4th of July

Another year, another 4th of July. Unlike last year, my mood was considerably more pleasant. Once again I spent the day with Heidi and her family. It was so nice to spend the day in the pool, especially since the temperatures were over 110. About the only time I left the pool was to reapply my sunscreen. (SPF 50 these days)

The fireworks display in the neighborhood was off the scale crazy again this year. The Strip does not generally offer any sort of fireworks display; they tend to save that for New Year’s Eve when we aren’t in the middle of fire season. Smaller neighborhoods do put on some shows, but I swear they are few and far between. I have stated before that Las Vegas does not have a very strong community feel to it and holidays such as this have a way of showcasing that.

What seems to end up happening is that people buy their own fireworks and end up launching them in their neighborhoods. It is completely insane. While we have our little stash of “safe and sane” fireworks that look more like large sparklers, there are crazy people out there with professional fireworks that sound like missiles being launched overhead. Once again, it felt like we were in the middle of a war zone. The noise of the launch was scarier than the noise of the firework itself.

It was with a horrified fascination that I stood watching a man, who was surely in the running for this year’s Darwin Award, casually stand directly over the firework as he lit them. These fireworks probably stood as tall as his knees. He would stand over them as he tried to light them and then walk away to get another one without even watching the result. Adding to this spectacle were his next door neighbors sitting in lawn chairs less than 20 feet away from the launching point. Can you imagine what could have happened if these things had tipped over? The kids were terrified of the noise, so we went back inside and out to the backyard. Last year we found ashes in the pool. This year I kept waiting to see my license plate come falling from the sky. Luckily that didn’t happen, but there’s always next year.