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Well, my 4th of July turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had thought it would. A lot more.
The day started out like pretty much any Sunday, with me getting up and going to church. (Though when I say "get up," what I really mean is stop using the computer and get ready -- there was no sleep that night). And after I got home, nothing much was happening. I was just working on a graphics thing that a friend asked me to do.
Then I got a call from another friend. He said he was bored, and wanted to do something . . . anything. So he drove down from the next town over in his "new" used car. We sat around trying to think of something to do for a while until we decided to head over to the park, where we heard there was something or other going on for the 4th of July.
About halfway to the park, we decided to go to Wal-Mart instead and get a few cheap t-shirts and some transfer paper, for ironing a printed image onto a t-shirt. This we did, and then came back home, spending a few hours trying to think of funky stuff to put on the t-shirts and then wrestling with the coloring, seeing as I'm apparently out of black ink in my printer. Eventually two of them came out in purple and light purple, while the other was bright red.
As for what was on them, the first one we came up with was simply some plain text in a large Arial font that said "wet t-shirt"; the second one said "100% homespun love" in a cursive looking font (don't ask me why he wanted a t-shirt that said that), and the third one was a drawing of a piece of pizza (that he drew in Paint) with the text "Please don't eat me... ...I love you." When it came time to go watch the fireworks, I ended up wearing the "wet t-shirt" one and he wore the pizza one.
At the park where we were supposed to meet some other people to watch the fireworks launched from the fairgrounds a little ways away, we ended up wandering around for probably about an hour before we saw someone we knew. (Well, she saw me, and told us where the others were). Turns out they were way, way back all the way across the fields, about as far from the big crowd gathered at the park as you could get. So we walked all the way back out there, and got there maybe ten minutes before the fireworks ended. It's a big field.
We sat and watched the big fireworks finale, which really isn't that impressive anymore since I've seen it nearly every year of my life that I can remember, but hey. Afterward, another friend came with us, and we drove around looking for something to do. This was the first time we've actually been able to drive around on our own, seeing as none of us had ever had a car of our own before. And guess what? There was nothing we could do -- we had little money, and we couldn't even rent a video because none of us are 18 or on our parents' accounts. Except. . . .
After some comments from my non-car-owning friend, as we got in the car about to leave the video store, I jokingly suggested we stuff him in the trunk. Well, one thing led to another, and we drove out of the parking lot . . . with him in the trunk. We had left it open a bit, though, so he was actually holding it closed from the inside. And of course, the other friend had told him that, when he stopped hard, to jump out and start running. Can you see where this is going?
So we drove around for a while. I actually had to stop the driving friend from stopping in this one parking lot, on account of there being a couple police cars stopped there, and the officers talking to some people. I figured that this was something you'd do around random bystanders, not the police. Because it looks exactly the opposite of what it is, and I didn't feel like getting arrested.
So we drove around even more, eventually pulling into a shopping center and stopping next to a Jack In the Box. He jumps out of the trunk and starts running across the parking lot and we give chase, the other friend yelling things such as, "Don't let him get away! Shoot him! Get the gun!" as we run. We end up running right in front of a Target store in the shopping center -- thank God it was closed because of the 4th of July -- and the running friend yanked out a couple of carts from a row and pushed them in our way in classic crappy movie style.
At one point, the friend chasing with me grabbed one of his sandels off his foot and threw it at the running friend. (I have no idea how he did this while still running, but hey, I don't wear sandels that much). So as I ran past the sandel, I reached down and grabbed it and. . . . I almost kept my balance. It was so dang close. If I had slown down a bit, I would've made it, but no, I kept going at full pace, heh.
So as I tried to return to an erect posture mid-stride after grabbing the sandel, my momentum invariably disagreed with this action. It wanted me to keep going forward with the running (or should I say sprinting? I was running as fast as I could), while I wanted to move my torso back upright. Momentum won . . . and down I went.
