Hot Fourth of July

Well, OK, duh, it's hot and it's July which makes it summer...

Our fourth started with a bang and some sparks that were NOT fireworks related. In the middle of the night we noticed the house was really, really quiet. The power was off. The dog was barking in Maggie's room. I got up (and was able to see without glasses or contacts thanks to Lasik Surgery) and found the neighbors on the front lawn and 2 firetrucks in the street lights flashing. The teen age boy next door told me they heard a pop and had sparks in the backyard so they called the fire department. Sounds like a transformer blew. I have no idea what time it was, but it was really, really dark. So, I'm guess 4am or before. I didn't go to bed till midnight, so I was pretty bleary eyed. I came in the house, which was thankfully still cool. Peter couldn't sleep anymore so he was up and down after 5. I finally got up at 7:45, Maggie was awake then so we ended up all getting up and going to breakfast.

Now, I'm home, getting ready to cook a brisket...which seems to be a great summer sort of thing to do. I'm getting the fire ready right now. I like the char the brisket and then bring it in, wrap it in foil and cook it in a sauce.

Last night I rode with my friend Amy Crane. It was great fun. We left about 6pm and rode until dark. It was much cooler than riding in the day time. It was good to ride as it got cooler instead of it getting hotter. The horses did great, until the deer started popping up. It was really fun until they got jumpy. We did get out into the lake and that was so pleasant. The horses were great and wanted to go in deeper, even though there were boats and wakes. I was so pleased how sensible they were. We did a little trotting and cantering to work on Amy's confidence. Her last horse bucked her off at the canter so she's working on her confidence to canter again.

Snow Cone Flavors

I have a goal for my summer. It's to eat as many different kinds of snow cones as possible before summer is over. So far I have had the following flavors:

Blue Raspberry
Tangerine
Dream cicle
cherry cola
grape cola
pina colada
Jamaica me Crazy (a combination of Pina Colada and Raspberry)
Ocean Brisk (lime, coconut, pina colada)
Tiger's blood (strawberry, coconut)
Kiwi
Lime
Margarita
The Sour Special (Lime, Lemon, Margarita and pink Lemonade)
Sour Apple
Pickle Juice
Rootbeer
DR. Pepper

OK, well, I have not had a whole snow cones in all these flavors. These are all that I have eaten and all the things I have tried. It's been hot and snow cones are yummy. TO minimize the caloric impact of my snow cone adventure, I have been ordering small snow cones and ordering them with light syrup. A snow cone is such a nice way to finish the day.

So far, my two favorites are Kiwi and Cherry Cola. I think Cherry Cola is my favorite. Amazingly pickle juice was pretty yummy, but I couldn't eat an entire snow cone with pickle juice poured over it.

Speaking of weight...I'm down 5.3 pounds from when we bought our WII 36 days ago.