Fireworks At The Fireworks

Some friends from church went to the park early yesterday morning in Maryland where we watch the fireworks every year and graciously laid out blankets to "mark the territory" for a bunch of us. They do this every year and about 30-40 people from church come later in the evening to a guaranteed spot. So this year a group of us traipse in and set up our chairs and settle in a couple of hours before the fireworks start. A woman comes up behind me and asks me if we could all move our chairs because we set up in front of a space where there were small children. Mind you, the place gets packed (thus the early morning claim staking). So I politely asked the woman why I should move - there is no ground show and I and the rest of us were not blocking their view of the sky - where the fireworks would be seen of course. She kept going on about the little children (who weren't there). So finally I said that if my sitting in my chair posed a problem during the show, I would move. She went back and told some friends so another woman starts calling me "rude." I turned around and asked her what the problem was - many people were in chairs and I was not blocking any view. And I asked her if we moved our chairs, would they ask the people in front of us to move theirs? When would it end? I then turned back around and ignored them (they were about 25 feet behind us). A few minutes later they grabbed some Parks and Recreation workers to complain about me. It took about 2 seconds for the P&R people to again point out the obvious - it was a public park, hundreds of people were in chairs, and the fireworks would be seen in the air. So the people slid their blankets back from behind us. Sure enough, it wasn't long before another family came along and set up their chairs behind us and then another guy set up his chair behind them! ha ha I never could see their point. Anyway, the fireworks were great as usual and we had a great time.

Before that we had about 20 people over for a cookout and pool party. That was a lot of fun and I set up my new Ladderball game. Great afternoon and we really enjoy watching the pool get used.

The night before, the power cord to my router went bad. I sent an email off and went to bed and 2 minutes later Elliott was up telling me the wifi was down. The modem was fine but the router was dead. I quickly found that for some reason, the power cable died. Turns out it is a common problem for this brand of router. Anyway, we scoured the house to find a power supply that put out the right power and had the right connector end. We finally found something that would power the router but the wifi signal is not strong enough to go more than about 5 feet. So Elliott had to experience an Independence Day from Xbox... I went online to order a new power supply ($20!) and wound up just buying a whole new router and antenna from eBay for $40. My desktop can get online because I am direct wired to the internet but the rest of the house is offline.

Looks like another great day today. Staying after church to help Lucie set up for VBS week next week and then eating cookout leftovers.