A Fourth Like No Other

Well this is the most Fireworks-free Fourth-of-July I've ever had. But all of the fireworks stands near Austin were closed (fine by me, I really don't like those) and most of the professional shows were cancelled due to the dry conditions. BOO!!!

But I am watching PLENTY on TV to make up for that.

I apologize because I took ZERO pictures this weekend. Well, I did take one, but I am not posting it due to my ugliness, I will explain later.

My friend from high school, Monica, that I hung out with last weekend, came in town this weekend. Saturday for a late lunch I took her to Abel's On The Lake. It's next door to Hula Hut on Lake Austin. It's newer, bigger and therefore you don't have to wait to be seated. It was a nice place to hangout and enjoy the lake.

We tried going to Barton Springs Pool but the line to get in was wrapped around the building and the parking situation looked even more horrendous. So we made the executive decision to just go to my apartment pool, and that worked out great! It wasn't crowded and very relaxed.

When the sun started to go down, we sat on my porch and drank Michelada's (a current favorite of mine) and watched the bats fly over. After that, we were not in the mood to go out, pay a bunch of money, fight the crowds then worry about driving home vs. cabbing it home. So we just hung out and watched very intellectual movies (AKA... the latest Harry Potter movie).

Sunday, we went to a friend of mine I work with, Marian's party. She lives on the San Marcos River. Since the water is so low, there is an island in the middle of the river. They just took their grill, a table and a bunch of chairs and put them on the island. It was a great time, we just hung out in the river and tried to not get run over by the kayakers, tubers and dogs. I really wish I could've taken a picture of the place, but see, something about "forging the river" with any electronics just didn't seem like a wise idea to me. Especially since there was about 10 soaking wet dogs running around everywhere!

After we hung out there a little while, we met up with Monica's husband who was at a friend of his party. They had a keg of Fireman's 4 beer, yum! He had a pool and it was a lot of fun just hanging out there.

Well, minus the mosquitos. And since he was a bachelor he had zero Off. So Monica and I went and bought some. We decided to go with the Deep Woods kind rather than the Active one. After I sprayed it on myself, it was overwhelming. It was rediculously thick on my body, it made my drink cup sticky and I couldn't help but continue to taste it no matter what I did. I didn't really worry about it until I went to the bathroom where I noticed my right eye had puffed up and swollen to a size I have never seen! I called Monica over and asked how she didn't feel compelled to tell me this, where she cracked up and said she had no idea. It turns out, no one could tell when I was outside that my eye was so swollen. Our theory is that I got some of the Deep Woods OFF in my eye and had a reaction with my eye because of it. To which her husband made fun of us for even buying that because we were in a backyard in a neighborhood, not so much anything that resembled "Deep Woods."

(Oh, and I did take a picture of the swollen eye, but I am not going to subject you to the ugliness of what I looked like after a full day of sweating and river hanging out.)

I took a Benadryl to try to help it out. Of course, within about 30 minutes of that I could barely keep my eyes open from being so tired. So after I fought through an hour or so... I finally called it a night and went to bed. I was happy to find his house was only about 5 miles from where I lived, but I still didn't want to take any chances with driving, so we all shacked it up there. Monica and I slept on a blow up mattress BETWEEN her husband and friend who slept in the two twin beds. I can't tell you the last time I shared a blow up mattress with someone and slept in a room with three other people.

Except I could tell you, it was last weekend at Natalie's in Ft. Worth.

Oh... and the weekend before in the hotel room in San Antonio.

Man, I'm kinda getting a little too old for this, I think that's what my eye was trying to tell me! But I had a great time this past weekend, regardless of how my eye handled it!