Sweet Home Grass-uh Lake-uh

Yesterday's title was from a song by X, by the way. I wrote a bit about it in last year's Fourth of July post (where you will also find the grumpy girl in a shopping cart, who, sadly did not make an appearance this year).

After the parade, I stopped at our local grocery store and was faced with this lovely gal:

I don't know what she was doing there, but she was certainly a vision in fiberglass.

At our friends' party, Len beat us all rather solidly at croquet. Who knew he was so. Um. Refined? Note the cigarette.

The party had "entertainment" (a loose term, at best): Chris and Aubrey's neighbors were having a party as well, and their kid's band "played" (again, I use that term loosely). They were very loud and very bad. Highlights included the singer (if you can call him that) thanking his mom for letting him come out and play*, introducing the band during almost every song (the drummer's name is Riki Tiki Tavi, if you can believe that), and dedicating Clapton's Cocaine to his aunt (whatever your opinion of Clapton, what they did to that song was sacrilege). But the best bit occurred during a dilapidated version of "Sweet Home Alabama", the singer interjected this of dumbness, "You know, they say 'sweet home Alabama', but I say, I'm from Grass Lake. So I say 'Sweet Home Grass-uh Lake-uh!'" Whoooo!!!! Yeah dude! Sadly it was downhill from there, and we finally tottered off, addle-brained, to the fireworks.

*His mom, by the way, is deaf. Also, the band continued mangling rock-n-roll (whoooo!!) the next day. Ugh.

When I was a kid, sparklers were a necessity of all good Fourth of July celebrations.

These were taken with a 2 second exposure.

The sunset was pretty stunning.

Finally, fireworks:

Sweet home Grass-uh Lake-uh, indeed.

You can't get that out of your head, can you? Welcome to my world.