Notes from the Fourth of July

Mrs theskinnyonbenny and I went up to Natchitoches this weekend for the Fourth of July. Crystal and Brent were in town with all of their kids (they're up to three of them for those who have lost count). There's nothing too major or exciting to report, and I forgot my cameras until we were an hour out of Baton Rouge. So all I have are a few disjointed observations.

• I had some small moment of concern about Louisiana's new law prohibiting open containers of alcohol. Previously, it was illegal for the driver of a car to have an open container, but it was fine for passengers. Now, it will also be illegal for passengers to carry open containers. I asked the girl about this being bad for business as we picked up daiquiris at a drive through liquor store in Natchitoches. "No, it's not an open container, since we serve it with the lid on and don't put the straw through." Well, thank goodness for that.

• The dumbest thing that I think I saw in the last few weeks was Brent, trying to light -- no, make that actually lighting some major-pow fireworks with a hand torch. Let's get this straight. We have a ball of big-time explosives, wrapped in some heavy paper. Then, instead of lighting the end of the fuse and running like hell, he's after it with a six inch flame. My heart still races from thinking about it.
  
  At one point, we went together to try to light three boxes of little screaming rockets at the same time. He got the first two light, as I struggled to get the fuse to catch from a punk. It didn't take me too long to run like a little girl, leaving my fuse unlit. Brent couldn't let that box of rockets go off solo, so he went back with the torch to light my fuse. Rockets whistled right past his head all the while.

• Did I mention that I forgot my camera? One day, I'm going to put up a photo gallery of "People in North Louisiana that I don't know." There are some real crackerjacks in the 318 area code.
  
  That reminds me, there's a sort of new little independent newspaper in Baton Rouge called "Tiger Weekly." It's mostly concerned with campus life. By far, the best page is the "fashion police" page, where they take pictures of the horribly dressed, blur out the faces, and add captions that are hilariously insulting. That's my inspiration for the 318 gallery.

• I don't see how I can lose my wallet or keys or sunglasses, and look for that type of thing for about five minutes a day. Meanwhile, I had a bottle cap from a beer that I drank on Sunday night in my pocket all the way up through yesterday evening. In other words, I can keep track of a piece of trash for four days straight (without finding a trash can), but I don't know where my wallet is from one minute to another.

• Having Monday after the fourth off of work was nice. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny has suddenly taken a keen interest in my canoe building and was enthusiastic about letting me work on it in the garage all day. I know, however, that she's just ready for me to get all of that crap out of the garage.

• This year's holiday was good. I don't think I normally like July 4th all that much. In fact, I don't remember more than a couple of July 4ths in the past 10 years. It's just too hot to have fun this time of year. I remember watching the Baton Rouge fireworks a couple of times, and I remember that a couple of years ago, I was just walking Daisy through the neighborhood while they were going off. One memorable year, I was driving on the interstate, and some idiots were stopped on the I-10 bridge over the river watching from their motionless cars. I'm sure that most of those people have weeded themselves out of the gene pool by now.