The Big DumpTruck

I’m exhausted today. Our bedroom was about ten thousand degrees last night thanks to the 87 degree day, and although they said the temps would drop like a dead duck in the evening, that cold front didn’t pass through until the middle of the night. So I just couldn’t fall asleep at all.

Then I couldn’t have coffee in the morning because I was having a fasting blood test (Oh my God, maybe the woman doing the draw needed another cup of coffee too…my whole arm was in pain) and the lab had a line about 10 people deep.

Yesterday I bribed Junior with Dairy Queen to get him to go to the Mall at Whitney Field with me. I wanted to run to JC Penny and Circuit City. Note to all stores that sell computer cables: Apparently HP has decided to move from a 6-pin firewire port to a 4-pin one. That means you have to start carrying 4 to 4 cables. Circuit City, I especially mean you, because you sold me the computer. You need to have the appropriate accessories. I bought the next to the last 4 to 4. Staples and another unnamed store didn’t carry them on the shelf, but they could be ordered. That isn’t good enough for me.

So anyway, the Subway sandwich shop is open again down at the mall. I think I met the manager (or the owner?) and she seemed very on top of things, and concerned about things like filth. As in, they weren’t selling soda from the old machine because she was concerned that it was completely gross. Now THAT is a good manager. Big high five right there. And Auntie Anne’s is open again, so my main gnoshing needs are all being met.

Today: 30 degrees cooler than yesterday. I don’t think sleeping will be a problem.

Adam seems to think we were up at the crack of dawn, but unless his dawn cracks later than mine, it wasn’t bad. We were at my sister’s in Littleton by about 8, and left there soonafter. We did get stuck in some traffic on the back roads, and when we were about 6 cars away, they closed off the road we wanted to take to get us a bit closer to the action. This just meant we had a slightly longer walk than we wanted, but it was incredible out yesterday so the walk was amazingly pleasant. I’d say if you’re going to try to be right next to the bridge, you’ll have to get their early, but we opted for the other side of the river looking down (next to the Visitor’s Center) and even getting there at 8:45 there was more than enough room to see everything. Plus, we were so close to the parade that at one point we had to duck to avoid being hit in the head by one of those poles that they use to hold the banners that identify the group marching.

One of the more amusing things we witnessed happened when a group marching from the Fenn School (in Concord) ended up stopping in front of us while everyone waited for some ceremony down on the Bridge to finish – 95% of them spent the whole time staring at and talking about the kids marching from a high school in Naples Florida. Specifically, their cheerleaders, pom pon girls and color squad, all of whom were dressed in the traditional short skirt “uniform”. It was pretty amusing to watch them watching the girls.

For the record, we thought it was pretty cool that the Naples high school marched in the parade, even though they were the only marching band that wasn’t somehow tied to Patriot’s day (either by being local to Concord and Lexington, or by dressing the part. Apparently they just wanted to come up to experience history firsthand, as it were, and to actually walk across the North Bridge. So they did. How much do we take it for granted that these amazing historic places are right in our backyard?

With apologies to our British friends, here are a couple of photos of us whooping their butts in Lexington/Concord today. I will have some stills taken from the video I shot as soon as I get the right cable to hook the video camera up to the new laptop. I would just do this on the desktop, but darn it, I want to use this laptop for video editing!

So forgive the quality of these two images…I used the video camera’s “capture” function to pull a low res image from the digital tape. But for now, its better than nothing. Click on the first one to open up a window for a few pictures we took with Junior’s camera (my old one).

And luckily, once again, the British retreat, so we get to be the United States for yet another year.

What a great experience! Unfortunatley, I forgot to explain the story to Junior ahead of time.

More later with a few pictures.

Sheesh. People, please, if you’re going to take your pants off to catch some rays, try not to do it right next to the mini golf course. I’m begging you.