This 4th of July weekend was quite busy for me. I'll summarize my very exciting life below.


Friday.

Friday was the 4th of July, and there was the annual party at Mike W.'s aunt's place. It was rainy, but Anderson, Matt, and Paul still managed to set off a lot of fireworks.

With a flame thrower.

In reality, I think the device is supposed to be used to melt ice on a walkway or something, but it produced a pretty decent flame, which Paul used to light about 18 bottle rockets at once. In addition, Kara provided a Barbie doll which Matt burned to ashes in a fit of insanity. Finally, Anderson discovered the "smashed cup trick," where he placed a burning firework underneath a plastic cup, and then placed a brick on top of the cup, and the cup slowly crushed as the firework burned inside it. A little later, we moved indoors to play some Rock Band, which I think everyone enjoyed, particularly some of the older folks, although they declined to play. Finally, we went back outside at dark for the actual fireworks show, which we watched through these silly "fireworks glasses," which added a little targeting reticule around any light source you looked at through them. It was cool.


Saturday.

Saturday, I drove out to C-bus to hang with Nate, Feezey, and Griff. I met Feezey at his dad's place, he drove us to Nate's. From Nate's we went to B-Dubs for lunch and then returned to play horking Waverace 64 with the annoying announcer. Nate then drove us to Griff's where we played pool and hearts, two Swing Hall classics. I won hearts. HOH! We then went to Champp's (two Ps) for dinner and saw Wanted afterwords. I thought it was a pretty decent movie, and the preview certainly didn't give anything away. We headed back to Griff's and hung around and talked, and Griff put in some American Dad episodes, which got Nate and Feezey really pissed. We headed back to Nate's, and I walked around the neighborhood at night for no reason. Some people pulled up in a car near me while I was behind a tree (for no reason) so I hastily left. It was weird. Nate, Feezey and I finally reached the decision to go inside and watch a movie, and we decided on Dirty Work. I found it hilarious. Feezey and I then departed and slept at his dad's place, but not before seeing his new Mazda 3 (hatchback edition) in the garage. At this point, Feezey actually said "What the hork," as he was quite stunned by this.


Sunday.

In the morning, I was out by 11:00 AM and back on the road, which I normally try to avoid as much as possible. Total cop count for the entire trip (there and back) was 13 (8 going and 5 leaving). Luckily, the trip passed without event. When I got home at 1-ish, I hung around for about 45 minutes before leaving (again!) for Eriq's place to continue our 4.0 campaign. We had a full party this time, with the addition of Topham, and I think things went pretty well. Topham's character proved to be effective at convincing people, which is always a useful skill. Now they just need someone with perception. Halfway through, we made a pit stop for pizza and I picked up a battle mat from the store (Acme Games), which I have needed for as long as I can remember. However, after returning we had almost had a pen emergency, as the first pen I drew on the mat with wouldn't come off. Luckily, some Tilex Eriq kept in the closet did the trick. We tried a different pen, and a wet rag erased it completely. Close call. I'll post a summary of session 2 in the near future, probably tonight.