This year my compressed schedule brought me an unexpected bonus. If your compressed day off is on a holiday, you get to take the day before off. A little extra independence, if you will.

I didn't really have anything planned for today except for washing my work clothes, since I'd forgotten to do them on Tuesday, and changing the bed. So I got a nice full eight hours sleep, then took Tucker on his morning constitutional. One of the families in the upper cul-de-sac has a little "dustmop" dog, the cute shaggy white kind, and they alerted on each other. I took Tucker straight on to the main street, but he hadn't forgotten the little dog and checked for him on the way back. Although it was already warm, there was a fresh breeze blowing (a combination of winds from Tropical Storm Arthur and a cold front—think 80s instead of 90s—coming in from the west) and if you were in the shade it was actually quite pleasant. So I crossed the street to where there's a line of pine trees between two homes. Tucker went rigid and growled, then stepped up to the bushes underneath, pace by pace, scraping his hind legs and growling. Never saw anything, but he sure did!

After we both had breakfast, I called him back into his crate and did something else necessary: washed the kitchen floor. I also started the clothes, but didn't do the bed until afternoon.

In the meantime I was thinking about something. We had found out that the Boston Pops July 4 concert had been moved up to tonight because the weather predictions (tonight a storm, tomorrow possible heavy rain from Arthur, which was developing into a hurricane) were better for tonight. They were busy getting the fireworks assembled and the Hatch Shell ready. Well, they were streaming it online for the first time since those [unprintable adjectives] from CBS decided to drop the broadcast (at least what piddling little they were giving us; only an hour of a 2 1/2 hour concert). (Apparently Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods reruns are more important.) The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to entrust my viewing to a wireless signal. So after I threw the bedclothes in the washer, I drove to MicroCenter for a new Cat5 cable. Since this was MicroCenter, I couldn't just leave with only a cable. I bought a portable recharger for my phone (it works fine; I tried it out tonight), a mouse pad, and a tiny camera case for my spare phone battery and earbuds.

Once home I finished up the bedclothes, changed the sheets, vacuumed a little, and took the dog out again just before James arrived home. It was our potlucks night and I took the leftover chicken leg from Tuesday, sliced off the meat in thin bits, then cooked up an Annie Chung teriyaki noodle bowl. When the noodles were done, I added some slivered almonds and the chicken, poured the sauce on top and warmed it up for another minute. It was a delicious supper.

And I was glad I went out for the network cable. I'm not going to say the picture was totally HD and there was a certain amount of minor jerkiness to it. But the sound was great and it was clear enough, and we enjoyed the whole thing. Unfortunately a big line of thunderstorms was marching in from the west, so they skipped the traditional "1812 Overture" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" and went directly into the fireworks. The show was fabulous, although the bunches of purple fireworks so prominent in the past few years were not in evidence this year. They had something new this year, one with a sparkly foil scrap sort of center surrounded by a more traditional firework light. Plus smiley faces, stars in circles, and hearts. The neat thing was that more than half of the shots were aerial, and you could see things like Fenway Park (with a game in progress, it looked like) and the famous Citgo sign. Once the fireworks finished they showed last year's "1812 Overture."

And we stayed up entirely too late...again...

Labels: chores, dogs, fireworks, food, music, pets, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:58:00 PM

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