4th of July Spectacular!

This past weekend was heaps of fun, if a bit tiring. For the fourth year in a row I had friends over at my house in Cumberland for the Fourth of July weekend, and this year was the largest gathering thus far.
I got back up to Cumberland on Friday afternoon, and quick did some trimming and vacuuming before people arrived. Seth got there first, so he and I made a trip into town to pick up some fireworks for us to shoot off during the weekend, and by the time we were done, Zach, Carl & Jolene had arrived as well. We all had a good time just staying inside for the cool evening, hanging out and watching “Ocean’s Twelve.”
On Saturday morning before Ben & Brendan arrived we all went out on the paddleboats for a trip around the lake. After lunch we picked up a bunch of delicious brats from Louie’s. I think I was the only not totally amazed by how many different flavours of brats alone that Louie’s had. All things considered, we stayed pretty ordinary, with “plain”, onion & garlic, cheddar and Packer (cheddar, beer & sauerkraut) brats, especially when you consider that there were Viking (purple cabbage & cheddar), blueberry and apple brats that we also could’ve gotten, among others. Mmmmmm, Louie’s is sooooooo good, and I think now everyone else thinks so too! We all decided to go for a swim when we got back, but first we decided to add about six feet of chain, so that it could be in somewhat deeper water, about 13-14 feet or so. Once that was taken care of, all us guys (we couldn’t get Jolene to join us, and Josh elected to fish instead) had an awesome session of king of the raft, that resulted in some carpet burns and nice takedowns for all, hehe. Mike & Shaun showed up for the delicious grilled brat feed, along with my brother Jake, who pretty much invited himself over for brats. Many bottle rockets (even clusters of them) were shot off the dock before sunset, even resulting in the deaths of three minnows, lol. Then Carl had to head back to St Cloud for the night, since the following morning he had to catch a flight out to Los Angeles for his Teach for America training. After he left, the rest of us just had a fire, a few drinks and launched a few other fireworks. All in all a very enjoyable day. 🙂
Seth left for home right away Sunday morning, and Zach & Jolene left for Jolene’s house in Duluth after lunch, leaving just Ben, Brendan & I to hold down the fort for the afternoon. Mike & Shaun came back late afternoon to do some fishing (this time Shaun remembered their fishing poles), and Sarah S., Janelle, Kate & John all arrived around suppertime (grilled burgers, yum!). It was especially good to see Sarah & Janelle again, since they had both fairly recently gotten back to the States from a year or more abroad in Hong Kong & China, respectively; Janelle had only been back for three days at that point, and it was my first time seeing her since a month before I left for Australia last summer. And not only is it really fun seeing friends, but it’s especially fun to see my friends from college and my high school friends get along with each other really well, even when they’re all telling each other stories about me. 🙂
Brendan had to leave promptly Monday morning, leaving Ben, John, Kate & I to hang out on the 4th itself, part of which involved having Kate watch “Kill Bill Vol. 2” in the afternoon, after having had her watch the first one the evening before. My parents gave Kate a good deal of conservative reading materials (which she of course promptly devoured), which immediately endeared her to my parents. Nathan & Laura and their kids also stopped by for a couple hours in the afternoon, as did Jake and one of his friends, so there was a lot of activity going on for a little while there. But we got everything packed up, and the four of us made it to Tourist Park in Cumberland for the annual Cumberland 4th of July Spectacular at about 8, a couple hours before the show. Ben & Kate were somewhat surprised to find that our beach towels were still where we’d laid them out that morning, right by the lakeshore — I love small towns! Anyway some people that have houses on the lake near the beach were shooting off fireworks for awhile before the official show started, and those were a couple of pretty good displays, probably as good a display as you’d see in a really small town somewhere. So when you tack on all those to the 30 minutes that the official display lasted, we were treated to a good hour or so of fireworks! 🙂 And for the actual show, there were hardly any gaps in between the fireworks, they did a really good job of keeping anywhere from 1-4 fireworks in the air pretty much all the time. Plus I managed to get the grand finale on video on my digital camera, I’ll try to get that uploaded to my website at some point. It was really nice getting to see 4th of July fireworks again, after having had to miss them last year while I was sitting in LAX for my 10-hour layover before my flight to Melbourne, though I was fine with having missed them when I got to see a fireworks display at Sydney Harbour back in November. At any rate, it was 11 by the time we all left Cumberland after the fireworks, and I didn’t get back to Minnetrista until 1:30am, which was kinda rough, since I had to be at work at 6:45am Tuesday. Yuck.
Something amusing happened at work yesterday. A guy called up wanting to make a reservation for a rental car, but when he told me that every place else had turned him down because he didn’t have a credit card or debit card or anything, I transferred him to Rick (the manager). Rick was about to make the rental after talking to the guy, but started to get a funny feeling and checked the computer after telling the guy to call back in 10 minutes. Sure enough, that same guy had rented from us back in 2002, didn’t pay us, and we still hadn’t gotten the money even after going to a collection agency. So when the guy called back Rick told him that we couldn’t rent to him because he’d stiffed us three years ago. Then the guy offered to pay up what he owed if we rented to him this time, but again Rick said that we’d take the money but that we still couldn’t rent to him, at which point the guy said, “then you’re not getting any of my money!” and hung up. We were all amazed and amused at the gall that guy had, to call up, and say he was only gonna pay what he owed us from three years ago if we rented to him again.
Well, my Grandma Siesennop isn’t doing too well. Two weekends ago she was moved from Martin Luther Manor to Fairview Southdale because of pneumonia — I knew when I visited her that afternoon at the Manor that she wasn’t doing very well. So I visited her again at Fairview last Friday on my way up to Cumberland, and she seemed exhausted and still not doing too well. At any rate, over the weekend the hospital decided to release her, but not without a feeding tube, which meant my Mom was on the phone with her brothers and other relatives almost all weekend. By the time they went down to the Cities on Sunday, Grandma had told the nurse that she didn’t want a feeding tube, meaning my parents and uncles started arranging hospice care, which started when she was transferred back to the Manor on Monday. It probably won’t be long for her now; she’s 93 and very frail, has been bedridden for the last 3-4 years, and her hearing and sight are mostly gone. It’s been tough seeing her wither away like this.
On a lighter note, a couple amusing news stories have come up in the last week, like the astrologer that is suing NASA for $300 million for their Deep Impact experiment, in which a probe slammed into a passing comet last weekend in order to create a crater and determine the comet’s composition. She says that the universe’s astrological balance has been completely thrown off because of it. Whatever. And apparently men and boys in Russia are having a harder and harder time passing as women, as evidenced by this would-be test-taker. Maybe that means the new generation of Russian girls that didn’t grow up on Communist-forced steroid injections are actually a bit more attractive…
And in response to today’s terrorist attacks in London, hopefully it’s a wake-up call to many, many people around the world that terrorists are not content with simply gathering and carrying out attacks inside Iraq, but are determined to attack us in our own countries, as we go about our daily lives. And that’s why these Islamofascist terrorists need to be wiped out, not appeased. Appeasement didn’t work with Hitler, and it won’t work with these evildoers either.