Good afternoon, and happy day-after-independence-day to you all.

I had a lovely long weekend.

I played doubles volleyball on the grass in a park in Berkeley with Leslie and my old wesleyan men's vball pals. It's been a loooooooooong time and it felt great.

Steve and two of his friends and I checked out a pinball "arcade" in Alameda, if by "arcade" I mean "one man's private collection of approximately 14 pinball machines housed in the auxilliary room of his housing complex which he opens up to the public two nights a week with a $5 donation and then all the free pinball you can play, BYOB." It's decidely hipster but also quite fun, and free play means you can actually linger on any given machine until you get the hang of it without blowing $25 in quarters. And most of them are old and show depictions of the usual buxom women only they're completely covered up except for the occasional short 70's style mini-skirt dress. It was fun.

Steve's former coworkers also had a bonfire on ocean beach on Sunday night which we went to.
We were not the first people to think of this -- not only were there enough bonfires to resemble a small military encampment in the cannonballs and musket era, but we hit up three different Safeway supermarkets simply seeking jumbo marshmallows for S'more roasting purposes and they were completely sold out, and we only just barely stumbled on a fresh shipment of firewood in the last one, which was so fresh as to still be industrial-saran-wrapped to the pallet when we pounced. We also saw a lot of amateur beach fireworks that occasionally endangered surrounding clusters of beach-happy Fourthers, but for the most part just frightened the dogs. The Rottweiler simply went (by all appearances) in to a comatose state of "I'm going to die" depression by the fire; The German-Australian Shepherd mix barked his panic until we learned to cover his ears for the boomy ones, in which case I believe he rather began to enjoy the displays of light.

The actual Fourth, a.k.a. yesterday, we went out and got breakfast, and relaxed our vigorous weekend away for the rest of it. It was nice.

Today I'm back at work. It feels weird. I could get used to a four day work week...