What are your plans for the 4th?



Same as most Tuesdays, mow the lawn and do the shopping [pensioners discount day]
 
I bought a bunch of fireworks and have a retired pyrotechnical engineer stopping by.

I usually do a giant party on my lawn and a professional-level fireworks display that the locals come watch (and to party on my lawn for a couple of days).

But, the pandemic kinda killed that and I didn't feel like investing the time, effort, and cost this year.

However, we'll still have some entertainment. There will be food and booze. I expect a small gathering of friends and family, much different than what I'd normally do.
 
KGIII said:
I bought a bunch of fireworks and have a retired pyrotechnical engineer stopping by.

I usually do a giant party on my lawn and a professional-level fireworks display that the locals come watch (and to party on my lawn for a couple of days).

But, the pandemic kinda killed that and I didn't feel like investing the time, effort, and cost this year.

However, we'll still have some entertainment. There will be food and booze. I expect a small gathering of friends and family, much different than what I'd normally do.
Click to expand...
You definitely don't live in a city!
Sounds like fun
 
If we don't get rained out grill some burgers and hotdogs.

https://www.greetingseveryday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/4th-of-July-GIF.gif
 
mrcrossroads said:
You definitely don't live in a city!
Sounds like fun
Click to expand...

Picture the exact opposite of a city. That's where I live.

I'm almost exactly (I've measured) 24.5 miles from the nearest convenience store.
I'm about an 1h 15m from a town bigger than a village.
The town mentioned has the nearest fast food, hospital, and Walmart.
I refuse to shop at Walmart (for reasons).
I refuse to use their hospital.
This means I drive at least 2 hours to get to a hospital.

Trying to describe where I live is futile. Trust me on this. Find Rangeley, Maine on Google Maps. That's the village with the aforementioned convenience store.

Yeah... I live here on purpose.

I don't have a post office. I don't have any municipality - which means no police, no fire department, no highway department, no water department, etc...

It's pretty awesome, but you give up a lot to live here.
 
KGIII said:
Picture the exact opposite of a city. That's where I live.

I'm almost exactly (I've measured) 24.5 miles from the nearest convenience store.
I'm about an 1h 15m from a town bigger than a village.
The town mentioned has the nearest fast food, hospital, and Walmart.
I refuse to shop at Walmart (for reasons).
I refuse to use their hospital.
This means I drive at least 2 hours to get to a hospital.

Trying to describe where I live is futile. Trust me on this. Find Rangeley, Maine on Google Maps. That's the village with the aforementioned convenience store.

Yeah... I live here on purpose.

I don't have a post office. I don't have any municipality - which means no police, no fire department, no highway department, no water department, etc...

It's pretty awesome, but you give up a lot to live here.
Click to expand...
I can see the allure and sounds tempting but I couldn't make the sacrifices needed to live that far from everything. Maybe in another 10-15 years. ;)
 
mrcrossroads said:
I can see the allure and sounds tempting but I couldn't make the sacrifices needed to live that far from everything. Maybe in another 10-15 years. ;)
Click to expand...

Sure, I eat venison - giant chunks cooked low and slow on the grill - but I can't get a good burrito to save my life. Then, there are the locals - whom I love dearly - but they'll slap ketchup on a steak, throw it on a grill for 10 minutes, and call it BBQ. In the "ethnic" part of the nearest grocery store, they have "taco kits".

I can't get a pizza delivered. I don't even bother having mail delivered, I get that in the village. Why? I don't actually have a zip code. I don't live in a town. I live in an unincorporated township. My driveway is nice and paved. I just had it retouched. As soon as I hit the end of my driveway, it's dirt roads until you get to Rt. 16 and can head into the village.

I got mad at my DSL provider. I really should have just sucked it up and accepted it, but they just let me go without service for two months. So, I decided to use a cell phone. Ha! I am so remove that I'm HAPPY if I can get 1 Mb/sec download. My upload? Oh, that's around 0.06 KB/sec...

