July 4th

A mildly strange independence day. I got up at 5:30 and drove to the Scripps Ranch area of San Diego to do a 10k race. I felt good for a change and ran a decent time (for me) of about 39:20. That's my 10k PR, and my first time below 40 minutes.

In the afternoon we went to a party in Encinitas, the summer place of one of the Filipino families that my wife grew up with in Phoenix. There's a big wedding coming this Friday that's being held in San Diego, so there are a bunch of people in town.

After we came home, we took the boys to see Madagascar, along with my sister-in-law. It's a moderately cute movie, but the main plot is rendered completely irrelevant by the scene-stealing lemurs, lead by King Julien (voice by Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G).

Got home in time to grill some hamburgers and watch fireworks from the back yard and drink some beer; because after all that's what independence day is all about. For many in my neighborhood, the 4th is sort of Memorial Day, take II. Flags, parades, fireworks, and lots of show of support for the troops, which around here means unquestioning support for whatever idiocy the president is proposing this week. I like to think of it as Thomas Jefferson day, a celebration of our most enignmatic founding father. Whether it's true or not, i like the myth of Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence solo, suspecting that it would hard for people to understand, that posterity would raise its collective eyebrows at the "created equal" bit coming from a slaveholder. I like to think that if Jefferson came back today, he'd regard most of the politicians in Washington on both sides of the aisle as self-evident dipshits, and that he'd have special contempt for the brainless self-assurance of our chief dipshit.