After careful consideration, we have decided to forego church attendance and spend this Sunday morning in quiet reflection at home. (Lea’s gone back to bed, Aaron hasn’t yet been out of bed, I’m slamming caffeine and eating aspirin, and Nathan’s excited that it rained so he didn’t have to help me pick up fireworks debris at 6:30 this morning.)
Incidentally, so sorry about that, dear Gaia. There are still some spent rockets and tubes here and there to pick up when it’s drier, and we’ll still do a pass through neighbor yards, but thanks to copious applications of wind and water, a whole lot of the mess is now…somewhere else.
I installed our new dishwasher yesterday. Lowe’s offered free delivery and haul-off this weekend, of which we availed ourselves. (I’ve thrown some weird shit in the dumpster at work without ruffling feathers, but I had a feeling tossing an old dishwasher in there might finally break the threshold of complaint.)
They left our new soldier and took our thoroughly-detested KitchenAid away. Who knows what happens to these things? I don’t. So I’ll choose to believe they packed it full of C-4, threw it 500 feet in the air with a catapult, and detonated it.
Most of the time I’m just handy enough. I’ll get there, but it takes me a while. That’s how it went yesterday. It’s in 
there, it looks good, and it works wonderfully, and I did it without personal injury or property damage. I was planning to be done at noon; instead it was 2:45. Still have the hundred and a quarter in my pocket it would have cost to pay someone else, though.
(Incidentally, when the Lowe’s guys set it down in the floor, I said “okay, I’m smart enough to do this, right?” One of them looked back at me intently and said, “hey man, you’ve just got to believe in yourself.” Loved it.)
So after that, it was on to more pleasant tasks. I grilled a sexy slab of ribs with Sticky Fingers Carolina Sweet and pineapple juice for three hours and change, and they were the best ones I’ve ever done. Then our next-door neighbors came over, and it took about two hours to burn through our respective pyrotechnic stashes.
The larger consumer fireworks have really gotten good. A pro show gets you altitude and size that you can’t buy at the corner stand, of course, but except for the very best six- and seven-figure professional displays, I’m not convinced there’s a clear advantage in effect quality anymore.
I found a site this year with videos of what the larger consumer cakes look like. (They only show part of the start-to-finish, but it’s enough to give you an idea of what something does.) I didn’t find it until after I’d made this year’s run, but next year I may shop with it.
The Watkins Glen Grand Prix comes on in a little while. I’m enjoying my Bob Barker book, with my P.J. O’Rourke book on deck. Maybe it’ll rain some more.
I hope you’re having a good weekend.
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