Another worthless fourth of July. We spent the afternoon/late evening at Osage County State Lake, an pretty little lake about 25 miles south of Topeka. Besides the prettiness, its' other distinguishing characteristic is the lack of bass for me to play with.

I decided early on that I would provide myself with other diversions whilst the drunkeness/celebrations went on, and it worked pretty well. I took the two-man bass boat along, and spent the greater part of the afternoon and evening not catching fish. Well, I did catch a couple of 3-pound walleye, but they don't really count, since I wasn't trying to catch them.

After my first 3-hour excursion, I returned to find that the food had already been consumed, so I ate while Matt and Andy went on a foray in the boat with as little luck as I had. I had made a subconscious mistake by not bringing along the PFD's (Personal Flotation Devices) mandated by the US Coast Guard. So I could not take any of the kids out in the boat; I was very unpopular with the younger crowd as this was made known. The reasoning was as follows: being caught without the mandatory PFDs will get adults a slap on the wrist; if there are kids on the boat, it's a trip to jail. The same goes for operating a boat under the influence, which would not be a problem for me, but would have been for anyone else out there.

I hung around the campfire for about an hour until dusk started coming on, then I went out for another hour, trying buzz baits. I did get a couple of hits on the buzz, but the bass were evidently too small to get the hook in their mouths. Meanwhile, the activity at the campground was becoming more frantic, with the kids impatient for darkness to come to start the real fireworks. I pulled the boat up and sat with Karen around the fire, consuming smores that the kids were making. They were having fun burning the marshmallows, but were not very interested in the consumption of the product. I was the happy receipient of several.

Those present were, in addition to myself, the aforementioned Andy and Matt, Karen, Kim, Karla, Lacee, Packy, Garyn, Drew, Steve and an eight-year-old girl who is Karla's niece, but I've forgotten her name.

By this time, the adult boys (normally, the phrase adult boys would translate to men, but not in this case) were pretty far along with the alcohol consumption: let the fun begin! Within the next hour, $200.00 worth of fireworks went up in flames. Compared to other years, they did pretty well. There were no major accidents, and most of the fireworks worked. The older of the kids were allowed to get into the act this year, and they were tenatively pleased; but they had a tendency to run away from the concoctions before the fuses were lit, prompting a skittish return to do the job properly.

In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. --Galileo Galilei

The works were set off right by the lake: I tried egging Matt on to jump over the fountains as they were going, like the comic relief he provided for us last year, figgering that he would wind up in the lake. Unfortunately, he was too sober to respond properly to my taunts.

After the fireworks were done, it was time for Karen and I to leave. Kim and Lacee were also going home with us, everyone else was staying. It was decided that we would leave the truck and trailer, since the boys would want to do some fishing in the morning. The car that we were going home in (Steve and Kim's car) was blocked in with Matt's car, which needs a battery, so we had to jumpstart it. Steve then proceeded to run over Matt's air mattress, which was only partially inflated. He then backed over it again and this time it got caught up under the car. By the time we got it out, it was pretty tattered. It went onto the fire and produced some intense flame and really black smoke.

Lacee decided that she wanted to stay and sleep in the tent, but she was unanimously over-ruled. She decided to make a scene, and cried and yelled and screamed until she went to sleep. We loaded the car trunk up and went on home. Kim discovered that she did not own a trunk key, and there were comsumables in the trunk, in fact, all of the left-over food.

All-in-all, a fairly typical Fourth of July here in mid-America.

After we got home, I tried working with simply speaking for a while and made some progress before I went to sleep about 02:30. I didn't get up this morning until about 11:30. The back is in worse shape today, most likely from having Lacee jump on me several times. Karen has several projects lined up for us to get done today, but then she went out shopping with Kim and Lacee for Packy's birthday, which is sometime next week. So I have had a couple of hours alone with the computer.

It is another simply beautiful day here; the expected high is 78 F, which is perfect. We will enjoy this day.

More tomorrow....