Fireworks and Pizza

WOOHOO! 4th of July! My most favoritist of holidays! I know, I know... enough of the exclamations, but it is the best holiday ever! It's the day when fireworks happen. I love them fireworks. Yes, it's my version of Christmas. I live for this day. I grew up with it being the one holiday that my mom would make sure to celebrate with me and it means something about family and warm and fuzzy stuff.

This year Susan, Belle, D and I went to Anaheim to see an Angels and Blue Jays game. D surprised me because right in the middle of the park is a huge waterlandscape. Is waterlandscape even a word? It's a fountain, and I wish we were closer to it. It kind of gave me a water hazard feeling from putt putt. We had pretty nice seats, well in my opinion. We were on the field and up the firstbase line. Maybe if I watched any of the game I would have something else to say about things. It was a pretty okay place to sit for the fireworks and that was what really was important to me.

I, of course, have no idea what the score was... I read during the game. I wasn't the only one, because Belle, who was appalled by the lack of skill the Blue Jays were showing, read Fragile Things. She assures me it isn't any better than I thought, but she has pulled through and read much further than I did. I do know that the Angels won by a lot and they didn't play all of the last inning because of it. Baseball is not like hockey and I just don't really care to know the intricacies of it. I do wish Canada had a better showing. They probably let us win because of it being a holiday and all.

The fireworks were really nice. I am going to go down nostalgia lane and talk a bit about what kind of magical wonderness fireworks mean to me. When I was a child my mom and I would go to Lake Ariel, that is in PA, and we would set up in the church yard by this big rock and we would get a pizza, from Kay's Pizza and we would 'ooo' and 'ahh' as the fireworks went off over the lake. A few times after I was married we went other places, one time was Lake Wallenpaupack and there was pizza there too. It was tradition in a world where there just wasn't any sort of traditions. This became really important to me. So now, as an adult, I have to re-enact this tradition to overcome this feeling of disconnection with that old life, that old me. Every year I have to go see the fireworks and remind myself that no matter how abnormal and warped my childhood was, I had this one normal thing. I had this one time when family was something. So fast forward 30 odd years and we come to this year. I was a little disappointed in my inability to capture the shots I wanted to with the camera, but as I got twenty some pictures, I need to get a grip and not cry too much.
Belle through me for a loop today. She landed herself some tickets to see So You Think
You Can Dance for the performance show and results show this week and she wanted to know if I wanted to go. I sure as by golly did! I even channeled some Mary there. So I had to email Dr. Moore when I got home tonight about canceling therapy so that I can go on Monday. I am a little nervous about how I will go and deal with the crowd but I am really excited. Of course it is the week AFTER Matt and Kourtni were voted off though. Booo! I was disappointed because I still think Comfort and Jessica should have gone before Kourtni and Thayne should have gone rather than Matt. But it didn't go that way and I will have to watch Thayne and Jessica *ahem* entertain me on Monday. I wish it weren't so. The one thing I was happy and then disappointed by was seeing Lacey and Benji. Benji did a WCS for Joshua and Katee and it was really not impressive. Sad.

I started a new book today and I am really excited by it. I finished French Kissing by Nancy Warren while at the game and I had brought along Dead Connections in case I was feeling uninspired by the game. I have to say, I am barely into it, 34 pages, and it has a really awesome sense to it. I love the tone of the story. It has a biting sense of humor and the characters are really varied, to the point of near schizophrenia. I love the main characters Murray and Pearl they have zing to their interactions that I haven't seen in a book since Christopher Moore books. There is a really messed up character, well they are all pretty messed up but there is one that is more so then others, his name is Mr. Robert Barry Compton and he makes me smile everytime his insanity is shared. I think I struck the mother load with this book. I am so happy that I went and picked it up. I may have to get D to read it when I am done.

And lastly, Blood and Chocolate. After we got home from the game tonight I talked D into watching the movie with me. I had read enough criticism about the movie to know that it was vastly different from the book and that became apparent in the first minute of the film. I was mostly confused as I tried to figure out who was who and what was what. The adaptation was so horrible that it was a clusterfuck of lore and bits and pieces of the book with pure fabrication. I felt terrible for Hugh Dancy and fans of the book. Neither deserved the tripe this movie served up. It was no longer a coming of age story which was what made the book so interesting. They villanized one of the [heroes??] of the book. I didn't like him in the book but I really didn't like him in the movie. And then they defied one of the principle storylines of the book with Rafe and killed him off midway through. Hey sorry if I just spoiled you, but you didn't want to see this movie anyway. I want my memories of the mediocre book back... now I have this bad taste in my mouth and these horrible images in the back of my eyes. No wonder it only made 6million in the box office. Yes, six million. Everyone else was smarter than me and held off seeing it.