For some reason, Milwaukee has it's big fireworks display on July 3. Yeah, I don't know either.

Last night, fortified by a gigantic pitcher of margaritas and a scrumptious Mexican dinner, we wandered down to one of the lakefront parks with a blanket and a few hundred other residents to watch the show.

It was awesome, except for the fact that the fireworks were completely hidden from view by a curve of the lake and forest of gigantic trees. D'oh! Honestly, this was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. All of us gathered on a grassy hillside, a half dozen grills serving up tasty BBQ treats, music pumping from portable stereos, children laughing and dancing, eyes turned expectantly towards the sky for... nothing.

The first couple of booms reached us with no attending visuals, and after about a 5 second lag to process this info, everyone realized at once that we were in the completely wrong place. Most people jumped up and started trotting down the street in search of a better vantage point. But the show was actually a looong ways away and required hiking down (and more importantly, back up) a steep incline. So we bagged it and went home, where we could still hear the booms for almost an hour.

Epic! Fireworks! FAIL!

We'll give it another shot tonight with our local village show.

I'm in one of those "so over-exerted it hurts to breathe" places right now. Everything hurts. I can barely walk. But I'm almost too tired / too sore to sleep, as my muscles and nerves are singing out loud.

I drove my ass all the way down to Kenosha for a craft fair this morning. Parking was miserable and far away and downhill from the exhibitor space. I bought a canopy this week after being rained on and then sunburnt at a fair two weeks ago, and wrestling that thing up and down the hill and setting it up solo nearly did me in. It's unbelievably easy setup as far as canopies go - it's amazing that one person can do it at all - but it takes some doing.

Then I sat there all day and hardly made a sale. In fact, I made back less than half of my entry fee in gross sales, not to mention the cost of goods sold. I'm not taking this personally or anything, but it's still maddening. This seemed to be the same for everyone, which I found not the least bit comforting. It's very frustrating to give up a rare weekend day off and go through all that bloody effort in order to lose money.

And I'm about to bleed, so everything feels especially dire and irksome. Blech.

Living with 18 year-old cats, I sometimes forget there are kittehs out there with energy. The one at about the 2-minute mark is just gorgeous.

It's hard to believe this is actual news and not, you know, The Onion.

PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly

I have never seen "Office Space", but I am familiar enough with references from the movie (and with, you know, normal society) to know that my rage at the flagrant pilfering from and destruction of my favorite multi-colored note cube while I was out of the office yesterday is comically out of proportion with the offense committed. And yet. I can't wait to stalk the halls after everyone has gone home today and determine who committed the crime.

Over a year ago, before I decided to leap into Facebook with both feet, I set up an account with this login just to test the waters. The account has a fake name / pseudonym, my old email address, and no personal or friend info. And I forgot about the account completely.

A couple of months ago I set up a real Facebook account using my real name, all my personal info, and my named gmail account.

Last week, my fake account came up on Facebook's recommendations for my real account. Facebook thinks my fake self and real self are likely to be friends. I find this disturbing. The fake account has zero info in common with my real one, except for the fact that I used the same computer to set up the old one as I use with the current one. But I cleared cookies several times in the year between accounts, so the fact that they know we're the same person is a more than a little creepy.

Somehow during the 15 months were I was either walking to work, working from home, or opening a store 7 blocks from my house, I managed to forget the simple pleasure of singing along to music in the car. Even when there's traffic, commuting can be a source of pleasure rather than pain. How could I have forgotten this? Just 15 minutes of Queen, Indigo Girls, The Beatles, Abba, Mika, and all their friends can whip my whole mood into shape.

Today I decided to inject a little variety in my lunchtime routine, which apparently translated into "ooh, I'm gonna have bacon bits on my salad today!" I do know how to live dangerously, don't I?

I've only been working at New Job for a little over a month, and I'm already sick of the cafeteria cuisine. The salad bar is good, but the rest of the lunchtime fare is borderline inedible. And there are few other options because (A) the neighborhood is scary and not somewhere you want to be walking... or eating, (B) there are no fridges to store home-packed lunches, and (C) THERE'S NO TIME!

I continue to like being paid by the hour, and I am pleased with how accessible the systems are even from my Mac at home (this is the company that's still running Windows 2000, so quite a feat). Last night I worked from home for the first time, and even without a laptop it was easy and productive. And have I mentioned the overtime? I likes me the overtime, even if I'm tired and headachy and crabby the next morning.

Apropos of nothing, why do Blackberries make all the Cisco IP phones buzz when they get near one another? It is annoying as hell.

It's tax day, and as usual I have pushed it to the last minute. Even though I am getting the World's Greatest Refund this year (hooray for being unemployed and the owner of a money-losing small business for most of the year!), I still waited to the last second to give everything over to our accountant and only picked up the finished return last night. I coulda had my refund months ago, if only I were a bit more on the ball. Story of my life, I guess.

Back to work!

I'm still struggling with the reality of working 7 days/week, and figuring out when exactly I get to read, knit, watch TV, sleep, etc.

I came straight home from the store at 4pm yesterday, and laid down for a short nap at 6pm. But I didn't wake up until 9:30 when I was all in a lather over missing the dog's insulin at 7pm. It took me about an hour to calm down, after which I... went back to sleep. Then I got up at about 5am to let the dog out, get a beverage, check email, and then I... went back to sleep. I hadn't set my alarm, as I didn't fathom having trouble waking up, which of course means I slept until 8:35am when I was due to open the store at 9am. I was only 15 minutes late in the end, but didn't have time to get change (the register is out of quarters) or have any breakfast. Not a good start to the day.

And the worst part is, I'm still exhausted. I'm so tired I even concentrate enough to make a list of things that need doing; instead I sit here and zone out and wait for the clock hands to crawl forward.

I had one of those bizarre WTF dreams this morning, wherein my family (mom, dad, brother, me) was running an elaborate science lab in our basement... with plutonium. There was an accident that simultaneously invented phasing (the lab assistant's hand went all shiny and gummy, then passed down through the table!) and let all the radioactivity out. So we had to leave really quickly and I lost all my packing time due to tending the pets and my dad wouldn't even let me grab a change of clothes before hustling me out the door. Which made me mad. The end.