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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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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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:24:00 PM

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