Happy Fourth of July, Car!!!!*

Tim and I spent last night the way we have spent the evening of July 4 over the last few years. We live on the sixth floor of our building, and all of the buidings around ours are smaller, so we open all the blinds in the living room and watch all of the fireworks we can see. We know we can see Evanston's display, as well as several individual displays, some coming from just around the block. We were able to see two or three more professional displays, but I'm not sure which suburbs they were. Skokie? Niles? Park Ridge? Norridge? I don't know. If you think you know, please tell me.

We always have music playing while watching the fireworks. Last year it was all classical music. This year we went with rock: Pearl Jam, Chris Cornell, and Velvet Revolver.

Also, we always have some food and drink, which always consists of beer and some sort of munchie food. This year we went to World Market and picked up a 6-pack of Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blonde. We liked how it just has a hint of strawberry, but still mostly tastes like beer instead of tasting link cough syrup or something. They were having a sale on Kettle Chips, so we got 3 bags. There was a Thai spice flavor, which Tim, being Thai, had to try. He really liked it. I think they might be his new favorite potato chips.

*The title of this post comes from a Fourth of July party I went to, oh, 10 years ago? There was a game of Truth or Dare. Or maybe just Dare. One of the dares was entitled "Fourth of July Around the Block". You know how, in It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart runs around screaming things like, "Merry Christmas, Signpost!!" or something like that? (Okay, I haven't seen the movie, but I know I have seen that bit.) The person who got that dare basically had to run around the block doing that, only saying "Happy Fourth of July" instead of "Merry Christmas". He had to do it loud enough for all of us to hear it in the back yard. It was pretty funny.

Maybe you had to be there.