None of the above is in jest. Those are real numbers.

I thought I'd try that new satellite service but those don't pass by my house. So, I have Hughes Net to keep the missus happy. It sucks. It's worse than the cell phone service, but it's good enough for her because she doesn't do much more than browse a few things.

Oh... If my road isn't passable, I need to do the work to fix it. I do have a couple of neighbors who chip in, but it's largely all me. When there's a giant snow storm, it's me that plows it out. However, I actually enjoy that. So, I consider that a bonus, except the equipment to do a good job is very, very expensive. I do drive a 'luxury' truck when it's that time of the year (or when I'm towing a car somewhere)/

I could go on... I will...

There's actually a farm 'across the road' that's so important that I own it. Actually, I just didn't want some jack*** from out of state to move in and screw the place up. So, I bought it. Yes, I technically own a farm. I don't actually lose (much) money on it, if you ignore the purchasing of the farm.

Amazingly, my other "neighbors" (a very loose definition for that word here) are all gainfully employed. I don't know how they do it. I do nice things like plow their driveways, 'cause they'd otherwise be spending four extra hours per snow storm just to make it to work. The equipment they do have is just barely adequate and it's a 10 minute task for me to plow them out.

I have one weirdo who lives further afield than I do and he doesn't want to be plowed out. He just parks just up the road from where I stop plowing and walks in. If his snowmobile is working, he rides that. He doesn't leave home often. I'm pretty sure he's the next Unabomber. (Nah, he's alright. He's just weird. He also went to MIT, but his brain broke back in the 70s and he now lives deep in the Maine woods.)

If any of you think this is weird or that I'm exaggerating, I assure you that I am doing the opposite.

It's actually much weirder.

And, well, as I've said, I love it. I absolutely love it living here. I not only love it, I live here on purpose. I could live pretty much anywhere, but this is pretty much the first time I've called any area 'my home'.

We have a couple of Mainers here. They'll understand.

(I ain't even sorry for the novella. I'm celebrating early.)
 

I'm not from the US but happy 4th to all the Americans here on the forum!
 
I will stay put as I'm on the other side of the world but I'll dedicate this to all the Americas:

Today came up this video, I watched it all, many things didn't knew:
 
Last edited:
0ikdjbi81y9b1.jpg

;)
 
Last edited:
KGIII said:
Sure, I eat venison - giant chunks cooked low and slow on the grill - but I can't get a good burrito to save my life. Then, there are the locals - whom I love dearly - but they'll slap ketchup on a steak, throw it on a grill for 10 minutes, and call it BBQ. In the "ethnic" part of the nearest grocery store, they have "taco kits".

I can't get a pizza delivered. I don't even bother having mail delivered, I get that in the village. Why? I don't actually have a zip code. I don't live in a town. I live in an unincorporated township. My driveway is nice and paved. I just had it retouched. As soon as I hit the end of my driveway, it's dirt roads until you get to Rt. 16 and can head into the village.

I got mad at my DSL provider. I really should have just sucked it up and accepted it, but they just let me go without service for two months. So, I decided to use a cell phone. Ha! I am so remove that I'm HAPPY if I can get 1 Mb/sec download. My upload? Oh, that's around 0.06 KB/sec...

None of the above is in jest. Those are real numbers.

I thought I'd try that new satellite service but those don't pass by my house. So, I have Hughes Net to keep the missus happy. It sucks. It's worse than the cell phone service, but it's good enough for her because she doesn't do much more than browse a few things.

Oh... If my road isn't passable, I need to do the work to fix it. I do have a couple of neighbors who chip in, but it's largely all me. When there's a giant snow storm, it's me that plows it out. However, I actually enjoy that. So, I consider that a bonus, except the equipment to do a good job is very, very expensive. I do drive a 'luxury' truck when it's that time of the year (or when I'm towing a car somewhere)/

I could go on... I will...

