TGIF

I know it's only Monday to the real world, but it's a very welcome Friday to your humble correspondent. And tomorrow, the 4th of July, is the very first holiday I don't have to work since arriving here in Vegas. Truly a momentous occasion! I wasn't planning on having the day off, figuring that my lack of seniority would assure my place on the schedule. But I'll take it, and that extra fifty bucks in holiday pay, too. Maybe I'll buy about three-quarters of a tank of gas! I have no plans as of yet, but I'm sure they will involve limes and ice cubes.

As a history buff, I spent my day watching the History Channel's four-hour program about the American Revolution (on Tivo). I found it fascinating. I majored in history back in college, but the stuff I'd never heard about could fill several volumes. I'm not much of a historian, per se, only having done two semesters of actual research (on subjects I had no interest in), and nothing I ever did got published for scholarly review. Besides, most of the history buffs I know are heavily into the Civil War and the American West. Me, not so much. Of course I drink heavily from the fountain of information about World War II, but my second favorite historical topic is the American Revolution. So this week provides some excellent programming across the cable dial.

I also made another surprising discovery yesterday, and that is that Nevada allows fireworks! When I lived in Phoenix, nothing was allowed, for fear that an errant spark might cause a cow somewhere to kick over a lantern and burn down the whole city. Whatever fireworks we used to celebrate with back in the day were always smuggled back from Mexico, bringing the inevitable call to the cops from our uptight neighbor. But just the other day I saw some temporary fireworks stands going up in parking lots around town, and found out that Nevada is just like Tennessee in respect to fireworks--pretty much anything goes. I wish I would've known that a) I wasn't working tomorrow and b) I could legally buy fireworks here, because I would've budgeted a small fortune away and loaded up like I did the last few years when I'd go visit Reverend Dave down in Alabama.


Can't think of a better way to celebrate our 200+ years of freedom than sitting on the back porch drinking beer and shooting bottle rockets at the neighbor's old rusty yellow van parked out in the weeds.

Mikey

Edited to add: Since I made this post, I have learned that most fireworks are allowed by state law, but Clark County restricts most of the more fun stuff--no bottle rockets, black cats, etc. But 60 miles away in that libertarian utopia of Pahrumph, they allow prostitution and fireworks...