A Happy Fourth

Well, I had a nice fourth, although I'm dog-tired and having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. Dan and I went to my grandmother's and saw my whole family. My niece counted up the family and concluded that my kid born in October will be the thirtieth kid born from the union of my grandparents. Talk about procreation.

Some highlights/events:

Fish died. Sure, my Grandmother won't be winning any awards for creative pet naming (she also had a dog named Puppy), but Fish itself probably could have won some awards. It was the oldest fish I've ever heard of. No one is quite exact on his age, although I do have pictures of him from 1988. One of my uncles bought Fish back in the '80s and the estimates are that he was around 23 years old. The funny part is that he is now frozen in my uncle's freezer because he intends to take Fish to an expert who could date him. There was also some mention of Ripley's... Fish lived his grand life in a little fish tank in my grandmother's kitchen. She fed him the same time every day ("he gets mad at me if I don't feed him on time," she would say) and he grew so big he could basically just float up and down because he didn't have room to swim. My grandmother claims he had a stroke a few years back (he was swimming weird, his fin was screwed up, and his eye was droopy), but she dropped an aspirin in the water and then he was good as new. I think she was more torn up over Fish than she would be about one of her grandchildren, but I guess Fish was easier to like anyway.

My uncles/cousins put on one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seen. They are hardcore fireworks fans (yeah, yeah, they're also Italian) spending lots of money on fireworks that I'm not sure are legal. Probably not, but I believe they found some kind of loophole with a permit or something like that. I think what makes their fireworks even better is that you're so dangerously close. There's nothing like the risk of third-degree burns and falling debris to make a fourth come alive.