icarusancalion

Been a while since I did a "home" post.

Fourth of July was a blast. Perfect clear blue skies. A really bad cover of The Doors' "Break On Through" echoing up from the park. Afterwards, however (hopefully after someone pelted that guy with rotten tomatoes -- okay, he wasn't so bad, but the woman who tried to harmonize-? Ack.) -- afterwards a very cool Guinean Bylophone and bongo band (like a xylophone only wooden) with kick-it beat played.

I ran down to the park to see if they had CDs.

Ended up chatting with the wife of the lead singer and the band manager (who's charming and open-minded), a professor of Ethnomusicology at Seattle University. I'll be getting together with the band manager tomorrow (hopefully) to chat and buy a CD (she forgot to bring them to the performance). She's into a lot of alternative new age things. I amused myself chatting about the Native American shaman Black Elk, whom I saw speak in 1986, and the Mind, Body, Spirit festivals we both attended over the years. She's done the Kalachakra empowerments with the Dalai Lama though she's not a Buddhist so doesn't seem to know what they are. The new age community has always blended with the Buddhists in the US.

Later, wildernessguru and I got in the car for a drive. I'm like a dog in a car, so happy to be driven around, I all but hang my head out the window with my tongue flapping. We to see "Hot Fuzz" at the cheap theatre. I enjoyed it, I found it to be well done and clever. He loved it.

WG really gets Brit-humor. (I've gotta get him started on Dr. Who.)

We came home as the skies began to darken, got fudgesicles out of the fridge, then took a lively walk through the wooded Seattle neighborhoods playing "The Cat Game."

(P.S. "The Cat Game" is as follows:

- 1 points if you see a cat
- 2 if you manage to pet said cat
- 5 points if you can call kitty to you)

It was a six point night.

We were only about a mile away from a pristine view over of the fireworks barge in Lake Union, our view framed by two trees as we hung out with about twenty people on the back porch of a church. My favorite part was the giant lit American flag flown back and forth under a Chinook helicopter (I'm with a military expert and, yes, he was able to ID it in the dark). That would be a fun job.

The gayest couple in the universe behind us wanted to see the "smiley face" fireworks -- and, yay! They got their wish in a whole series of smiley faces. And cubes!

The coolest effect was a giant mist of gold that was followed by another mist, by another mist, all interlaced "like sagebrush" as wildernessguru said. But you can't argue with the neat, slow moving rockets that floated up, or the new effect of red and blue sparks that dance in crazy directions. We walked home following the gay guys holding hands (I love my neighborhood!).

Now that, my friends, was a fourth of July.

In celebration, I'll post something for you that I wrote a year ago, July 4th, 2006:



( John Sheppard, snippet from July 4th, 2006 -- this was before we knew he'd been married. )