July 4, 2009 Independence Day

In the great tradition of Election Day 2008, Thanksgiving 2008, Christmas 2008, and Inauguration Day 2009, I spent the 4^th of July with a group of American friends, eating American food and having American-scale fun. :D

We celebrated not only the 233^rd (I think) birthday of our country, but also the half-birthdays of Fatima and myself (since our actual birthdays fall in early January, when nobody in their right mind wants to come to our frozen mountain village) as well as the upcoming birthday of Jamal. Whenever blogspot starts working again, I’ll post some pictures. :)

The activity had originally been billed as a campout by my favorite lake, but rainy skies and early-morning plans shifted that to a walk out to the lake, followed by returning indoors and baking pizza. :)

A few of the many quotes of note:

“Frosting covers all sins.” – me, sharing patisserie secrets with Fatima

“Yeah, I used to work at Papa John’s.” – Saeed, offering to make garlic breadsticks, and inducing drool more effectively than Pavlov’s bells

“If there’s one thing better than having pizza on your birthday, it’s having secret pizza on your birthday.” – Jamal, referring to the fact that only the kitchen crew and the birthday folks got to eat the first pizza, while everyone else hung out in the living room, oblivious to our surreptitious snarfing

“It’s still only11:05 old time.” “Yeah, all of our neighbors think it’s still the Fourth of July.” “And in California, it’s only 3 in the afternoon.” “And we have apple pie.” - Mina and Hiyat, chiming in with reasons for why our celebration should continue after midnight