Post by Sporlo on Jul 9, 2008 4:16:33 GMT
IT WAS SO DEPRESSING ALL THE FIREWORKS WE HAD WERE LEGAL!!!
I think we started using some of the pathetic smoke balls on the 3rd. Our supply consisted of (roughly):
-24ish (1 inch dia.?) smoke balls of assorted colors
-a few hundred pop-its, those little paper things that pop when you throw them on the ground
-3 smoke candles, roman candle sized
-2 smoke grenades (just slightly larger, and all it does is smoke)
-6 party poppers (like wtf...), the real little pullstring ones
-2 boxes of "booby traps", single strings with centers that pop when you pull the two ends
-6 (forgot the name) gun-shaped party poppers, bigger, louderish
-2 sparkling trees
-1 large smoking thing. Just smoked for longer.
Yeah, it sucked. All that came in one box we bought at a random store. We didn't pass through Indiana or Wisconsin lately so we couldn't get anything good. As cool as some things can be, all I need to have some fun are firecrackers and bottle rockets, kinda small but really fun.
We stained our driveway blue and red at the ends from some smoke balls. We tried throwing some. Our neighbor had a lacrosse stick and he would try to catch them, and one of them burned a hole in part of the netting . Probably the most interesting thing we did with a smoke ball was put it in a bucket of water while smoking. The smoke would form bubbles, float up, pop, then exit as a gas. Pretty cool. Then we dropped a smoke grenade in a closed empty garbage can.
On the night of the 4th we went to Ribfest, a huge place to eat ribs, drink beer, and enjoy live music. An official guy said there was almost 300,000 people there, and the facility really isn't that large. We knew it was gonna be insanely crowded that night, because obviously of the fireworks, but also because REO Speedwagon was playing. My dad likes them too, and we decided to just show up REALLY early. (Around 4). I didn't really do much. No one did. But I expected that, we went last year, and we sat in the relatively same place and did the same thing, just this time there was better music.
We were surrounded by drunk people too. It was kind of strange. Plus I saw LOTS of people from school but they were all random people I rarely see.
I can't exactly compare our fireworks show to anything other than last years, but even then I can't remember it that well. I believe this years was better, and possibly longer. I definitely liked their choice of music and the layout of the show better. There was a mini finale then a bigger finale that I would've liked to be bigger but considering all the shells they used before it was very good.
Getting out of there was horrible. We took the bus shuttle from a high school to the park, so we obviously had to take it home. The high school we went to was by FAR the most heavily trafficked. I think we got a little careless and thought we'd be as lucky as last year when we got on the first set of buses. Unfortunately we weren't able to take the emergency exit this time, and we had to wait like 45 minutes for the next set. This kind of thing can bring out some bad people. We saw/heard some yelling and all kinds of people getting pissed off and pushing and shoving to get on a bus. The capacity for each was around 70, but there was probably 100+ on each. We had to wait about another 15 minutes after the 2nd round of buses to finally get one. All of the other destinations converted to ours because so many needed to go there. The fireworks show was at 9:30 exactly, but we didn't get back till 11:15ish.
We all just went to bed when we got home, and finished our "fireworks" the next night. It is pretty fun though to put lots of pop-its on the street, and just watch as cars drive over them and see if they react to the pops. So far the only one I've gotten is one person who stopped, did nothing for a second, then kept on going.
Monday was our cat Clover's 1st anniversary of living in our house. 7/7/08! She's about 2.5 years old, which translates (I THINK, not sure though) to about 10 in human years. I wouldn't be surprised if she's doubled her weight in a single year. But we got CAKE! Yes, how sad, my sister wanted to make a cake for our cat.... My brother made it though, and he used regular flour instead of cake flour, so it tasted slightly like cornbread. BUT, he also made the BEST homemade frosting EVER!!! It was amazing.
