I’m back at the drawing board this morning, still trying to get caught up following my trip to Florida and the holiday break!
While on the boat trip, I got used to sleeping in later than I normally do and with the holiday weekend it made it easier to hit the snooze button a couple of times!
Speaking of the weekend…
We almost had a nice relaxing weekend!
On Sunday, on our family enjoy a “spirited” round of “putt-putt” golf, which is kind of a summer tradition with us. This time however, we played on a course with real grass and none of those “hoaky” windmills and characters to maneuver!
It was a battle!
My two sons versus my wife, daughter & I!
Following a “grueling” back and forth match, my sons edged us out in the final holes to win and of course the bragging rights that go along with it!
Then we piled into our car and headed home, almost…
We were traveling in the far righthand lane, westbound on I-494 in Bloomington when a tractor trailer decided to change lanes into ours.
One slight problem…
He didn’t see us!
All of a sudden I felt a hit on the back rear of our car and for a moment thought the car might spin! The truck had hit us with his front bumper and fortunately, he wasn’t making a quick lane change and he was able to back off soon after he realized what he had done.
We both pulled over.
The driver was very apologetic and made sure we were all okay, which thankfully, we were.
We inspected the damage, which happened to be very minimal considering the size of his vehicle versus ours.
The Minnesota Highway Patrol soon arrived, we exchanged all of the necessary insurance info, etc…and we were back on way home, grateful that it wasn’t worse!
The irony of it was, the truck that hit us was from a local grocery store chain that my wife has dealt with many times over the years with her food industry job!
After we got home it was time to fire up the barbecue!
We enjoyed a dinner of barbecued chicken and a couple of side dishes. We piled the dishes in the sink and headed for our town’s Fourth of July festivities!
One thing our town does right is it’s Fourth of July gathering!
he setting is a local park near a small lake. There are food vendors, games for the kids and a terrific band on stage that plays for a couple of hours before the fireworks go off at 10:00 PM.
We arrived about 8:30, located our next door neighbors who had arrived before us and planted our chairs in our usual spot, which is near the stage, but at an angle that we aren’t blocked by a large tree when the fireworks go off!
We then enjoyed a band from Minneapolis called Synergy that played songs from the 70’s, 80’s & 90’s, plus even a couple of today’s hits.
The fireworks, set to music went off at 10:00 and didn’t disappoint!
The only thing that did were the number of people who decided they needed to photograph the display!
There was a near constant display of flash from cameras of people, who I guess planned to make a great scrapbook of our city’s 2010 fireworks!
Can you imagine dropping by their house in a few months and having to look through countless pictures of fireworks over the years?!
“You know, this year’s was good, but I’ve got a great shot of the grand finale from 1998 that really tops that!”
Do us all favor next year, reject the urge to photograph every burst of color you see!
They’re fireworks!
They are not a “once-in-a-lifetime” thing!
They set them off every year!
And in case you feel the need to see them more than once a year, there’ a local amusement park that sets them off each night during the summer!
Just enjoy them!
Hope your Fourth was safe and great!
P.S. The “Grand Finale” of our display was great, think I’ll do a search on “You-Tube” to see if anyone recorded it! (Gee, I hope so!)