230

whoa, you are way behind AGAIN. i guess after my lonely, flooded-out, lotta-blog week last week, i ran out of steam. of course, independence day was this week - the usa is 230 (200 + g = u.s.age). it was my first 4th in DC, and it was great. after barbequeing (some veggie burgers at the home of a friend's fambly of giants), we headed downtown. some rainstorms had rolled through around 5 or 6, which kept some people away - so the mall was ridiculously crowded, but not painfully intimate. here, i took some pictures:



you can't quite tell, but that's a mass of people all the way to mr. lincoln.




then there were the booms. i never get the pictures of the booms right, but i really like these:





and then, what else have i been up to? the weekend was good - too much sleeping, a bike ride, some enchiladas and some eggsandtoast...but probably the most exciting recent event occurred today. i really needed some new undies, principally because it's summer and everything gets so sweaty here in the tropics (i've heard that some foreign embassies give tropics pay for DC duty because of the ridiculous summer. true? makes sense, anyway). so far, i've resisted the urge to remove and discard the sweaty pair in the middle of the day, but it still takes more than one pair a day, and i needed more.

SO, after work, i stopped at the department store for a quick undiepurchase. i found one pair on sale for $2.99, and 4 pairs of my faves at regular prices, which are too obscene to think about for such tiny bits of fabric (are undie companies evil or brilliant?). the lady rang up the 5 pairs and said the total was $12.65. i tried several times to correct her (did you get these? they were not on the sale rack. they are not all the same. that can't be correct. are you certain?), but she was sure, and i paid a record $12.65 for 5 pairs of undies, about $25 too low. $2.53 per undie, including tax. awesome. the only thing i can think is that it was her last day on the job, and she was evening the score!