Luckily, today, our neighbor invited us to use up some last firecrackers with him!! YAY! Hooray for danger too. We took a Gatorade bottle, and my neighbor lit a firecracker while my brother was going to cap it quickly. My neighbor was expecting my brother to be quicker, he panicked as the firecracker was LIT, and as time ran out he dropped it next to the bottle and we all tried to get away as quick as possible. That all happened in a few seconds, but I clearly remember seeing the firecracker's fuse lit, IN my neighbor's hand. My brother and I were about 3 feet away when it exploded, and I only had time to turn around, and cover my left ear with my shoulder. AND we were in my garage due to the difficulty lighting, so it echoed like heck, and it was SOOOO loud. Luckily it wasn't damaging or anything. We tried it again (go total disregard for safety!) in our neighbors garage, once with no cap, then the next I capped it, screwed it on about a centimeter because I was afraid to spend more time. It was cool though because the bottle popped off the ground a few inches and the cap cleanly popped off as well. The rest of the firecrackers we just lit and threw in the cul de sac. As for the few bottle rockets, half of them had no tail sticks, so it was just the explosive part. We lit and threw them and then they'd whistle into the ground and explode. And then I was like WTF when my neighbor lit two (whole ones) bottle rockets, and not realizing that he was holding the bottle HORIZONTALLY, shot them right past my brother. They missed and exploded some feet away.
The last firecracker I went over the the sewer and stood there for like TEN minutes trying the light the dang thing. It's frustrating holding a tiny explosive that can blow your fingers off while trying to light it in lots of wind. The fuse was in the lighter flame SOO many times, but it took forever to light, so I was watching the fuse very carefully to make sure I knew the instant it started. Once lit and dropped in the sewer it made a satisfying echoing bang that sounded like something broke, but it was 100% concrete down there so nothing could've happened.
Oh yea, at 9am tomorrow I get to help clean up at the Ribfest for 4 hours! Yippee! Just doing it for community service hours and money for the high school.
Whooooaaa... I seriously thought this was going to be a short blog! I think one reason is it's just poorly written. You know what, I don't believe this blogging thing is helping my writing skills at ALL. And I still need to write a paper comparing and contrasting To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color of Water (TKaM and CoW ).
I think we started using some of the pathetic smoke balls on the 3rd. Our supply consisted of (roughly):
-24ish (1 inch dia.?) smoke balls of assorted colors
-a few hundred pop-its, those little paper things that pop when you throw them on the ground
-3 smoke candles, roman candle sized
-2 smoke grenades (just slightly larger, and all it does is smoke)
-6 party poppers (like wtf...), the real little pullstring ones
-2 boxes of "booby traps", single strings with centers that pop when you pull the two ends
-6 (forgot the name) gun-shaped party poppers, bigger, louderish
-2 sparkling trees
-1 large smoking thing. Just smoked for longer.
Yeah, it sucked. All that came in one box we bought at a random store. We didn't pass through Indiana or Wisconsin lately so we couldn't get anything good. As cool as some things can be, all I need to have some fun are firecrackers and bottle rockets, kinda small but really fun.
We stained our driveway blue and red at the ends from some smoke balls. We tried throwing some. Our neighbor had a lacrosse stick and he would try to catch them, and one of them burned a hole in part of the netting . Probably the most interesting thing we did with a smoke ball was put it in a bucket of water while smoking. The smoke would form bubbles, float up, pop, then exit as a gas. Pretty cool. Then we dropped a smoke grenade in a closed empty garbage can.
On the night of the 4th we went to Ribfest, a huge place to eat ribs, drink beer, and enjoy live music. An official guy said there was almost 300,000 people there, and the facility really isn't that large. We knew it was gonna be insanely crowded that night, because obviously of the fireworks, but also because REO Speedwagon was playing. My dad likes them too, and we decided to just show up REALLY early. (Around 4). I didn't really do much. No one did. But I expected that, we went last year, and we sat in the relatively same place and did the same thing, just this time there was better music.
We were surrounded by drunk people too. It was kind of strange. Plus I saw LOTS of people from school but they were all random people I rarely see.
