Celebrating Independence
Another Independence Day has come and gone and the nation is a another year older. How did we spend our July 4th weekend? Celebrating, of course. Karin and I went over to our friends house for the 4th, cooked out, watched a movie, and shot off the few fireworks they had purchased.
Ed & Renee had steaks cooking on the grill, and the ladies made up baked beans and salad to go with them. Ed’s brother, Chris, and his manager at work joined us for the evening. After dinner was over, it was decided that a movie would be a good way to pass the evening. We had our choice of Terminator, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or Gangs of New York. We ended up watching Gangs of New York. The short capsule review? Don’t bother renting it. It has more violence, naked women, and sex than you can possibly imagine. An utter waste of the 2 1/2 hours we spent watching it. If any movie deserves an NC-17 rating, this was it.
On Saturday, we got up and watched a little TV. Then I realized that our memberships at the Pacific Science Center expire this coming Thursday, and we still had 4 free IMAX movie passes we hadn’t used. So we hopped in the car and headed downtown.
The current featured exhibit is “Scream Machines: The Science of Roller Coasters”. We wandered through the exhibit and tried out a couple of the hands on experiments.
We were wandering by the Planetarium when they announced the next show, and since Karin had never been to a Planetarium before, we hopped in line to see the show. It was a 40 minute program on how to find some of the constellations that are currently up in the night sky here in Seattle. We both enjoyed it a lot.
With the Planetarium show over, it was time to head off to the IMAX theater for our show, “Thrill Rides”. It was an entertaining movie about the development of Roller Coasters and Thrill Rides. As you would expect, there was a lot of video of the rides from a first person perspective. On the IMAX screen, the twisting and turning images really do confuse the mind. I found myself leaning back and forth as the roller coaster dipped and turned. Karin just kept covering her eyes. By the end of the show, even I was dizzy.
With the movie over, we decided it was time to head back home and let Belldandy outside. Karin decided she wanted hamburgers for dinner, so I fired up the grill. We invited our neighbor and her two kids over to join us, and ended up sitting on the back porch eating and talking until almost 8 o’clock. She finally decided she need to take her two boys in and get them in the bath, and we cleaned up and headed inside.
Sunday morning, we visited our friend’s church, Cedar Park Northshore. It was a good worship service with lots of worship music and a good sermon. Afterwards, they had a bar-b-cue in the church parking lot. Karin had a burger, and I grabbed a couple hot dogs. We sat around and talked for a bit before deciding to head off to see Charlie’s Angels with Ed & Renee.
Charlie’s Angels is a fun action movie with a flair for comedy. I definitely recommend seeing it in the theaters. But, of course, there’s a fair amount of adult humor, and plenty of violence, so don’t bring the little kids to see it.
And that pretty much wraps up our weekend. Karin has a temp job this week, so Belldandy will end up spending the week at home by herself again. Don’t know what she’ll make of it though. Karin’s been home for the last several weeks, and i know she’s gotten used to it. Oh, well, she’ll adjust.
