As I’ve mentioned many, many, many, many times before, I pretty much hate the 4th of July. I’m all for celebrating our independence, but since I live where I can see the annual Burning Of The Butte (aka our local fireworks show) from my living room, our neighborhood becomes a war zone for the week before, the day of, and the week after the Fourth. Since fireworks went on sale last week, it’s been non-stop booming and banging with flaming projectiles flying through the sky (most of which are illegal in Oregon). I even saw one guy down the street who had set fire to a stump in his front yard and was lighting fireworks with it.
As I type this (and it’s 11:40 right now), I can still hear bottle rockets flying over my house. And today’s only the third of the month — it’s only going to get worse tomorrow.
Now just so folks who don’t live here understand, I live in a desert. A dry, hot, mostly moisture-free, high altitude, mountainous desert. We get snow in the winter, but our actual annual precipitation is very low. Which means we have a lot of dry wood and trees that will cause fires to burn of control quite rapidly. We’ve already had one fire destroyed this week because of illegal fireworks, and I worry that mine might be next because of some drunken moron down the street who decided it’d be a great idea to shoot projectiles out of their mouth, right at my house (yes, that has happened, and no, unfortunately Darwin didn’t win that battle). I’m thinking I might just keep my sprinklers on all night.
So enjoy the Fourth safely, everybody (I’ll be at work, so you’ll undoubtedly hear from me on the holiday). And if anybody has to deal with me on Thursday, I apologize in advance as I’ll be tired as hell.