4th of July Party, Here I Come!

Well, June is gone. What happened to it? How come the summer is so suddenly over a third over and done with?
June has been quite the rainy month, it seems like it’s rained about half or two-thirds of the month so far, and we’ve had so many big thunderstorms. But at Twin Cities Int’l Airport, where all the official records are kept, they’re reporting a slightly below average rainfall for the month. Weird.
So I went up to Cumberland last weekend. On Friday night I played a board game over at Nathan & Laura’s, with them and Mark, called Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. I’d played regular Settlers of Catan several times previously, but this was an enjoyable new twist, though the dice were thoroughly against me the entire game.
Saturday afternoon I worked my first shift at the radio station in Rice Lake in very nearly a year, from 4-midnight. Things went smoothly and dull as usual for a summertime Saturday night at the station. But it was good to get back in practice with that a bit, and to make a few extra bucks too. And now I can tack onto my resume at least an extra year to my time of employment at the radio station, hehe. And Mathison dropped by for a visit at midnight, it was good to see him again, as always.
On Sunday after church, which was at our house, Dad & I worked at getting the swimming raft out into the lake. Only where we first put it wasn’t the best place for it, because as we discovered shortly after making it back to the dock, the raft was in water too deep for its anchor, and so blew way over to the side of the lake. Sigh. So we had to go fetch it and tow it back to a more suitable place with one of the paddleboats. Let me tell ya, that was some hard pedaling! But I just wanted to get that out there last weekend, so we wouldn’t have to monkey with it this weekend when all my friends arrive, like the ordeal that happened with the raft last year upon everyone’s arrival. And when we were changing oil on my car, my Dad discovered that the boot for one of the CV joints on my car was broken, so we traded cars for the week, so that he could get mine into the shop.
This week at work hasn’t been all that eventful. I mean, how can I top last week’s renting of a car to the wrong person? I put in nearly 38 hours from Mon-Thu this week though, hehe. It’s actually kinda nice to get basically 40 hours, and yet to have those three-day weekends. This week I’ve been learning a lot more of stuff that gets done in the office, like data entry, billing credit cards, etc., to make myself even more of a utility person at Choice.
Tuesday night I went to the Twins-Royals game at the Dome with Zach, Jolene & Ben. It was half-price Tuesdays, so we got tickets on the Home Run Porch (lower deck left field) for just $8 each. And it was a fantastic game to go to as well, with the Twins winning a slugfest (if a game with only two total home runs, both solo shots, can be called a slugfest), 11-8. Cory was supposed to come too, but wimped out, using the lame excuse that he had to pack and get some sleep for his move down to Tucson and the University of Arizona the following morning. Wuss! Just kidding, Cory. 🙂
I was met with quite the pleasant surprise this evening when I popped online — my friend Simon from Australia was online for the first time since I’d gotten back, as he’d literally just gotten back a few hours ago from his semester of study abroad in Lyon, France. Welcome back to Melbourne, Simon! And speaking of Aussie friends studying abroad, Bradwa should be getting back from his stint in Italy sometime soon. I wish I could gallavant around the world like that again… And it’s hard to believe that almost exactly one year ago, on July 4th, 2004, I departed for Australia. Wow, does time ever fly.
I’ll be heading up to Cumberland in the morning, to get ready for this weekend’s big event. For the fourth year in a row, I’m hosting a get-together for my friends over the Fourth of July weekend, for a few of my college and high school friends. Only this year instead of just a one-night event, it’s basically going on the whole weekend, one continuous lakeside party right through Monday evening’s fireworks over Beaver Dam Lake in Cumberland, the best fireworks show in all of northwestern Wisconsin. People will be coming and going throughout the course of the weekend, and I don’t know how many will actually be staying for fireworks on Monday night. I will be though, and then hightailing it back to the Cities that night, since I’ll no doubt have to be at work bright and early Tuesday morning at around 7am. To my parents, thank you for letting me host this again, and I apologize in advance for the probable disruptions to your sleep over the weekend, just from the fact that there’ll be some noise around after 10pm. Only this won’t be in advance, because I know they won’t actually check my blog and read this until well after the 4th. But ha! this is proof I was thinking ahead. 🙂 At any rate, I’m sure that I’ll put up a post about it all sometime early next week, once I recover. 😉 And to celebrate American Independence Day, you’ll probably noticed I’ve temporarily replaced the New Zealand pictures at the top of my homepage with some fireworks pictures of mine.
But before I go, a couple stories I’d like to pass on. First, since I’m a weather geek, I was naturally interested in the new Japanese weather satellite that’s monitoring East Asia and Australasia. And this guy totally had to be on some illicit substance — he claimed he was being chased by evil subterranean beings while on his crime spree! And finally, in response to last week’s breathtakingly outrageous Supreme Court ruling that essentially revoked our right to private property, a group of developers up in New Hampshire are proposing to build a hotel on Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s land, using as legal support the majority ruling that Justice Souter himself voted for. It would be called the Lost Liberty Hotel, with an eatery named the Just Desserts Cafe. I mean, seriously, this isn’t a conservative or liberal issue, this ruling by the Court should frighten every single American immensely. Now we no longer truly own our property, the government does. If a corporation, developer, or wealthy campaign contributor comes along and says to the city council, “I want that piece of land, and my new development would net the city more in property tax revenue than Joe Blow’s house that’s currently there,” this ruling gives the government free reign to seize your land and give it to the wealthy person or group, under the guise of “eminent domain.” Without private property rights and ownership, our republic and economic system as we know it will certainly collapse within the next 50 years. Maybe now is the time to start considering a Constitutional amendment that would either a) explicitly re-state, in stronger terms, citizens’ private property rights, which are already enumerated in the Bill of Rights in the 5th Amendment (which the five majority justices completely ignored in this recent ruling), or b) allow Supreme Court decisions to be overturned by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. The runaway judiciary must be stopped before they ruin our country.
Happy Independence Day.