Tuesday, July 4, 2006
We woke early (for a holiday) to go to brunch at Boogaloos with Sam, Mom Ryan, Phil, and Drew. Danny "missed" his 6 AM flight, so he unexpectedly joined us, which was a welcome surprise. Although we got to the restaurant pretty early, we waited a very long time. Eventually, Danny, Phil, and Drew decided to abandon us because they had to get Danny to the airport for the next flight, and we then got a 4-top right away. Home. Patrick found out that he got the job he applied for last week—he'll be the events coordinator at the Books, Inc. bookstore on Market Street in the Castro. It's a really great job for him—he'll be managing, greeting, and introducing writers who arrive for readings and other bookstore events. Hooray! I uploaded photos to Flickr while Patrick took a nap. Installed Democracy TV for OS X from participatoryculture.org. It looks kinda neat, but I couldn't find anything interesting to watch. Napped. Patrick left to spend time with Wei. I went to Phil and Drew's for dinner. Phil made glutinous rice pancakes. Afterwards we talked in the living room for a while. We were supposed to go to Kartek and Antoine's place because they have a good view of the fireworks from Twin Peaks, but they were late getting back from Santa Barbara, so we drove to Twin Peaks on our own. At around 9:15 PM we stood on the hill and watched some fireworks—they were really tiny and far away. It was very cold and windy, and we huddled together in a blanket Phil had in the trunk. We decided to leave Twin Peaks and we instead drove to Dolores Park. The view was better here, and there were a lot of people around. Illegal fireworks were all over the place. One young man was launching them out of a big tube about 50 yards away from us. He got cheers and applause from everyone at the park after lighting a long, flat, rectangular box which said something like WAVE THE FLAG on it. It cleverly shot red, white, and blue fireworks high in the sky, alternating left, middle, and right—like waving a flag. After the fireworks, we drove back to Phil and Drew's. I decided to wait out the traffic at their place a little bit. Phil went to bed, and Drew and I talked. I showed him Un-pimp Your Ride, which he seemed to like. I helped him find images to use for his forthcoming party invitations.