The Fourth

Wordle 381 4/6

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Yesterday I went jogging in the morning. Breakfast was simple: cereal for me, a muffin for T. Also not very social; she had just discovered a problem with a credit card payment and was too busy sorting it out to relax.

We planned to go to brunch around 11, and/or the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, but T. wasn't feeling well. Probably an allergy attack caused by all the dust kicked up cleaning, and/or a sinus infection resulting from it. A covid test came back negative. One session of lying down turned into another until it was after noon, when we officially decided to take it easy. I spent some time cleaning the basement. I got some stuff organized and some stuff thrown out. (Not nearly as much of the latter as I would have liked, some day T. is going to have to be willing to give or throw away stuff we haven't used in years, but at least it's more organized.) 

I'm not much of a party animal in general and I'm not feeling very patriotic these days, but I wanted to see the fireworks. We haven't in years. For the last two years, we were in Vermont or California on the 4th and it was easy to do nothing on the fourth. Before that, the kid was 4 or younger and we tried to observe bedtime. If nothing else came up, I was prepared to walk a few blocks to a hill that I thought would have a good vantage point. 

Around 5 in the afternoon, we heard our new next-door neighbors hosting a party. T. told me that we had been invited. By the time I stepped outside, it seemed that the neighbor's party had died down a bit (it was clearly still going on but was no longer on their front porch), while our neighbor across the street, who we already know and like, was just getting one started. So I walked across the street first. I hung out with people there who I've known for a long time. One of them invited us to their roof deck to see the fireworks. How convenient! I also got a call from my dad, but obviously couldn't chat then, so scheduled a follow-up later. 

Then I went home to T. and reported on all this. She encouraged me to go next door, and I admit I should get to know the new neighbors, so I went. It was nice, sort of. In their house and talking to their friends, we saw a lot of circumstantial evidence that they're Republican activists, which is scary. T. joined me there for a bit. We politely said our goodbyes around 7:15 and went home to chat with my parents. Then I went back to our neighbor across the street. His party was just getting started. T. joined me briefly. We didn't linger too long, though, because we went to the roof deck.

The view of the official fireworks was worse than I expected. I don't know if a new building since the last time I was there blocked the view or what. But there are tons of neighborhood fireworks. We got some so close it was scary.

The neighborhood fireworks also continued late. T. couldn't sleep until after 11 and I'm not sure when I got to sleep myself. We went to bed worried about broken windows because it actually happened last year. 

This morning I got up at the usual time. No damage to our place but our neighbor's window was broken. That sucks. Then I biked to work for the first regular work day at the office in over two years. It probably won't be a regular thing, but it's an experiment I'm doing a few times while the kid is gone.