Sunday, July 6, 2008

4th of July Weekend Part 1: Ooooo! Ahhhhh!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! I know I did! Katie and Patrick came down on Thursday night and stayed till about 11 this morning. It was so good to spend so much time with them! It's been a while!

Friday morning we just went to breakfast, grocery shopping, and then hung out in my yard all afternoon and played games. The sun came out and it was really nice. Pat and I decided to start the holiday off right with a drink called a California Rattlesnake. Really sweet, but pretty good. Then around 6 we went and parked the car at my office and walked downtown where we had dinner at Lolla's and then started out to brave the crowd at the beach. There were people everywhere! They were sitting in the plaza at the top of the wharf and all along the pathway, all over the first wharf and then the beach was completely filled! Standing on the wharf I couldn't see where the people ended. People had dug huge holes, carved out benches, and taped off their areas with flagging. So our strategy was "lets just walk till we find a place to pop a squat." As we weaved ourselves through the groups we eventually got to a spot where we weren't sure where to go, so we just spread out the blanket and sat there. It was pretty cloudy out, so we weren't sure if we were going to be able to see anything except for maybe some flashes in the sky. But as the show began, the clouds proved to be higher than the fireworks. It was a pretty good show and we were fairly close the the barge they were shooting them off of. Patrick said he'd never been so close, but Katie and I laughed and said "next year we'll take you to Pleasant Hill and we'll sit under where they shoot them off!"

The show lasted about 20 minutes and less than 10 seconds after the finale the great migration began. We decided to be part of the "lets get the hell out of here as quickly as we can" crowd. We didn't even bother to shake the blanket off well or fold it up. We made our way off of the beach pretty quickly, but then got stuck walking down the sidewalk behind a pretty slow group. It was a bunch of girls, who I'm convinced weren't even 21 yet, and they were basically carrying one of their friends back to the car as she proceeded to yell everything she was saying at the top of her lungs, trip, and lose her shoes in the middle of the street. As bad as she seemed, her friend was worse, which she proved by walking into a telephone pole as she was texting someone. It was kinda funny, but I must be getting old because they were really getting on my nerves. I mean, it's not like I haven't been there, carrying my drunk, screaming friend down the street.

Anyhow, it was a fun afternoon and evening. It was great to just hang out and finally experience a 4th of July in Monterey!

Dinner at Lolla's
Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty....weird...Waiting for the show to begin...
Patrick: "I don't like sand" (maybe the beach wasn't the best place for him!)Self picture!Patrick is a giant! (He's very handy for changing light bulbs though)
Fireworks!
Oooooo!
Ahhhhhh!
The finale.
It got really bright with all the clouds and smoke!

2 comments:

~rob said...

". I mean, it's not like I haven't been there, carrying my drunk, screaming friend down the street."

It's not like you haven't been the drunk, screaming friend either, I'm sure.

Unknown said...

Untrue....I think. Usually If I'm screaming, so is everyone else and I'm not singled out as the asshole...