a grand day out

so, i was a loser, and bagged on a party down in connecticut this weekend, for a variety of reasons, i guess. sometimes i just feel antisocial, and that's part of it; apart from that, i've got a bunch of stuff to do before leaving for europe on thursday. anyway, what i did do yesterday, was hop on my bike at 1900 hours and ride downtown to go see the fireworks. which, needless, to say, was quite the adventure. what really struck me (and i hadn't been since 2000) was the sheer number of people that were out there. i mean, after the fireworks ended at 2300 or so, the streets were teeming with people for dozens of blocks. which is actually great fun to ride through. it's like a moving slalom course, except the flags will sue you if you hit them. oh, i exaggerate--i wasn't riding that agressively--but it was still wicked fun. but damn, was i ever tired when i got back...
and of course, it also gave me an excuse to see if my digital camera was indeed on its last legs. after last weekend, it wasn't working so hot, given that it had repeatedly been inundated with sand and water over the past couple months. not the brightest thing to do, but i strongly believe that gadgets aren't worth having if you don't have them with you. but anyway, i now no longer fear heading off to europe, taking a shitload of pictures, and finding that they all came out like shit. that, and having recently read the manual for the thing to troubleshoot some of its crappy behavior, i got to try out some fun stuff, in order to make pictures at night actually come out.

the coolest thing was the reflections of the fireworks across all the buildings. i tried getting pictures of that, but it's hard, so you'll have to take my word for it. and the best thing was that with the passing T trains and lack of a radio, i didn't even have to suffer through leann rimes or whoever it was (as an aside, since when are the boston pops insufficient?).

pictures here.