O Canada

For the past couple of years, July 4th weekend/holiday has generally meant a trip to Vancouver, B.C.. For all sorts of reasons. Yes, there's the liberal political statement, a smaller scale Alec Baldwin type comment by the little people. Also, we're not really into fireworks--they're noisy and obnoxious. People generally get noisy and obnoxious when they're about to set off something explosive. So, a Canadian holiday made sense--a three-hour drive from Seattle to Vancouver, a nice friendly welcome from the Canadian border guard at Blaine, WA, and an enjoyable time away from home in an international setting, also close to the nature of English Bay and Stanley Park. Of course, driving back in to the US was another story, with long lines, and long conversations with the border guard about our legitimacy. We were even lectured last year about not having our son's birth certificate with us. Dude, chill, eh?

Since we're living further south this year, a drive to Vancouver is out of the question, so we're faced with experiencing this holiday along with the natives. We've been talking about having Mexican food or East African food. I'm glad for the day off of work, don't get me wrong, but it'd be nice if it were a quiet restful holiday. No such luck, the kids down the street were already starting to set things off last night....