Independence Day Weekend

Friday was a pretty darned lazy day off from work. I was originally planning on going for a bicycle ride, but somehow I got sucked in by my computer and before I knew it, it was already 11am and pretty warm outside. I had lunch at home, and other than picking a few things up off of the floor, didn't do anything productive all day. Finally around 6 I went to the veloway for a skate. There were only two cars in the lot when I got there, probably the fewest I've ever seen, most likely since it was still about 100 degrees out. After one lap, I started feeling a pain at the top of my right boot. I figured it was a burr or some other bit of debris that had come from a tree or some such thing. I was going to wait until I got back to the start, but a wheel was getting so loose I was afraid it was going to fall off, so I stopped on the track to tighten it and address the pain. When I loosened my right boot to get to the offending material, I realized it was the boot itself rubbing my skin raw because I was wearing shorter socks than I normally do. I tightened my wheels and skated back to the start in pain, and called it a day. I took a shower and had dinner at TX Roadhouse, then went to check out a brand new (opened that day) sports bar in the shopping complex. It was a nice enough place, but nothing amazing.

I was mostly awake but trying to go back to sleep at 7 when, because of a problem with his holder, my dad's cell phone called me. I tried to go back to sleep, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen. I called my parents to wish them a happy Independence Day, then had breakfast and headed out on my bicycle. I got to the downtown area around 10 and started doing laps around the hike-and-bike trail to kill time. There were as many people out as I've ever seen, and had my work cut out dodging them. Eventually, I sat down on a shaded section of wall near the confluence of Barton Creek and Lady Bird Lake and read the paper. Around 11 I went to Uncle Billy's, which seemed to just be opening, for beer and lunch. After lunch I rode over to Barton Springs pool, for my first time ever. There were tons of people there, but at least it's a big place. I crossed over the pool and found a place to set my stuff under a tree, then went for a swim. Most people were congregated around the shallower areas, with very few in the deep sections, so that's where I went. After swimming for a while in the fairly bracing 68 degree water I decided to wait in line to try out the diving board. Not being a diver, I just did a cannonball. I floated around for a while longer, then went back to my towel to sit and read for a bit. While I was sitting there a group seemingly quite consistent with the pool's demographic- underage teen girls in bikinis- set their stuff down and went to the water. After a while, I was drying off and starting to feel the 100 degree heat, so I went for another dip. After another cycle of swimming, then reading/drip-drying, I packed up and headed out around 2. I thought the 15-person line to get in was bad when I got there, but the line as I was leaving wrapped around the building and went on further than I could see. If it had been like that when I got there, I still would have never been in the pool. I was actually feeling hungry again, so I went to Shady Grove for some sustenance. I was pretty pissed when, at one point, I went to the bathroom for two minutes and came back to find some jerk had just shoved all my stuff over one stool so he could sit with his group rather than stand for one minute and wait to ask me to move over, or just stood the two minutes they were even at the bar. I hung out at the outside bar trying to keep cool, reading the paper, until about 4. I took another lap on the hike-and-bike, then went to Book People and chilled out until I got hungry. I didn't have much of a plan as to what I was going to eat, and pretty much just found myself at Hooters. It wasn't very crowded when I got there, but it gradually filled up to the brim, as did every bit of grass in the park across the street, as people gathered for the fireworks. When it started to get dark around 8:30 I left to find a place to watch. I stopped along Riverside where I could see the symphony, but I faced the other direction, toward the fireworks. It was a pretty good show, as it usually is (barring uncooperative weather). It wasn't all that easy, even on a bicycle, negotiating the throngs of revelers and all the cars to get headed home. For a while, I was moving faster than the cars were, there was so much traffic. When I got home I pretty much went straight to bed.

Sunday was another pretty lazy day, but I did manage to do a little yard work in the morning and some light housework. I finally hung up an elk horn I've had sitting in my living room for months, but I didn't hang a painting that's been sitting on the floor for about as long.