Later: Part 2

Okay, off to a long weekend in NH with a family of 4 (Mar’s, not mine). I feel a bit of trepidation as, if you’ll recall my last trip to NH, you tend to encounter a lot of nature there. I mean, I saw a bunch of friggin’ moose that time. Not good.

Far, far away

Went to NH to spend the holiday weekend with Marianne, her family, Li and Paul. There, we watched the Franconia 4th of July celebration: a mini parade of fire trucks, featuring a brass band that had grown too old to march and had to be carted around on a truck, a bunch of public officials who pelted us with candy, exactly one black guy, and a rubber duckie race in a creek. We went moose-watching and saw two. We drove up a mountain and back down again. We took photos by a waterfall. I came to the conclusion that nature wants to eat me, and I am genetically unfit to live. I ate a bunch of prescription painkillers, but I don’t think they helped.

Trip Highlights: The headline in the Brattleboro Reformer (a newspaper with an entire section devoted to “doggies”) – “Town Prepares to Party,” the sign in the restroom of a Franconia restaurant that read “BOTH employees must wash hands,” and the crazed youth who sat next to us during the fireworks who kept yelling “GO, YOU GUYS!” “YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!” “YAY, U.S.A.!” and “GO, RED, WHITE, AND BLUE!”, an ordeal that finally culminated in a rousing rendition of the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” theme song.