mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-07-06 11:40 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-07-06 11:40 pm
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July 4th!
I'm certainly not celebrating America's birthday right now.
But the 4th is also Alex's and my anniversary, so we celebrated that as usual. 16 years!
Our main "tradition" is making a fruit salad of Just The Good Fruits:
The Good Fruits in question!
Two peaches (one was very good, one was very meh), a nectarine (average), cherries (from our neighbor, which was nice of her), strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, two different mangoes (the small one was REALLY good, the larger one was fine but kind of bland), bananas, and mandarin oranges. The pear did not go in the fruit salad, because it didn't feel ripe.
I always like processing mangoes, because:
It's like a little hedgehog, lol.
The completed fruit salad.
We headed up to another city for their fireworks show, the one we've gone to a couple times in the last few years as well. This year we didn't get anything from the food trucks, and just ate our fruit salad and the other snacks we brought. It was warm, but not horribly hot. We got some wind for a bit, but no actual storm came through. We mostly ignored the cover bands that were performing, and picked an ebook to read for a couple hours, ha.
Bella! (This picture from Alex.)
Bella is fortunately extremely chill about fireworks. She didn't even jump at the first one. She sat and watched the first few, and then just seemed bored, haha. She just wanted snacks, and could not care less about the noise or anything. I am 1000% fine with her being bored instead of anxious about them. We were lucky with Cy when it came to fireworks too.
The fireworks themselves were pretty cool. As usual, I'm not a fan of the clips of "patriotic" songs that they're set to (though some of them aren't patriotic so much as just having "USA" in the lyrics.) But again, the finale was set to the 1812 Overture, which always remains cool. I may or may not have been imagining governmental buildings being blown up.
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I need to devote some time to like... life admin, ha. I'm not sorry that I've managed to Do Things on my time off from work, since that was obviously the point! But I've also done nothing except those things, ha. I need to catch up on some regular life stuff, get caught up here, etc.
But the 4th is also Alex's and my anniversary, so we celebrated that as usual. 16 years!
Our main "tradition" is making a fruit salad of Just The Good Fruits:
The Good Fruits in question!
Two peaches (one was very good, one was very meh), a nectarine (average), cherries (from our neighbor, which was nice of her), strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, two different mangoes (the small one was REALLY good, the larger one was fine but kind of bland), bananas, and mandarin oranges. The pear did not go in the fruit salad, because it didn't feel ripe.
I always like processing mangoes, because:
It's like a little hedgehog, lol.
The completed fruit salad.
We headed up to another city for their fireworks show, the one we've gone to a couple times in the last few years as well. This year we didn't get anything from the food trucks, and just ate our fruit salad and the other snacks we brought. It was warm, but not horribly hot. We got some wind for a bit, but no actual storm came through. We mostly ignored the cover bands that were performing, and picked an ebook to read for a couple hours, ha.
Bella! (This picture from Alex.)
Bella is fortunately extremely chill about fireworks. She didn't even jump at the first one. She sat and watched the first few, and then just seemed bored, haha. She just wanted snacks, and could not care less about the noise or anything. I am 1000% fine with her being bored instead of anxious about them. We were lucky with Cy when it came to fireworks too.
The fireworks themselves were pretty cool. As usual, I'm not a fan of the clips of "patriotic" songs that they're set to (though some of them aren't patriotic so much as just having "USA" in the lyrics.) But again, the finale was set to the 1812 Overture, which always remains cool. I may or may not have been imagining governmental buildings being blown up.
-
I need to devote some time to like... life admin, ha. I'm not sorry that I've managed to Do Things on my time off from work, since that was obviously the point! But I've also done nothing except those things, ha. I need to catch up on some regular life stuff, get caught up here, etc.
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Happy belated anniversary!
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And thank you!
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I'm glad you got to enjoy the fireworks and the weather cooperated. It's great that Bella is not afraid of the noise.
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I am glad the weather was nice. And I'm extremely glad that Bella remains completely unimpressed with fireworks!
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And yeah, for us the fireworks started at 9:15, so we weren't home until really late by the time we waited out the traffic at the end. I would have had to work the next day, except that I took this as my vacation for the summer. (Even on years that I do work the next day, we often still go... but definitely more of a struggle, ugh.)
I'm glad that Darji did okay with the fireworks! I feel like none of our asshole neighbors who shoot them off every night care about the weather - they'll be out there in the rain still doing it, ugh. Or if it's raining too hard, they'll just wait for it to let up and then start shooting them off around 2 or 3 in the morning. So annoying.
I have heard about all the flooding down there. I think the most recent death toll I saw was 104? 27 of those were the girls from the camp that were killed, I think? I'm sure the deaths will climb more, since they won't even confirm an estimated number for how many people (outside of that one camp) that are still missing.
The rain would probably be more helpful if it was spread out instead of just flooding one area!
The national weather service DID provide warnings... but none of the local Texas officials were willing to pass those warnings on, apparently. They did try to claim that the NWS didn't warn them, until the NWS showed the timestamped reports they'd provided. I think there was one "well, so many warnings end up being false alarms, we just sort of ignored them..." answer, but mostly they've just refused to say why they didn't actually provide the warnings they were supposed to.
I did also see a report about how they were recommended to put flood detection and early warning systems in back in like, 2017, I think it was? But they didn't because they said it was too expensive.
It sucks, because this is a lot of "finding out" after the "fucking around", but it really wasn't 20-some kids going to summer camp that deserved to be killed for it.
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Hope you are getting some rest and getting caught up isn't a pain
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Hoping for the same... probably should have done a bit more resting, but hopefully the catching up can be spread out enough to not be too difficult!
The 4th is mine and Kev's anniversary, too!
It's neat you've got a fruit thang going on there. It's always gratifying seeing someone process a mango correctly! I've got 3 whole apples, a can of pears and a can of mandarin orange slices. I'm hoping to make a nice something tomorrow that I can nosh on. I'm starting exercise again this week. Naturally, I woke up with hip issues, but I pressed on anyway.
Re: The 4th is mine and Kev's anniversary, too!
The 4th is our "officially dating" anniversary, too... though that was just the "acknowledgement of mutual interest in doing so" online, ha. He was still in MD at that point, and flew out to see me in person in October that year.
You have a bunch of different significant dates! (I guess I should try to figure out exactly what the date he flew out to see me was...)
Hooray for correctly processing mangoes! (I learned to do so from, of all things, a Highlights magazine as a kid. There was a short story from the perspective of a kid making fun of tourists who didn't know what they were doing and ended up making a mess when they bought mangoes. I have zero idea why it stuck with me for a good decade+ until I actually had a fresh mango.)
Congratulations on pressing through the hip issues. Isn't that always the way? If I have plans to go do something physical, that *will* be the day I wake up with my back horked. (Though this week it's been a mystery something under my shoulder blade. Mostly ignorable, but throbs with every step.)
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That's awesome Bella is chill enough with fireworks to attend a show!
Otherwise, I'm genuinely glad you've had some time off work!
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I am so glad that Bella is so blasé about fireworks. She's luckily pretty chill with most things.
And thank you! Time away from work was very nice, even if it does always feel too short.