Soak Up the Fun, Part $

Apparently, nerds like to blow things up.

Here's how my 4th of July went...

Slept in
Took a ride on Ruby Gayle, my sweet "new" bike.  Literally one mile in, the chain falls off when I switch gears.  I turn around and take her home, clean up and get some writing done.
Around dinner time, I go with my roommate and her college roommate to the cul de sac where one of our other friends lives with the intent to blow things up.
We eat some din-din and watch Dr. Horrible, during which someone says that the Death Ray (or maybe it was the Freeze Ray) is actually the gun used by Captain Malcom Reynolds in the battle of Serenity, but turned upside down.  So we watch that.

My sister calls and I don't hear my phone ring (go figure that the name of my ringtone is "Serenity").  She calls back an hour later, and Nerd Farmer Matt tells me it's ringing.  I step out of the room to chat with her, and she was just inviting me to the display her husband and his RPG friends put on every year.  Had I remembered their tradition, I would have gone there instead.  Next year.  Next year.  I've seen pictures of their spreads, and it's pretty impressive.

I guess it's a tradition among my cul de sac group to stuff a non-working appliance with fireworks and light them off.  This year's contestant: a wind-up emergency flashlight that no longer winds up.  To pry it open, Nerd Farmer Matt gets an axe out of his truck and goes at it.  (Or maybe it was a machete.)  The only thing that happens is that it starts working the way it's supposed to. 

I lit off a firework with the word "midget" in the title, but when it gets too close to a tree for my comfort, I reassign myself back to Punk Duty.  My roommate bought a couple of paper lanterns, and the first one didn't work quite right.  Much debate was had over it being device malfunction or user error.  Either way, someone (I honestly don't remember who) decided it would be a good idea to assault the faulty thing with Nerd Farmer Matt's blow torch.