boom boom rockets!

So yesterday was US Independence Day, holiday in the middle of the work week, sleep-in day, fireworks day, however you want to name/describe it. Yesterday was July 4th! So I think I'm going to recap my July 4th holiday for you to enjoy - or not enjoy, it's your choice.

It was pretty sweet because having a national holiday right smack in the middle of the week meant I only had to go to work for two days then get to stay home. And now, I only have one more day of work left for the week! How sweet is that!? This should happen every week - that would be awesome. Screw hump day; it would turn into ... well, maybe it'd still be hump day for some, but in a different sense. Anyway, I digress.

The only problem I find about having an established sleep schedule is that no matter how much you tell yourself, "Sweet! I get to sleep in tomorrow!", you end up doing this:
The eyes open. The eyes drift towards the alarm clock. 7:46. Balls, I suppose I can go back to sleep. Sleep manages to successfully reoccur. The eyes open already staring at the alarm clock. 8:32. Lame. I still can't sleep in, might as well get up. So in spite of the fact that you could have slept in, you can't. And that makes you grumpy for that first 5 minutes that you're awake. At which point, I simply tell myself, "It's okay man, you still woke up after you normally would" ... and then I feel better.

So I after that, I did my normal morning routine of turning on the computer, checking mail, checking if there's anything new to download, checking if there's any sweet deals on geek toys, etc. This is when the boredom starts kicking in. *see post about boredom.

Anyway, time went on. The sun disappeared before it should have. Thunder started happening - wait, crap it's raining? Nooooo, the fireworks! Check news! The National Mall has been evacuated... monkeys! Tornado watch in effect for Fairfax, VA... well, that's really close by...
After weighing the odds and some more research, me and the housemate decided to go into DC anyway. I mean, the worse that could happen is that the storm gets worse and the fireworks are canceled right?

So to the metro we travel. At one point along the trip a middle eastern or Indian family boards the metro train and seats themselves behind us. Now, I'm not racist at all, but I suppose there's a reason stereotypes are what they are. The B.O. just a *ahem* tad strong coming from one of them, or maybe a few, I'm not sure. But, it would have been rude to get up and go to another seat the moment they sat down. So, being self-sacrificing, I sat there; my nose didn't quite get accustomed to it, but it's fine now. We did meet some *excuse the language* total fucktards on the train we had to switch over to in order to get to DC. These are the stereotypical wear-your-pants-lower-than-your-boxers, walk-and-hold-your-balls-as-if-they-were-going-to-fall-off-any-minute, taunt the people in the other train cart because they sure as hell won't be able to do anything serious to you through the doors, grab your balls and pelvic thrust because it amuses their little minds, swear and giggle in public. Ok I'm done with that. It just amazes me how useless some human lives really are.

Anyway, we really didn't know where we were going. We were hoping the crowd knew where it was going and we would just follow. Quite fun stuff trying to listen on people's conversations, hoping that you can pick up on some direction. Anyway, by using this method we reached the DC monument, wandered our way around the lawn there, and plopped ourselves down in anticipation of darkness.

Here's the album of pictures I've uploaded for your viewing pleasure of the fireworks show. Oh, and in that album, the last item is a video of the fireworks show. Me and the housemate both had our digital cameras so we did video recording of segments of the fireworks show. About 3/4 of the way through, I thought to myself. He's taking videos, so I'll just take continuous pictures of the fireworks. So I just pieced together my clips and the finale from his camera. Enjoy the fireworks!

July 4th, 2007

The fun didn't stop there! Oh no it didn't! With so many people at the Mall, you can imagine that there's going to be equally as many people trying to leave DC. The problem is, coming in, the people were spread out in time. But now that the fireworks are done, the rush to the Metro stations commenced! There were HUGE crowds/lines at the nearest Metro station. So my housemate and I decided it'd be more fun to walk to the next station - it'd probably take the same amount of time, and at least we wouldn't be standing still. Onward! Next station comes into view. Same issue. Huge crowd. Ok, let's walk to the next station! Wait... where's the next station? Oh well, we can just go with the flow! Anyway, that got us walking around in circles. And we ended up heading back to the DC monument. A nice complete walking circle we did. So by guy's intuition and guessing, we knew that there were more Metro stations in the other direction. We already knew ahead of time that the Smithsonian Metro stop (the one that was actually the closest to the fireworks) was closed for the 4th. But no worries, we would continue past it to another Metro Station. Anyway, we managed to walk for a good 30 minutes, maybe more. But it was amusing! and that's all that matters; I got bored and traced out our route that we walked on Google Maps.

I hope you enjoyed my recap of my July 4th. How was yours? I hope if was relaxing. Until next time, enjoy life!