six-day weekend

Working where I do can be a bit weird sometimes. The schedule is and must necessarily be flexible, of course. I just didn't expect it to flex quite so much.

Due to the Fourth of July, we had a short week last week (Tuesday through Thursday) and now, it seems, I have a six-day weekend on my hands. Friday to Thursday. Almost a full week. And here I am, sitting smack dab in the middle of it, wondering what I'm going to accomplish during that time.

So I thought, Heck, why don't I blog? Gives me a chance to listen to that Eric Clapton song I've been searching for on YouTube for, like, forever.

At some unforeseeable point in the foreseeable future, I will get around to filling you in on those two weeks in the U.K. and Ireland. First post's already in the pipeline. But for now, I'll tell you about some other stuff that's been going on.

Thursday night was rather interesting. I wound up at a friend's house for the evening. Or perhaps I should say, for the sake of strict accuracy, that I would up in my friend's swimming pool. I had a marvelous time. The sun was warm and the water perfect. I swam about and talked with my friend's pretty sister-in-law about everything from marine biology to zombies to the hotel business to the weather in Maryland.

Friday was (ahem) a pretty good night too. It too involved swimming pools. One of my best female friends, V, had a birthday last week, so on Friday we all went out with her to celebrate. She's a fan of the comedy show How I Met Your Mother, so, since we'd be playing laser-tag, she decided we should all "suit up." Everyone got dressed up in their Sunday best and then we put on the electric vests and ran around a room filled with black lights and shot each other for a few hours. Playing laser tag in a suit and tie is something everyone ought to try at least once in their lives. Makes a guy feel like a Secret Service agent from the year 2134.

After this, we went out for pizza at Oggi's, a local micro-brewery that just happens to do pizza on the side. (Or perhaps it's the other way around, maybe they're a small-time pizza joint that does beer as a sideline.) Delicious stuff: the combination of the Heavyweight (meat lover's) Pizza and Oggi's own Sunset Amber Ale is tough to beat.

Then it was over to V's house for some night swimming. (There were no American-flag bikinis in evidence, though.) Nobody had informed me about this little part of the adventure, so I was forced to run into Target and buy some swim trunks. (My house was 10 miles out of town; I'd never have made it out and back in time to get the pair I already owned.) The errand made me extremely worried. I'm afraid that, in a few years, it will be impossible to find any men's swim trunks that don't hang below the knees or some other absurd length. I had a horrendous time trying to locate some men's swimming products that were not excessively baggy, coated with inane patterns, or board shorts. I eventually settled on a simple black pair of trunks, purchased them, and beat feet back for Oggi's, still wearing my suit and tie. That must've been a sight.

We had to clean V's pool before we could use it, but this being the desert, where things like algae and frogspawn are practically nonexistent, all we really had to do was give the thing a once-over with the scrubber and skim some leaves and pine needles off the top. I went the extra mile and dived down to the bottom for some loose leaves and bark that the vacuum couldn't suck up. Then the party spent a few happy hours disporting in the pool, making fun of Paul (who couldn't hardly see without his glasses, and had to swim by echolocation), congratulating V's little sister K on her recent marriage, and talking of this and that. Then it was over to V's hot tub (very, very, very, very hot tub) to poach ourselves into a contented frame of mind. I came off the night a few bucks poorer, but a pair of swim trunks richer. At least this new pair isn't flesh-toned like my old one...

Saturday was spent in assisting my buddy John with buying up the remaining materiel necessary for the huge party he and I would be throwing on the evening of the Fourth. We hit Stater Brothers and Vons and between the two of them picked up about thirty bottles (and one mini-keg) of beer, a bottle of rum, a grande bottle of bourbon, some mojito mix, and some sweet 'n' sour, plus some napkins, plates and plastic silverware. (Can I just start calling it "plasticware"? "Plastic silverware" is, at the very least, a material oxymoron.)

Then I went back home, having blown a good portion of whatever savings I had left over after England, and went over to Lucerne Valley with the parents to watch their fireworks show. Yes, Lucerne Valley has their fireworks on July 3rd, for some reason. I didn't care. The more fireworks shows I get to watch, the better. And I hadn't seen one in two years, mind you. I was in Korea for the last two Independence Day holidays.

The show was excellent—much more than I was expecting. It went on for 20 minutes, used a plethora of different kinds of fireworks, and was accompanied by live music from a local swing group, Phat Cat Swinger, replete with suspenders, fedoras and zoot suits. I sat and marveled at pyrotechnic technology (and the unceasing wonder of a country, people, and democracy as great as the United States of America, now 234 years old) as the band played on, the cool breeze blew, and the sizable crowd of Lucerners hollered and cheered.

Sunday was great. I lazed around the house until about 3:00 (watching the excellent musical 1776 with William Daniels), then went over to John's house and helped him set up the pool table and the barbecue. The bar was all ready: a flat board placed on top of two bookshelves in the garage, with two buckets of ice behind, one filled with beer, the other with hard liquor and mixers. A blender on the workbench rounded out the manifest. Guests began to arrive, five o'clock rolled around, and the evening mellowed out. We refreshed ourselves with Fat Tire and Tostitos, taking occasional breaks to toss the Nerf football around, play a pick-up game of basketball, or shoot pool. The stereo kept us entertained with a steady stream of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Foghat, Van Morrison, Foreigner, and AC/DC. The hamburgers and hot dogs were grilled to perfection and consumed with gusto. John's girlfriend Rebecca had baked a red velvet cake, which went down mighty fine with some Shock Top Belgian ale.

The day died and the fireworks lit up the valley below. We could see the bombs bursting like tiny flowers blooming in the sky above town, and hear the bangs and booms as distant thunder. Occasionally, from some unseen point in the neighborhood, smaller firecrackers would pop and explode illegally, to the whoops and yells of drunken suburban merrymakers. All of us were fairly well along by this point, and the inane commentary and bad jokes were plentiful. The night concluded around a card table in the middle of John's driveway, drinks in hand, blankets about our shoulders, and quite a lot of giggles and chuckles. Our eyelids began to droop about 12:30, and after helping John clean up the considerable mess we'd made, the party broke up.

And now here I am at home, on the floor of my (newly re-carpeted) room. For the remaining three days of my weekend, I'm planning on reorganizing my dresser (so my clothes will actually fit into it); pounding the pavement for a bartending job, resuming the long hard search; and, let's hope, blogging about England. It's about 97 degrees outside, and my chamber lies on the sunnier side of the house, so things are kind of warm in here. I woke up, ordered a pair of pants off the Internet, washed the glass doors where the dogs have wiped their noses peeking in from the back porch, and took a four-hour nap. I'm bleary, creaky, grubby, and probably quite fetid. I should really take a shower and brush my teeth, but hey...it's the weekend.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.