mariness

Happy New Year to all. It is time, I think, to reveal my resolution for the year to all of you:

Eat chocolate.

I know, I know. But I'll be keeping my resolution.

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It's no secret that I love fireworks. Love them.

And I've always wanted to set off little fireworks of my own.

(Er, in the real, not metaphoric sense.)

Alas, much of my life, I have either lived in places where individual purchase and lighting of fireworks is outright illegal, or, severely disapproved of in the apartment complexes where I lived.

But last night, we were able to head out to the driveway to set off little fireworks of our own, under the concerned eye of the Winter Garden Fire Department, which was making slow and nervous rounds throughout our neighborhood. What I hadn't anticipated – although this, along with the unusually dry weather, which explained the Fire Department – was just how many of our neighbors would be joining in – nearly every single house on this street and the two next to it. Frankly, not shooting things off would have seemed, well, unneighborly.

We set off a few fireworks, then headed back in for games (because, honestly, more years should end by facing Cthulhu), turning on the TV to warn us when the New Year approached. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of having CBS on in the background, paying so little attention that we entirely failed to notice that CBS was running—not kidding –a re-run of David Letterman. They didn't even have the guts to run live coverage, so we totally missed the countdown.

Luckily, the booming sounds of Disney and the neighbors made up for this, so we weren't exactly able to ignore the incoming 2011 for very long. We flipped stations and then popped out to shoot off more fireworks. The street was filled with people making things go bang bang bang.

(I say "we" but in actual fact I just stayed back and watched things go up and bang. I'm notoriously abysmal with getting lighters to turn on and not particularly fast at moving backwards as fuses as sizzling. But it almost counted!)

It was not until after midnight that I remembered I also had a bottle of Rosa Regale (a rose champagne) in the fridge for a moment just like this (we'd been drinking Gluwine and eyeing the bottle of Chocolate Wine, which I actually haven't dared try out yet.) We decided to let it go. The city bangs lasted quite some time – until 3 am – and the Grey One, who does not approve of this sort of thing at all, is still not talking to any of us.

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On a totally different note, but before I continue to forget to blog about it: I am not at all surprised that Stargate: Universe was cancelled – ratings were not good, and although the show certainly improved in its second season, this was largely because it had nowhere to go but up. Cancellation was pretty much inevitable.

So yeah, not surprised, and filled with doubt that this is really and truly the ultimate end of the Stargate franchise – someone, somewhere will resurrect it again. But I will say that whatever the feelings about the cancellation, letting your cast and crew (including John Scalzi, who really doesn't deserve this sort of thing) find out that they've been fired through Twitter seriously sucks.

So last evening I was just quietly minding my own business when something went BANG. Knowing it was July 3rd, I mostly ignored this, although a small grey creature, who had finally chosen to reappear after the bangs of the night before, took a moment to summon up my inadequacies as a Stopper of Things That Go Bang and fled. (I haven't seen her since, which would worry me more were she another sort of cat, instead of the sort of cat that chooses to step out to another dimension when she's mostly had it with us, to come back only to demand that she be scratched and admired right now, never mind what you are doing, because she is the Interdimensional Cat, and a Figure of Extreme Beauty and ANYONE even a sad pathetic human can tell that she needs to be scratched and admired right now. In case you were wondering, the term "drama queen" was invented solely to describe this cat.

With that said, this was also once my little neurotic cat who was terrified of everybody and everything, and especially of getting seen by anyone or touched by anyone other than the other cat, including me. She was just coming out of that when we moved, to temporarily live with, gasp, a DOG, adored by the Little One (because he could sit on the dog, which is pretty much his standard for adoring anyone) and dreaded by her, so much progress was lost until we moved again, and even then, it took months before she would willingly be touched. Things were improving and then….we moved here. But these days, as long as visitors and fireworks aren't around, and sometimes even then, she's out and about, yowling and climbing on people (well, mostly me), allowing and even demanding that people scratch her, and becoming, on occasion, quite bold, which combined with the fact that she's considerably smarter than the other cat (neurotic, terrified, yet able to turn on faucets and open doors) is slightly alarming. We can't QUITE pick her up from anything but the scruff of the neck without risking damage, but we can get her in our laps (this is not always welcome) and get her to purr. Now if we can get her to stop turning on the sink….who am I kidding?

