Hey, gang. Hope you had a great Independence Day. Unless, of course, you celebrate your country's independence on another day, or you don't celebrate anything like that at all. Then I suppose I hope you had a happy normal day. Unless, of course, you're Latvian, in which case I hope you had a somber Holocaust Memorial Day. Well, whatever you did or didn't celebrate, I hope you did or didn't do it with or without the intended spirit to your fullest or emptiest potential.
Oh, my 4th was good, thanks for asking. We went and hung out with NetGoddess and her clan, had some tasty pulled pork sandwiches, and lit off some fireworks. Brianna danced around with sparklers like she was Ms. Patriotic, Alex enjoyed getting yelled at for picking up the spent fireworks, and Rachel was just kinda indifferent about the whole thing.
Oh, and we also went and saw a parade that morning. It had rained earlier, and it was actually very cool out. They still handed out free ice cream, though, and we still took it. Alex got a Flavor-Ice thing, but the guy that handed it to him didn't bother to actually open it, so Alex was squatting down and gnawing at the plastic, as if he were raised in the wild or something. It was pretty amusing to watch, but I had to open it for the poor guy eventually.
I've signed up for the Oh No Robot comic transcription thingy. I'm going to make it so that the Rontourage Comics are automatically transcribed once they are completed, and then folks can go in and improve the transcription if more detail is needed. It was MrPoush's idea, and I think it may help bring some new folks to the toy. We'll see.
I needed to get gas when I left work today. I don't worry too much about getting gas downtown. I need gas and if I get stabbed while I'm doing it, then I guess that's the way it is. I'm very Zen-like with my petroleum consumption. Anyway, I pull into a gas station that seemed oddly empty. I went inside to prepay, and there is a very large, handmade sign that read "NO GAS TODAY". Well, shit. About a block away was another gas station, so I went to it. As soon as I got out, I received an offer to have my gas pumped for me. I nicely declined and went inside. I stood in line while some gentleman forced the cashier to make random amounts of change for him (which is a phenomenon that I always seem to observe whenever I go inside to pay for gas). After paying, I walked out, and there's Mr. Gaspumper, holding the door for me. "You sure you don't need me to pump that for ya?", he inquired. I told him my wife only gives me enough money for gas, trying to have a "I'm whipped" chuckle while giving an excuse. Somehow he interprets that as an invitation to express his life story to me. Why he's not selling his services to anyone else is becoming very obvious to me. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and you don't con a local. He told me about his arm, and how it got slammed in the bus door twice, and how he was carrying a new beer on the bus but the driver thought it was opened, and the cop told him to get on another bus, and he should get an attorney, and he needs surgery, etc. I just nodded a compassionate nod, trying not to look at the gas pump, as such an action would clearly show I don't give a shit. I packed everything up and said "Well, see ya later" and got the hell outta there.
Well, tell me about your possible holiday, or about any web services you've signed up for recently, or about hoping someone wasn't going to get randomly stabby while you were pumping gas.