freedom on the fourth!

…and today, it’s freedom from any kind of schedule, except for getting up early this morning to go bird-watching, sort of. But it’s already almost five o’clock, and I can’t figure out where the day went. I’ve been looking around for it, but no sign anywhere.

I just re-read my last entry about the birthday festivities, and we didn’t do any of the stuff I wrote about – no badminton, no croquet, no board game Cranium. We did eat and drink and have fun anyway, thought. B. (Bradley) came over early and he, mom and I played the guitar, flute and keyboard, but I observed that as others arrived, they seemed to all drift out to the deck instead of staying inside to listen. The dogs seemed to like it, though – well, at least they were barking a lot.

After the eating and drinking and singing happy birthday and opening gifts and eating cake, somebody realized that my keyboard has a bunch of songs programmed into it, and they kept playing “la vida loca.” At the same time, you can play the keyboard, and one of the settings is called “DJ,” so when you hit a key, instead of a note, there’s a male voice that says stuff like “hey! Hey!” or “DJ!” or a sexy female who says “oh yeah.” Highly amusing, especially in combination with La Vida Loca.

Some people played the tambourine, others the maracas, the castanets, and everybody danced. Lots of energy, and not too many accidents. Afterwards, B. and Randy and I played a cutthroat game of Boggle – Randy was in the lead most of the time, but B. snuck up and beat him in the last round.

I have lots and lots of photos, and I’m going to put up as many as I can right now. First, you may recall that I went to a st. louis cardinals baseball game and got to sit in the FRONT ROW:

at the game

here’s an actual ball player signing an autograph. he’s probably a very very famous guy, although i don’t know who he is. he plays for the pittsburgh pirates, that much i know:

player