The State of My Car's AC

Without AC on...

With AC on the lowest possible setting...

With AC on anything higher than the lowest possible setting....

Basically it's a lose-lose situation.

Surviving the Fourth of July

Yes, I know it’s not the fourth of July anymore, but I’ve been pretty busy so I haven’t had the time to sit down and write another blog for a while. This one will be dedicated to the fourth of July I guess.

I must admit, this fourth of July was much better than last years. Let me tell you. Last year I almost died. (not really, but kinda) Last year, my neighborhood got together and went up to one of my neighbors’ house and watched fireworks in their yard. Sounds good, right? Very wrong. You see, there are some Virginia firework laws that don’t allow fireworks that shoot over 12 feet. (so basically the only thing you can have are fountain fireworks which are okay, but when that’s all you have, it gets boring.) Because of this, my neighbors (I’ll call them Ron and Peter to protect their names) decided to put all the fireworks on top of this ladder so they would be high enough for everyone to see the fountain fireworks. It actually worked pretty well……. For the fountain fireworks. There’s something about men that makes them get illegal fireworks regardless of the law, which is fine by me since I can’t get in trouble. (I know that sounds bad, but if you think about it, no one ever gets caught of the fourth of July unless they’re really, really drunk and shooting fireworks into large buildings. Plus, I’m convinced that cops either do one of 2 things on the fourth of July. They either sit around at the police station and pretend they don’t hear all the loud bangs that are obviously illegal fireworks, OR they confiscate some of the really cool big ones and bring them back to the station and shoot them off while laughing at the sucker they confiscated them from. I’m onto you cops.)

Anyway, back to my story, my neighbors decided to put this big firework that shot off the fireworks that explode in the sky (illegal in VA) on the ladder. Well, Ron lit the firework and ran away. The first shot fired up into the sky, but it was so powerful that it caused the ladder to fall. The firework started to rapid-fire into the crowd of kids sitting in front, myself amongst them. Fight-or-flight mode* (you don’t think fight is an option? Just wait.) I flighted so fast outta there so I wouldn’t get hit by any exploding fireworks. There was bangs and light all around me, and moms were screaming. The firework was a monster. No one could stop it. We just had to wait until it stopped. Not gonna lie, but I did feel a little like a cool B.A dude with sunglasses and a leather jacket and a motorcycle when I was running from the explosions. I felt like this….

Even though I probably looked like this….

Once all the exploding stopped, I looked around to see that almost everyone, including me, had hidden behind something that probably wouldn’t have stopped the firework anyway, like a thin bush.

ALMOST everyone. One teenage boy was still sitting where he had been before the firework went nuts. He obviously had chosen to "fight". He was all like “Whooooaaa duuuuude! That was soooo cool.” His shirt sleeve was black and singed off. He had actually gotten hit by one of the firework beams. People were asking him stuff like “Why didn’t you run!?!” to which he would reply, “I wanted to see the firework! It was like 3-D maaann! I felt like I was really in it!” – I think he might have been on something. Thank goodness he was okay, but he did get burned pretty bad. He was trying to play it cool but you could tell he was hurting. The thing that bothered me most was that he had been sitting right next to me. It was cool though. It definitely made the grand finale way more exciting!

So now you know why this years fourth of July was better than lasts. You don’t even have to know what I did to know that anything beats getting shot at by fireworks. This year was good. I went up to my Aunt’s and Uncle’s and we went to the pool, played put-put golf in the rain, had dinner, and then we shot off fireworks while playing “Firework” by Katy Perry…. We seriously did this. It. Was. Awesome. I now know what she means when she sings, “Just own the night like the fourth of July” The night was owned!

If you are reading this, I hope your fourth of July was just as exciting!

* If you aren’t familiar with “fight-or-flight” look it up on some psychology website…. Or Wikipedia. It basically says that when faced with danger, you will either fight it, or run away (flight) from it. See my very first blog post to see how I normally respond when faced with danger.