Happy belated 4th of July, all!

I love the 4th of July. It ranks as my third favorite holiday, behind Halloween and Christmas, and not in that particular order. (Guess which order those two go in! No, really, guess.) (And yes, I really have ranked my top three holidays. You shut up!) The music, the fireworks, the spirit, the people, the hotdogs, the fireworks! I love the 4th. In a more cynical mood I might say something about how typically American it all is - blowing things up and cooking flesh over an open flame, all in the name of frivolous patriotism. I would, however, never degrade the music. I love all music patriotic and will tolerate nary a bad word about it, so don't dare make fun of "purple mountains' majesties" or "twilight's last gleaming" within my earshot. Anyway, I really do love this holiday and all that it represents and every year I go home from the festivities with a smile on my face.

But - leave it to Duluth to have some of the all-time crappiest 4th weather that I can remember suffering through. Last week: beautiful, upper 70s-low 80s, sunny, gorgeous! This weekend: grey, cloudy, sort of warmish until yesterday afternoon, then rain rain rain ALL DAY, then mist, then fog and then! Cancelled fireworks! Bah!

However, Chelsea and Katy spent the weekend here and we managed to have a good time despite the weather - had a pseudo-barbeque, played Trivial Pursuit (which I finally purchased for myself, so if anyone wants to play Trivial Pursuit... you know where I live!), watched several movies yesterday afternoon/evening while it poured, talked, etc. Last night we went to Perkin's down by the lake, hoping that if there were fireworks we could see them from there and then as we headed back up the hill to Dave's, my car was rear-ended by a Pizza Hut delivery guy. Yeah, exciting, but wait, there's more! So, I pulled off onto Superior, and I was pretty flustered from the whole rear-ending and I sort of just... ran my car right onto the curb into a no parking sign post. That thing is now reclining at a near 45 degree angle. So yeah. Luckily, there was no damage to my rear end (the Pizza Hut guy felt pretty bad) and only some minor paint scrapage in the front.

Not much else to report. The one summer class is officially over. On Thursday I have study abroad orientation at the Twin Cities campus, so I'll get to meet some of the other people who are going to Venezuela. Most of them go to the U of M Twin Cities, there are a few people from various schools in Ohio, one person from Penn State, and one from UW Madison. I'll be the only Duluthian. Well, pseudo-Duluthian. I'm really a Cities girl. My dad is going to Buenos Aires at the end of the month, the schmuck! But he wants to be there til the end of August and would like to try and visit me in Venezuela, if possible, so that would be great.