No fireworks in the house dammit!

The fourth of July sneaks up on me every year.  I think that because summer doesn’t “officially” start until July 5th in Seattle it’s easy to ignore the 4th until it’s almost here.  At Pride I somehow volunteered to host a 4th of July bbq at our house.  Luckily I had the good sense to farm out all the side dishes and the beverages to the invitees.  I handled making up the hamburgers and handing them off to Bryan to grill and then making the dessert.  Throw a few bears in the cooler and get Bryan to clean the house and we’re set.

Folks showed up around 3 and we grilled around 4 and then settled in for the serious part of any bbq, the drinking.  Actually I watched everyone else drink since my liver is still on strike* and I’m trying to give it a rest until the Vancouver trip. Then I’m once again going to show that organ who’s boss, by goddess.  Nettie made up a seriously lethal Sangria that knocked a few people (I’ll protect the guilty, for now) off their assess.  Apparently someone can’t remember the bbq… shall I tell her what she’s agreed to?**  Whipp, as is tradition, had a bag of illegal fireworks (ask her about the year that she, Poff and the CL almost set the Synagouge on fire – always a good time when your 14 yr old daughter is drunk off her ass).  This year the only really illegal toys she let everyone play with were the bottle rockets. Amazingly enough, only a few hit the neighbor’s house and no fires were started.  After a huge bowl of strawberry shortcake everyone headed out, we must be getting old, it wasn’t even dark yet.  I cleaned up the kitchen and back deck and then watched two of my favorite movies of all time (Cry Baby & Heathers) while Bryan went to bed.

Saturday dawned bright and early with absolutely nothing on the agenda which is always a nice way to spend the weekend. I paid the bills and balanced the checkbook, we did our weekly budget review and then Bryan and I went and ran a few errands.  The most exciting thing we did on Saturday was take the vacuum cleaner in and find that the motor was blown after only owning it for 8 months.  Thank goodness for warranties.  After an afternoon nap we had a lazy dinner and watched the movie Coffee Date, which was actually kinda funny.  Who knew Deborah Gibson had an acting career.

Sunday Bryan went fishing*** with some friends and I hung around the house and did nothing.  I finished a book and started a new one and caught up on all the blogs I’d been negelecting the last few days.  Then I had to be at the sleep study center at 7pm for a sleep study.  I got to sleep all night in a crappy bed with electrodes all over my body and being filmed to see if I have sleep apnea.  I’ll get the results in a few days, all I know at this point is that my skin still itches from the gel and tape they use to attach the electrodes and that I haven’t had that bad a night’s sleep in a long time.  I got to the office today to find 500 and something unread posts in my feed reader, geez, one night away from home and I’m swamped with posts.

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* ~ my cholestorol medication and my diabetes medication are apparently irritating my liver which has caused both my doctor and my nutritionist to encourage me to lay off the booze and take milk thistle to help calm the irritation.

** ~ we made vacation plans for next year, I think.  There’s a grand possibility that sober heads may decide this is not a great idea, but on Friday we decided to take a 2 week road trip around the US together.  Actually we want to get 10 of us in together on a tour bus and then we’ll go around seeing the sights like Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the largest ball of fucking twine.  I’m not sure if this is like the night we got drunk and decided to join the bowling league or not… Ask me about that season of regret sometime.  Of course our other option is a trip to China with my family, hard to decide between the two.

*** ~ he caught nothing, but had a good time nonetheless