Fireworks and Quarter-End

I've been much better about keeping up with my cooking blog than this one lately. I guess it's because that blog is so structured: I post the menu, then post the pictures and recipes after I cook new dishes. Doesn't take a lot of time or brain power.

This month-end has been rough. We counted a day early since the plant was shut-down all week. This gave me a head start, which is nice since Corporate decided to bump our close up two days. I worked Friday (which was technically a holiday) to get inventory done and I finished up the statements at 4:50 this afternoon. *sigh* Everyone's out again this week doing dry runs for SAP. It's only day three and we're already done. Well, kind of. Things were pretty much thrown together to get some numbers quick so tomorrow I get to start to back-track and clean things up. It's also quarter-end so that throws all kinds of other wrenches into things. But it's ok. I like deadlines and I seem to work better when I brush up against them. Maybe I'm a closet adrenaline junky.

Since I worked (most of the day) on Friday, we didn't really have anything special planned. Adam went golfing all day with Mark and some other people. He came home sunburned. Semi-raccoon-ish. Saturday we did our shopping (somehow avoided mad rushes of holiday shopppers), then I read for a while, took a nap (somewhat accidentally), and then headed down to Sheboygan for dinner and fireworks.

Somewhere along the line I got to thinking about how long it had been since I last saw the fireworks. I determined it had been five years. In 2002, through the strange circumstances of which my life has been made, I was in Neenah, just a block from where we live now. I'm almost certain I worked the holiday. I always volunteered since I had nothing better to do and I knew other people were less of a loser than I was. In 2003 I was on an airplane on my way to France on July 4th. I thought it was funny that I was leaving the country on our national holiday, going to the country everyone seemed to hate the most (aside from Iraq, of course.) The last time I recall watching fireworks was with Jess and Dakota back in 2004 when he was barely a month old. It was cold, and thankfully we had the good sense to back up to the Younkers parking lot to watch them so it wasn't too loud. I don't know what I was doing 2005-2008, but we didn't go to any fireworks. I'm guessing either I was working, Adam was working, or we were sleeping. We're so lame. But fortunately our neighbors love setting fireworks off. They go for about a week and a half prior to the actually holiday and really go crazy on the 4th. This year they were still setting them off after midnight. Adam gets jealous because I don't want him setting anything off by our house.

Anywho. Strange tangent. We met Dad, Cheryl, her parents, Brooke, and Tom at the Highland House. We had dinner out on the patio and watched the fireworks over the bridge. I could have sat closer, but it was still nice. They had heaters so it wasn't too cold. There was an obnoxious man who complained throughout almost the entire display, but what can you do? It's a public place. We zipped out of the parking lot pretty quickly, and aside from an unexpected detour on 14th Street, we got home pretty easily.

We slept in on Sunday morning since we didn't get home until around 11:30 and the neighbors kept us up long after that. When we got up we had breakfast and Adam did some yard work. I cleaned, baked some cookies, read, did dishes. It was a pretty boring day. Adam made ribs again for dinner.

This week will hopefully be less stressful than last week was. Adam is going to a Brewer's game with Dave on Wednesday so I'll be on my own for the evening. Nothing else really going on.