Oh say can you see

The idiot neighbors were at it again last night. Is it so wrong of me to secretly (well, not so secretly now) wish that one of them would blow off a finger or two while exploding illegal fireworks late into the night? All fireworks, of any kind whatsoever, are illegal in Contra Costa County where I live. It's for good reason, everything is dry and incredibly flammable. The next county over, Alameda, allows what they call "safe and sane" fireworks which are neither. The county sells licenses to non-profit organizations to sell these fireworks and it's a huge source of income for everyone involved. Of course Alameda County is, I believe, just about the last county in the Bay Area that allows even these incendiary devices. And most of the people buying them are planning on using them where they're illegal.

I've lived in my house for many Fourths of July and each year the asshole neighbors across the street blow up more bigger louder things than the year before. This year they managed to get their hands on professional ooh-ahh fireworks that go way up and explode into pretty blossoms. And then rain down hot ash onto all the surrounding houses. They were blowing up bombs that set off car alarms. I was *this* close to calling the overworked San Ramon police when they finally scattered and stopped. This morning the street in front of my house was littered with leftover crap. Nice.

Each year the City of San Ramon has a Spectacular Fourth thing with music and fireworks. I used to walk or drive over there but then discovered I could see the fireworks just fine and dandy from my front lawn. This year a huge bunch of neighbors (not just the asshole neighbors across the street) were out on my corner to get the good views. Fireworks are directional so we don't really get the full effect of them blowing up overhead, but they're still pretty cool with lots of ooohing and ahhhing from the crowd. The only problem is that they don't start until after full dark, at 9:30 pm this year, and so it's late by the time it's over. At least I now just have to walk a few feet and I'm home.

I ran the local 5k yesterday morning. I arrived not knowing whether I intended to run it as a 3 mile run, or a 5k race. I was leaning toward running it easy since it was pretty warm already at 8:30 am. My feet made the decision for me by going faster than my brain had intended. I ended up running it faster than I've run a race in the past couple of years. Still way the hell slower than my 5k PR but I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon (my 5k PR is 29:something). My Garmin told me I ran 3.18 miles so either the course was mis-marked (noo, San Ramon mis-marking a course??) (yes, I'm being totally sarcastic) or I ran around so many people that I added extra mileage. Probably a bit of both.

The rest of the day I caught up on some stuff I didn't get done over the weekend, but I didn't do everything I intended. Oh well, maybe next weekend!