Good morning America how are you?

You know what? Açai juice? Vile.

Plus? I drank the disgusting stuff thinking all that antioxidant power would flood the cells of my body with amino acid goodness, leaving no room for the badness of too much Yuengling's lager yesterday. And? Yeah no.

Maybe it was the steady beer drinking, but it seems to me that the 4th of July was pretty darn ok this year. I have a complicated relationship with my country, and sometimes Independence Day makes me feel kind of itchy, but this year... you know? It was ok.

We always go to my parents' house. Their town, the town I grew up in, celebrates July 4th big, with a good-sized small-town parade (the Governor shows up) and a world-class fireworks display. My folks live within easy walking distance of both of these events, so the whole family comes for a picnic, and they walk up to the parade even though it's usually hot and boring and nobody stays for the whole thing, and in the evening we walk down to the fireworks at the high school.

So, this year it was not disgustingly hot, and the parade moved along at a good pace, and Big Man and Mr Four had curbside seats, and we stayed for the whole thing. The crowd, I would say, was not as blindingly patriotic as it often gets. In past years I've had complete strangers ask "Where's your red white and blue?" at that parade. I really hate that. What are you going to say? "As a liberal I feel uncomfortable demonstrating patriotism"? "I'm not a joiner"? "Makes me look like a chump"? This year I wore my anti-Patriot Act T-shirt (blue, at least), and got a receptive response when I explained what it meant.

As the parade ended, a big exciting storm descended, which disrupted the day's program pretty nicely, with everyone crowding into the kitchen or playing croquet in the rain.

Because of the rain (which took out power to some of the neighborhood, which was also kind of interesting), the fireworks were postponed, so at dusk, we took a walk around the block with the kids. I've never seen more people setting off their own fireworks in my life. What with the mist from the storm's aftermath and all the smoke from the fireworks drifting around, it was a very surreal stroll through my childhood landscape.

Not bad.