spam to describe junk e-mail. More specifically, it's complaining about a company called Spam Arrest, LLC. According to the Washington Post, "[t]he company [said] that Spam Arrest's name so closely resembles that of its lunch meat that the public might become confused, or might think that Hormel endorses Spam Arrest's products."

My day

• Woke up late.
• Called my parents.
• Booked a plane ticket to go home for the Fourth.
• Did a load of laundry
• Dozed off.
• Saw a blimp.
• Paniced when I realized how far behind I am in reading for my class. Read for quite a while, but am still very behind.
• Gave my bathroom a very cursory cleaning.
• Drove by a whole lot of Corvettes!
• Went to see Charlie's Angels with a friend. About as vapid as you might expect, but amusing all the same. (Anything with Drew Barrymore can't be all bad!)
• Grabbed a late dinner at Chapel Bistro with friend. (great food, highly recommended!)
• Got home at 11:30, goofed off on computer.