It was a good day

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 31
7/04/09
23:32


Red Wing puts on quite a nice Fourth of July show. The whole town turns out for a day of patriotic music at the brand new outdoor auditorium nestled in the middle of a gently sloping, shady park. After the music, the city displays a movie on an outdoor screen. Independence Day, no less, shown completely without irony. A good chunk of the town turns out for that, and after Jeff Golblum uploads his computer virus, the everyone strolls over to the river's edge to watch the fireworks shoot out over the water. It's all very Stars Hollow.

My office building is probably the nicest place in town. It looks like a tiny version of Wolfram and Hart, what with the perty oak trim and open staircase and no-expense-spared decor. And we have a pretty goddamn nice rooftop, which meant Airika and I had the best seat in town for fireworks today. Four stories up, overlooking the river. Totally the thing to do.

Hell with all that noise.

Our day:

Slept in. Drank some damn fine coffee with my Lucky Charms and the weekend edition of USA Today. Screw you. I like my news bite-sized and color-coded.

Cleaned the house. Because when I have nothing to do and no plans to make, this is what I do. Weirdly relaxing.

Spent two hours at a wedding reception. Only hiccup of the day. Although I did hoarf down three shredded chicken samiches, some tasty homeade pretzels and a pile of soft cookies. The food made it nearly worth getting dressed in my finest denim leg coverings.

After a quick exit, we hit Caribou Coffee and came home, where we sat on the porch. All night. Surrounded by tiki torches and Citronella candles, we watched the deer and the birds. The dogs failed (once again) to catch everything they chased. Airika read about chickens. I read the second volume of the Starman Omnibus. Random tunes wafted from the iPod dock out to the porch, mingling with the distant cracks and booms of rednecks gambling with fingers.

After dark, we strolled out to the prairie and watched home-job fireworks displays dot the sky from all directions. More impressive was the night, and how it was so bright you could read by moonlight alone.

It hasn't been very often when I experienced an Independence Day and really felt anything close to independence. Never, actually. The holiday's always been kind of a joke. Forced to run around, see people, have a picnic. A day off always turned into an agenda. But today. Today was different. Monday morning is careening back around again and I know that it will bring everything that shackles me in annoyance and worry. But today? Yeah, I feel free. And I don't need a goddamn fireworks display for that.