An early start to this weekend, although we were nearly drowned getting there. It started raining yesterday and just kept raining; we had a power blip at work—to my enormous surprise, the network stayed up—in the morning (and at home, too, over twenty miles away). Thankfully, they "sprang us" early (and it still took me an hour to get home). I took one look at the traffic map, which was turning shades of red not found in nature, and just headed home via surface streets. My favorite house in Brookhaven is up for sale again...wonder what's with it? (It's a lovely brown stone home, which would look fabulous decorated in an autumn motif year round, and lovely at Christmas.) Anyway, I think the car swam from Chamblee Tucker Road to Windsor Parkway, after which the rain lessened a bit and it was just soggy for the rest of the trip.

This morning we celebrated our independence by sleeping until ten o'clock, and we did not go to bed late, either. I guess we needed it. Did some chores and then put on 1776 at noon. Followed that by some channel-switching, where I found a selection of patriotic songs performed by Bing Crosby running on "40s on 4." By the time this was over, it was time to go to the Spiveys for an Independence Day cookout. Great fun: Ken's mom and sister and brother-in-law, some of Aubrey's friends, the Boulers, and David, Juanita, and Jessie were there. We brought our own meats and shared sides, and exchanged apps.

Home in time for A Capitol Fourth. Great performances, and even a salute to the Boston police department, but their fireworks coverage was pretty poor this year: they kept turning the cameras on the musical performers (Barry Manilow and a blonde woman whose name I don't know) rather than showing the fireworks.

Had a rude surprise when I consulted Zap2It this morning: CBS was not broadcasting the Boston Pops concert this year. They said the ratings had not been good. Instead they had a rerun of Elementary scheduled. I love Elementary, but not on July 4th! Did you ever think, CBS, had you treated this concert properly, you might have had a better audience? Maybe shown the entire concert, including the entire performance of the Pops' Independence Day signature piece, the "1812 Overture"? And not reworked the concert as you have the last umpety-umph years to highlight this year's musical celebrity pimping his/her new album? WCVBs/A&E television's coverage was so perfect CBS's hideous coverage suffered in comparison.

We did find that WBZ-TV was streaming the musical portion of the concert on their website, followed by streaming video of the fireworks. So there we were, watching the Washington, DC, fireworks listening to the Boston Pops play the "1812 Overture." :-) (DC played it, too, so we had an encore.) Then I tried to switch to the live feed on the television computer, but it whined about a driver, so we ended up watching on James' computer, in the dark, which nonplussed poor Schuyler. Some neat new firework combinations, too: red and blue spheres with white centers, and triple circles around a spherical center, and some beautiful multicolors. Unfortunately our download speed is only 5mps, so it was a bit pixelated.

Finally we watched the New York City concert/fireworks on NBC...wow, what a fireworks show!!!! 95 percent of the shots were outstanding (just a few focused too tight or crowd shots) and the fireworks themselves were outstanding! Loved the red hearts surrounded by a halo, and a great finale. Plus, in the background, they were running a light show at the top of the Empire State Building. The red-white-and-blue color scheme danced and twinkled and shimmied and shimmered. Excellent! Of all the firework coverage we saw, this one gets the best marks.

Labels: fireworks, friends, holidays, Independence Day, music, television

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