Just got back from fireworks in Decatur Square. The weather was unusually pleasant for Atlanta in July--this past week, it's cooled off from insanely hot to merely very hot, and tonight was almost cool.

There's something very nostalgic about going to see fireworks on the 4th of July. Many things have changed about the world--and about me!--since I was a little girl, but this isn't one of them. We still congregate with hundreds of people in some public outdoor venue to watch the lights in the sky. Someday Z will be old enough not to be scared by the noise, and we'll take him along. And someday he'll take his kids.

Happy Independence Day!

For someone who had no plans for the holiday weekend, I sure have been busy. Friday Z and I went out for dim sum with itarille, rslatkin, vatavian spambrian, and eponasr. The former three came back to the house with me in the afternoon, then we all went out for the Lenox fireworks display that night. The original plan was to take Z along in the front carrier, but Aaron decided he didn't want to go, so he and Z stayed home. I'm just as glad--while Z has successfully slept through a combined klezmer-mariachi band, I'm not sure how he would have responded to big sky-bangy noises.

Also, I don't know why it never occurred to me to watch fireworks with my glasses off before! Giant glowing puffball-fireflies, big enough for me to reach out and grab!

Yesterday I went with rslatkin, vatavian, partytrick, and skellington to see Wall-E, which is absolutely brilliant. Make sure and stay for the end credits--there's no Easter egg, per se, but the montage they've put together for the credits is almost as good as the movie.

After the movie, we joined up with ahhhnahhh and zudaru for a Mexican dinner, then fetched up back at their place for tea and talk. Aaron had stayed home with Z again, so it was weird for me to have almost an entire baby-free day.

Today's plan had been to hit the Pride parade downtown, but frankly, I'm exhausted. Plus, I'm not sure I'd want to have Z outside in the heat all day, and I feel like Aaron's been on baby duty rather a lot this weekend, so I think I'll be staying home in the A/C. But still. Busy weekend with no plans!

Who's up for fireworks at Lenox this year? We'll be taking MARTA (with Z in the front carrier). Let me know if you want to meet up there.

Thanks to spambrian, itarille, gwdanton, and thatcrazycajun for meeting us last night for fireworks! I got my splodey fix, and then there was ice cream, and what more could you want?

Unfortunately, I should have been home finishing up my school reading for today...I ended up staying awake til 2:30 to get it done, so consequently I feel like ass today. I may be coming down with a cold, too, but with the sleep fog, it's hard to tell. *yawn*

Enough dance, let's talk pretty-sky-boomboom. Anyone want to join us for fireworks on the Fourth? I'm working from home, then we're taking the train to Lenox--yes, Marta's finally good for something!

kd5mdk is in town this week for the National Fencing Championships, so we invited him over for dinner last night, and to go see the fireworks at Lenox Square. Unfortunately, nature's own fireworks threatened to wash out the event, so we escaped the donner und blitzen and took the train back home for the backup plan.

I'd rented "Mrs. Henderson Presents" from Netflixx on the basis of Ebert's review, and a certain fascination with the time period and the somewhat titillating subject.

My god, what a movie. And Judi Dench, my god, what a woman! She could just stand still and be amazing (though not in the same way as the Windmill Girls). Then she talks and you go, "What, it gets better?." The dialog sparkles as much as the sets and costumes, and she just brings out the best in everyone she interacts with. It's gorgeous and moving and based on a true story, and really, what more could you ask for?

(Today I discovered that the fireworks weren't rained out after all, but the movie was so good I almost don't care.)

(Even though that makes two years in a row I've missed my fireworks fix.)

My fireworks craving was amply fed this weekend.  The Stone Mountain laser show was all one could have wished in tackiness, and followed by a gratifyingly extravagant fireworks display. 

We had received a dinner invitation for the 4th itself, from our next door neighbors, whom we had only met before in passing.  This was a whole new concept for a girl who grew up in NJ apartments--this whole "being neighborly" thing.  I hadn't realized at first that they had invited only us and one other new couple on the block--I had some idea it was a much larger affair and they'd invited the whole neighborhood.  This is approximately my least favorite social situation, right up there with office holiday parties--people I don't know, food I probably don't like, and nowhere to sit.  Luckily, I've been taking "How to Talk to Strangers" lessons from Aaron, and the smaller group setting was a great relief to me.  So it turned out to be a good time after all, and we chatted all neighborly-like until about 8, when we left for fireworks.

The Lenox fireworks display, allegedly the largest in the Southeast (and I shudder to think of the cost) was enhanced by an 11th floor view.  The original plan was to take the train to Lenox station like civilized people, but then I had to go into work at the last minute.  We thought of staying there to see the show, but we had an hour to kill and figured, we were right down the street from Lenox, surely in an hour we could find parking, right?  Ha.  We drove around Buckhead for an hour--as much of it as we could drive around with half the streets blocked off--and finally gave it up and headed back to the office, with two minutes to spare.  This turned out to be a perfect view--we missed some of the low fireworks, but everything else was fabulous.  We even had the radio tuned to a local news station covering the event, so we got the music and somewhat mis-timed booms as well.  Yes, they played that song again, but it was worth putting up with. 

We're going to Stone Mountain with some friends to see the laser and fireworks show tonight.  I've been to the laser show before, and it is an unbelievable paragon of patriotic tackiness, which I can only assume will be even more absurd this weekend, but I am a fireworks fiend.  My secret dream was to have fireworks at my wedding, but when you get married in a big-city skyscraper, lighting incendiary devices is frowned upon.  I've had to settle for as much as I can get when this time of year rolls around.  Despite my Barrayaran addiction for things that go "boom,"  I've never been tempted to set the things off myself (being attached to all 10 of my fingers) but I'll go to any public fireworks display I can get.  The year before I moved to GA, I went to six July 4th displays in six different little podunk NJ towns, every day of the week leading up to the 4th.  This year, in addition to the Stone Mountain extravaganza of tackiness, we'll also be hitting the Lenox Mall display on the actual 4th.

Now, don't get me wrong; I don't find patriotism tacky.  It's giant laser-outlined profiles of George Washington that make me snicker.  And that dreadful, ungrammatical, "I'm Proud to Be an American" song.  Not only is it musically uninspiring, but the grammar: you can't be "proud to be an American, where at least you know you're free," because American isn't a place.  I much prefer the old-fashioned patriotic hymns--America the Beautiful, for example.  Yes, yes, those hymns usually refer to a deity in which I don't believe; but the lyrics and the melodies beat all heck out of ungrammatical feel-good songs masquerading as pop music. 

There's been some discussion of tempering the bad grammar with a holiday viewing of "Farenheit 9/11."