Fourth of July (3 of 3): Another coworker's experience.

Also at work the next day after the Fourth, one of my coworkers was saying that she just stayed in, because she hates celebrating the United States and what it stands for.

(She's young and into radical activism.)

She then was like, "Yeah, I think you'll like this, but I was actually hanging out with a friend of mine who does a cam show, and she would draw an American flag on a piece of paper every so often and wipe her ass with it."

"That's something," I was like.

"Her hits were through the roof," my coworker was like.

Fourth of July (2 of 3): Coworker's lakefront bikepath experience.

At work the next day after the Fourth, one of my coworkers mentioned that it was something else to travel home along the lakefront bikepath late night, after the cookouts and fireworks were over.

"Like how?", I was like.

They paused for a second, and then were like, "Like a woman was just standing in the middle of the bikepath, taking a selfie, and chugging out of a bottle of Crown Royal."

"Really?", I was like.

"Well," they were like, "Maybe not chugging, I think they might have just been posing like they were chugging."

Fourth of July (1 of 3): Fogey-dom.

I'm really getting to be an old fogey.

Not one but actually both of my friends who usually throw a big cookout were out of town this year, and I had had a tiring few weeks, so I decided to stay in.

I could have sought out plans, but it seems more and more that the fireworks are getting bigger and more out-of-control every year, where people set them off near crowds or there's huge ones going off as you bike home.

I'm a bit afraid of one going out of control and burning me or harming my eyesight, so I figure, why not just stay in.

When I took a walk in the quarry park in late afternoon / very early evening, already bottle rockets were going off.

When I was home that evening, from a few blocks away on a couple of side of my apartment, it was like mortar shells going off.

I mean, what the heck.

Part of me wonders, too, if people are spending more money on bigger fireworks as income inequality gets worse, since because you can't get ahead anyway, why not?

New question of my one (half English) (half Sudanese) friend.

My one (half English) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair I'm friends with) gets driven crazy by the way in which people indefinitely refer to "Africa" a lot, like, "When I visited Africa..."

In fact, sometimes when I have reason to reference an African country, I name the specific country, followed by "...which is in Africa, a place with many different countries and many different cultures," a phrase that always gets his vocal approval (e.g. "Quite right," he's like).

Anyhow, the other day when we were grabbing dinner, he got all like he was making a pronouncement and was like, "I have a new question that I've been asking people."

Then, he told me that whenever someone indefinitely says "Africa," he's like, "So, how has the weather been lately in North America?".

Then, when they get confused, he's like, "You see, it's an entire continent, just like Africa."

2 sights on my morning commute into school:

The other week when I going into school in the morning I saw:

1) As I was walking to my bikeshare station, that (older) (Chinese) lady rubbish picker, a street up from where I usually see her in my alley and walking in the opposite direction, her cart bulging with bags, including some clear plastic bags full of tin cans (= she collects scrap metal to sell?).

2) As I bike in, by my one shortcut through a small park with a fountain, one (light-skinned black) woman's walking her dog, and an (older) (black) guy in a full suit is sitting on a concrete bench in the shade of a tree.

A neighborhood sight:

As I walk around in the quarry park, I glance across the street towards the playing fields and fieldhouse, and see a bunch of older Chinese ladies in neon green t-shirts, doing slow dance exercises in perfect formation and raising their hands into the air.

Pie-day baking story.

The other week I was having dinner with friends (actually the night of the Chinese French fries), and my one library circulation supervisor friend's girlfriend asked my one library circulation supervisor's friend about her brownie pie that she had taken into work for a fun pie-day baking context her job had put on, and that she had posted on Facebook about.

"Did you win?", my friend's girlfriend was like.

"Yes!", my friend's friend was like.

"I knew you would when I saw the picture!", my friend's girlfriend was like.

"I kind of felt bad, actually," my friend's friend was like.  "Though it was funny.  Everyone got up and described their pie recipe, and it was always their grandmother's or their aunt's.  And I was like, 'I found it on Pinterest.'"

Then she laughed at her memory of how ridiculous that was.