Happy 223rd Year of Independence!

Hope everyone had a good 4th of July. I wasn't able to get down to the valley for our traditional BBQ but Jas was able to come up. We had a lot of fun over the weekend, just being goofy (as usual) and managing to stay out of any real trouble. I had to work a few short shifts on the 3rd and 4th but we didn't let that hamper our festivities. We were planning on going to dinner at the Moo Creamery (an amazing modern day soda shop style restaurant) since they were planning a very "all American" menu in celebration but found out that they closed at three. Would have been handy for them to have mentioned that fact when promoting the special menu for the day. So we decided to head over to the Marketplace to find something open. Yes, we were those annoying people who expected others to feed us on a national holiday.

We saw that the little 50s style diner had some lights on (good first sign) so we were on the lookout for a sign letting us know if we were again out of luck. I quickly spotted a sign tapped up right above the normal hours sign reading 'We will be open normal hours July 4th'. Excellent! We open the door and one of the employees says to us that they are closed. But the sign...? "Seriously?" Jas asked. And the employee smiles (doesn't he know we're starving, how rude to smile at a starving person!) and says that they've been slow all day so they're now closed. Right after we're turned away another couple of people are turned away too. No wonder you've been dead, you aren't letting people in! So we went on to plan C. Walk to Applebee's, we saw cars in the parking lot and people inside, odds were good.

While we were walking to my car after dinner a nearby firework caught our attention and we ended up jogging to the far end of the lot to try to see what we could. If we stood at just the right spot we could see some of the large fireworks from the show at one of the country clubs between the trees. After standing for about five minutes we decided that one firework every minute was not worth standing in the parking lot for so we decided to go on a hunt for more. I knew where a nice neighborhood was where the houses were huge and I would expect lots of people would have purchased their own fireworks. Fireworks are legal here which is so odd to me since I'm used to them being a big no-no in the valley. I guess they aren't concerned with burning Bakersfield down. We ended up finding a road that was filled with the ground sparklers so we pulled over to watch their little show. Which was actually really impressive considering they are all bought from a stand. Not too long later we heard a huge BOOM and up and to our right a large firework went off. Turns out there was another professional show just to the west of where we were sitting and we had a great vantage point. Heck, I'm going to be so bold as to state that we got a better show sitting in some neighborhood by a park than we'd have gotten at the show done at SYVHS. Lots of the really cool (smilies, super giant, multi-pop) sky fireworks along with a good ground show. And we got to control our own music instead of listening to the same recycled patriotic music that goes with the same old recycled show.


Loves.