Not just the best, but every show in town...

I have to say, we certainly did the fourth of July right this year. First of all, we went on a major shopping spree this weekend and bought a patio furniture set and a barbecue for our back deck. The deck is on the downhill-facing side of the house overlooking the entire valley toward the coast range. So yesterday afternoon we marinated some salmon and shish-kebabs, chilled some wine, and had a lovely barbecued dinner in the evening. And once it got dark, we didn't have to go anywhere to watch the fireworks -- we had the whole valley laid out in front of us, and we got to see probably a hundred different firework shows all at the same time. The sound delay was much more noticeable than it usually is if you go to watch a show, because most of the fireworks were pretty far away, so it took several seconds for the booms to reach our ears after we saw the display. It was really pretty cool, and the best part was that we were sitting right on our own deck eating dessert!

We've made some good progress on unpacking and organizing the house this weekend, too. We bought new nuts and bolts for the futon, because the movers didn't put the original ones in a logical place when they disassembled it, and we still can't find them. So Hugo is assembling that, finally. I've unpacked most of our pictures, paintings, and fragile stuff, so we have clean towels again (I very cleverly used all of our towels for packing the fragile things, neglecting the fact that they would probably be the last things to get unpacked on the other end). We're gradually emptying boxes and clearing floor space, and we're even working on the garage with the hope of eventually being able to fit a car in there -- now that would be something! :) But now I have to take a break from being domestically productive and start being academically productive for a while. I have a modest-length essay in Spanish due tomorrow that I need to start working on. It's a little hard to believe I'm almost done with my first "quarter" already! :)