I fell forward, but I recovered quickly, putting my hands out in front of me and pushing myself back upright to resume sprinting. (Still while moving, mind you -- I slowed down through this, but never to below half of the speed I had been going). And while holding my friend's sandel in my right hand, I actually managed to push off with the bottom of it, heh. Unfortunately, my left hand didn't fare as well by itself against the asphalt, but not that bad. I managed to put down and lift up my hand fairly straight, so all I got was one small scrape that didn't bleed much. But, no matter what, road burn hurts, even in small amounts.
But, nevertheless, I kept sprinting, sandel in hand. At that point I wasn't feeling any pain from my hand besides the small impact of it hitting the pavement. Also at that point, we ran out of parking lot, so my friend turned the corner of the Target store, stopping just around the corner and pressing himself against the wall, hoping we'd shoot right past. I'm more aware than that, though.
I came around the corner at near full speed, saw him standing there, and stopped in the space of one stride while letting my momentum carry my right arm -- and the sandel carried in hand -- right around towards his face. It would've been perfect if I had actually wanted to hit him, but I stopped the sandel about an inch away. He looked rather surprised that I had managed to stop and bring the sandel around so quickly, saying "You were supposed to keep going around the corner."
The chase over, all three of us sat down on the curb of the parking lot and the building, getting our breath back and laughing over what we had just done. It was great fun. And now I'm wondering just how many people were freaked out, since there were quite a few people there at that Jack In the Box. While walking back to the car, we got some funny looks, and a couple people hurried over to their cars as we walked past, heh.
Leaving -- with no one in the trunk this time -- we drove around aimlessly for a while again, ending up stopping at another video store with no luck. It was the same story as before. So we decided to head back to my house, where we just picked out a few movies from my oldest brother's collection. (And also where I got to wash off my scrape, though I couldn't find any bandages. But it's healing fine, and it's in a spot where it shouldn't affect my video game playing too much, so whatever).
It was a little past midnight when we put on Good Morning Vietnam, the first movie of the night. And after that we went on to watch Labyrinth, Alien, and Joe's Apartment -- in that order. I dozed a bit during a couple of the movies, but never got any real sleep. It was somewhere around 7:00 AM and I had been up for about 36 hours after all four of those movies, so it was hard to stay awake while reclined on the couch, heh. I think the only one I didn't doze at all during was Alien, since I had never seen it before, but I didn't think it was all that great. There were a lot of really slow parts that I guess were meant to be suspenseful, but meh.
We got up and moved around some after that, and Four Swords Adventures was brought up several times, though we never got around to actually playing it. I made a pot of coffee, though me, my brother, and my dad were the only ones to drink any. Then again, both my friends had slept more during the movies, and one apparently hates coffee. (Don't know about the other). And then, for some reason, my friend -- the one that had ridden in the trunk -- decided to put on Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. I don't think the other friend was awake for much of it, though, so it was just me, my brother, and my coffee-hating friend. And my friend had to leave part way through it.
My dad cooked some scrambled eggs after the movie (and made more coffee), so we had some breakfast and sat around for a bit longer, watching The Price Is Right. Apparently that's just what was on after Kung Pow got over. I don't think think any of us really cared what was on, though, so we just made fun of Bob Barker and the people on the show while we ate.
Finally, The Price Is Right over and us having eaten, my friend decided he'd head back home. I cleaned up the small mess we'd made, emptied the dishwasher, took out the trash, and contemplated trying to stay up for the rest of the day. Then I remembered how long I had been up, and I stopped caring whether or not my sleeping schedule got screwed up. It was already screwed up. So I crashed, going to sleep about noon and waking up at 5:00 PM. Again, I just said "screw it" and went back to sleep until I got up at about 5:00 AM the next morning.
So now I'm here, at 6:45 AM, July 6, finishing up this post. And that was definitely the most fun I've ever had for the 4th of July.
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