4th of July Edition

This was probably one of the most anticlimactic 4th of July holidays in recent memory. Not that anyone was expecting much since it fell on a Wednesday and it seems most everyone I know went to work on Tuesday and came back to work today. But clearly our nation's forefathers were scheming to put an even bigger damper on the day. And damp it was. Maybe this was a sign from those same forefathers (perched in the cosmos somewhere looking down on us) that not all was satisfactory with our fair nation.

Everyone knows that grilling and celebrating American independence are basically synonymous. I have no idea how this came about - perhaps grilling is somehow a step in the "pursuit of happiness" direction. In any case, this year I joined the fray. A friend of mine who recently moved in with her fiance on the upper east side invited a bunch of people to a barbecue on her building's terrace, so I made my over there with supplies from Fairway in tow. In the cab going crosstown (both cabs I took that day had crabby and chatty cabbies), the cabdriver was peeved that he smelled food because he was hungry and on his way home. He asked me whether I had gone all the way crosstown just to get groceries. As much as I love Fairway, that is really an absurd proposition. If I lived on the east side, with its lack of quality options, I would probably succumb to Fresh Direct and be deprived of the basic sensory experience of grocery shopping I so enjoy.

The terrace at my friends place is great (subsidized student housing is an amazing thing in Manhattan), so I definitely need to revisit when it's sunny. Just as we started grilling the rain starting coming down in fits and starts, so by the time any of our vittles were done we were quite soaked. After a few hours we retreated to the apartment to have tea and dessert (at this point I should have taken the pure satisfaction of this ritual and replicated it at home to the tune of a cheesy romantic comedy), but the second crucial mission of the 4th of July had not yet been fulfilled. Always gluttons for punishment, we trotted out to the building across the street and waited on the 34th floor rooftop for the fireworks to begin. When we got there it was hardly raining, but as we waited, the torrent really came down. What is it about fireworks that turns us into little kids? That experience never seems to get old, and after waiting a half hour in the rain the fireworks ended up having an enormous cloud of smoke in front of it, obstructing half the view. We didn't even stay to watch the grand finale, because by this point only about a third of the display was visible at all - the wide-eyed child in me was disappointed.