I can't exactly compare our fireworks show to anything other than last years, but even then I can't remember it that well. I believe this years was better, and possibly longer. I definitely liked their choice of music and the layout of the show better. There was a mini finale then a bigger finale that I would've liked to be bigger but considering all the shells they used before it was very good.
Getting out of there was horrible. We took the bus shuttle from a high school to the park, so we obviously had to take it home. The high school we went to was by FAR the most heavily trafficked. I think we got a little careless and thought we'd be as lucky as last year when we got on the first set of buses. Unfortunately we weren't able to take the emergency exit this time, and we had to wait like 45 minutes for the next set. This kind of thing can bring out some bad people. We saw/heard some yelling and all kinds of people getting pissed off and pushing and shoving to get on a bus. The capacity for each was around 70, but there was probably 100+ on each. We had to wait about another 15 minutes after the 2nd round of buses to finally get one. All of the other destinations converted to ours because so many needed to go there. The fireworks show was at 9:30 exactly, but we didn't get back till 11:15ish.
We all just went to bed when we got home, and finished our "fireworks" the next night. It is pretty fun though to put lots of pop-its on the street, and just watch as cars drive over them and see if they react to the pops. So far the only one I've gotten is one person who stopped, did nothing for a second, then kept on going.
Monday was our cat Clover's 1st anniversary of living in our house. 7/7/08! She's about 2.5 years old, which translates (I THINK, not sure though) to about 10 in human years. I wouldn't be surprised if she's doubled her weight in a single year. But we got CAKE! Yes, how sad, my sister wanted to make a cake for our cat.... My brother made it though, and he used regular flour instead of cake flour, so it tasted slightly like cornbread. BUT, he also made the BEST homemade frosting EVER!!! It was amazing.
Luckily, today, our neighbor invited us to use up some last firecrackers with him!! YAY! Hooray for danger too. We took a Gatorade bottle, and my neighbor lit a firecracker while my brother was going to cap it quickly. My neighbor was expecting my brother to be quicker, he panicked as the firecracker was LIT, and as time ran out he dropped it next to the bottle and we all tried to get away as quick as possible. That all happened in a few seconds, but I clearly remember seeing the firecracker's fuse lit, IN my neighbor's hand. My brother and I were about 3 feet away when it exploded, and I only had time to turn around, and cover my left ear with my shoulder. AND we were in my garage due to the difficulty lighting, so it echoed like heck, and it was SOOOO loud. Luckily it wasn't damaging or anything. We tried it again (go total disregard for safety!) in our neighbors garage, once with no cap, then the next I capped it, screwed it on about a centimeter because I was afraid to spend more time. It was cool though because the bottle popped off the ground a few inches and the cap cleanly popped off as well. The rest of the firecrackers we just lit and threw in the cul de sac. As for the few bottle rockets, half of them had no tail sticks, so it was just the explosive part. We lit and threw them and then they'd whistle into the ground and explode. And then I was like WTF when my neighbor lit two (whole ones) bottle rockets, and not realizing that he was holding the bottle HORIZONTALLY, shot them right past my brother. They missed and exploded some feet away.
The last firecracker I went over the the sewer and stood there for like TEN minutes trying the light the dang thing. It's frustrating holding a tiny explosive that can blow your fingers off while trying to light it in lots of wind. The fuse was in the lighter flame SOO many times, but it took forever to light, so I was watching the fuse very carefully to make sure I knew the instant it started. Once lit and dropped in the sewer it made a satisfying echoing bang that sounded like something broke, but it was 100% concrete down there so nothing could've happened.
Oh yea, at 9am tomorrow I get to help clean up at the Ribfest for 4 hours! Yippee! Just doing it for community service hours and money for the high school.
Whooooaaa... I seriously thought this was going to be a short blog! I think one reason is it's just poorly written. You know what, I don't believe this blogging thing is helping my writing skills at ALL. And I still need to write a paper comparing and contrasting To Kill a Mockingbird and The Color of Water (TKaM and CoW ).