My weekend so far:

Saturday was a fun party where I watched The Two Towers again. First off contract party over 21! My friends at the Cellar put on a great party. They've cleaned out their garage into an excellent TV room. It was a lot of fun. It was also the first party I've been to where I've run into family I didn't know was coming. My brother and his wife showed up a little after me.

The highlight of Saturday was a short phone call from Libby. Missing her.

Watched some Avril videos for some reason.

Today I went home to celebrate the Fourth. Watched the nation's 228th birthday celebration in D.C. on PBS and went outside to see all the fireworks that were going on. Tonight there were more illegal fireworks than we've ever seen on a Fourth. Rockets and starbursts were all over the neighborhood. Sounded like a war-zone. On my way home I saw a bunch of cars parked on the side of the 5 to watch the fireworks from Disneyland. That struck me as a pretty awful idea if anyone had a blow-out, as the shoulders were solid with cars. I hope the CHP finds out about it so they can prevent it next year.

Interspersed I've been nursing a sick toe, reading Keats and playing some Knights of the Old Republic on the X-Box.

Keats is a Romantic poet not only in the literary sense but in the modern sense of the word. He seems quite concerned with male and female relationships whith ethical values paralleling our modern society's pretty closely in the area of sex. The poems I've read, Isabella or the Pot of Basil and the Eve of St. Agnes both have fiery lovers pining fiercely away for the one that they love. They're good poems. Isabella is especially powerful and shocking. I read a little of Hyperion and it resembled very closely a pagan version of Paradise Lost, with Saturn acting a convincing Satan. It was very good.

Anyway, happy Fourth of July.