Naturally, we are now planning to move, which will probably mean going through all of this reassuring process again. Oh well. That was quite a digression. Moving on.)

But I did look up, to see a rather impressive explosion in the sky. We live in one of those marvelous states where people are encouraged to explore their rights to explode gunpowder and thus help the economy if not the air quality, so I figured it was just a happy neighbor who had bought out a fireworks tent, and then more bangs, and more, with some really impressive fireworks.

Why it took me so long to realize that this was not, in fact, the neighbors (although some neighbors were contributing) and in fact the celebration of the town of Oakland less than one mile from here, I can't tell you, although somewhat in my defense I hadn't realized that Oakland was having a celebration, partly because Oakland is a very, but very, small town ("downtown" = four buildings and dirt roads, although the dirt roads are left there deliberately to discourage people from driving through), partly because I hadn't been here during previous July 4ths and they hadn't done anything on the one New Year's that I'd been around, partly because it had been raining hard enough to cause small floods and I figured any celebrations would be cancelled, and partly because, well, it wasn't July 4th.

Anyway, I headed to the breezeway, where I realized that other city celebrations were going on – Monteverde, what we were guessing was Zellwood, and few others. Which meant that the Winter Garden celebration, which I'd planned to head to, only to cancel because of the rain, was apparently still on.

The best place to watch that celebration was down by the lake, which not incidentally was also the best place to develop a close and bloody relationship with Florida's extensive insect population and quite possibly trip over an alligator in the dark (they do sometimes come up on the shore by the complex, and although they'll ignore you if you ignore them, if you accidentally kick them while stumbling around in the dark they will not feel overly sympathetic) so instead most of the neighbors gathered in the parking lot, which, given the huge puddles and streams of water heading to the lake, did not seem especially inviting to me. Alas, from the breezeway, a huge tree blocked the Winter Garden displays, but I watched the rest happily enough, and then headed inside figuring that the excitement was mostly over for the night.

I had not counted on the neighbors, some of whom were made so enthusiastic by all this that they decided to head down to get a better look at the Magic Kingdom's next set of fireworks, and some of whom decided that the best way to get more fireworks was to go ahead and buy more at Walmart and set them off in the parking lot.

I don't mean to be mean to Walmart here, but for all of their size and strength, they have forgotten to provide one item essential to worldwide happiness, or at least, happiness in a Florida parking lot: waterproof fireworks. If you haven't tried to set off a small personal firework in a parking lot filled with puddles and water streaming down to a large lake, it works rather like this:

Grownup puts firework carefully on the ground.

Grownup realizes that he can't find his )(**(&T^*(*)( cigarette lighter.

Different grownup reminds us all that children are around.

More discussions ensue about the cigarette lighter.

Eventually, a different cigarette lighter is found and produced. This is not, I must note, a Cool Patriotic Cigarette Lighter and is widely and loudly criticized. Firework is lit.

Firework fails to go anywhere.

This is repeated with more fireworks in the box.

Eventually, grownups agree that this is a problem that can only be solved with beer. Children are promised trips to see the "real fireworks" at Disney tomorrow and that these will not be the cheap-ass )(*)&)(*_)_)_)**&(_))( fireworks sold at Walmart. Also, they can do DisneyQuest. Parking lot erupts in delighted cheers.

It rains again.

Anyway, today's plans include a July 4th party thing at my parents, which will involve – you guessed it – watching fireworks, including the new Universal display that had to be Severely Altered to accommodate the arrival of Hogwarts (the fireworks previously went off from where Hogwarts is now located, and now have to be shifted for safety reasons) although since apparently several of the city displays were last night, I'm not sure how much of those we'll see – but SeaWorld and Universal should still have something.

Happy Fourth of July to all, especially British friends!