There's actually a farm 'across the road' that's so important that I own it. Actually, I just didn't want some jack*** from out of state to move in and screw the place up. So, I bought it. Yes, I technically own a farm. I don't actually lose (much) money on it, if you ignore the purchasing of the farm.

Amazingly, my other "neighbors" (a very loose definition for that word here) are all gainfully employed. I don't know how they do it. I do nice things like plow their driveways, 'cause they'd otherwise be spending four extra hours per snow storm just to make it to work. The equipment they do have is just barely adequate and it's a 10 minute task for me to plow them out.

I have one weirdo who lives further afield than I do and he doesn't want to be plowed out. He just parks just up the road from where I stop plowing and walks in. If his snowmobile is working, he rides that. He doesn't leave home often. I'm pretty sure he's the next Unabomber. (Nah, he's alright. He's just weird. He also went to MIT, but his brain broke back in the 70s and he now lives deep in the Maine woods.)

If any of you think this is weird or that I'm exaggerating, I assure you that I am doing the opposite.

It's actually much weirder.

And, well, as I've said, I love it. I absolutely love it living here. I not only love it, I live here on purpose. I could live pretty much anywhere, but this is pretty much the first time I've called any area 'my home'.

We have a couple of Mainers here. They'll understand.

(I ain't even sorry for the novella. I'm celebrating early.)
Click to expand...
Glad you're living the dream. Except for the potential unabomber there. lol

I couldn't couldn't, or should say I would have a hard time, without high speed internet. Need my streaming services. ;-)
 
mrcrossroads said:
Glad you're living the dream. Except for the potential unabomber there. lol
Click to expand...

I'll be in and out today. Mostly out...

You give up a bit to live out here, but I find a way to make it work for me. I might not be able to eat flan, but I often have moose on my lawn and moose are delicious.
 
Here it's just another day...the only day we don't celebrate is the first of July because everything goes up.
t3603.gif
 
Worked on personal Linux and other deskwork projects. Did chores and repairs. Started a project for my partner. I do not like the word "bespoke". Made great progress until I measured once instead of twice and now two parts are a re-do. I have only enough material for one, so two cutoffs are laminating overnight to become what I need. Grilled our holiday dinner. Ribs (so-so), corn (first of the season and very yes!), and veggies (yum).
Most evenings we watch something boring on TV in the living room. I tune it out and study or use the laptop. The current book is "How Linux Works, What Every Superuser Should Know, 4th edition" by Brian Ward. I checked it out from the public library. So far, so good. Not much is new to me in the introductory chapters, but a refresher is always good. I have the feeling that the book is about to get more interesting. It is evening and the illegal fireworks have started all around us. I like fireworks, but what happens here is out of control. The air is already foul and brown as the light fades. We closed all our house windows to keep it out. Now my partner is asleep on the couch with the puppy asleep at her feet.
 
I ended up having more guests than expected, which wasn't a problem. We just made more food and sent someone to pick up more supplies. I have a bunch of American beer left over, specifically Coors and Budweiser if anyone wants to come pick it up. If not, I'm sure I can find a home for them. It's first come, first serve.

We normally set fireworks off in a field across the road, but we went out near the edge of my lawn and set them off there. They were mostly aerials shot from mortar tubes, but we had some ground effects. We used up what I bought and what my buddy brought with him. It was a pretty good show with few breaks. It went on for 45+ minutes. You can set them off electronically, but my buddy is old school and likes to run around with a road flare.

There was no live music this year. There was no pig roast this year. There was no camping this year, though a few people weren't able to drive home and crashed on some cots.

At right around midnight, I remembered that I'd not written an article. It was pretty tough, but I managed to get one written. I haven't looked at it with today's clearer eyes. No, I have not.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.
 
We had a good 4th of July cooked hamburgers and hot dogs and had homemade potato salad tea and beer nothing fancy.
We're able to watch fireworks in our neighborhood.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

Total: 968 (members: 7, guests: 961)

Latest posts

Top