Thursday, July 05, 2007

Reuben rolls and sweet tarts

I had a wonderfully lazy Independence Day. I sat by the pool and knit on my sock, talked to neighbors, and generally soaked up the sun. Last night, the roof was the place to be! About a quarter after nine, it started -- all the city parks and nearby suburbs started their fireworks shows and we could see them all from our rooftop perch. We have a not-quite 360 degree view and there were more than forty separate shows we could see going on at the same time. At one point it looked like the whole world was lighting up -- in every direction there were beautiful displays. Spectacular! They had forecast rain, and there were some threatening looking clouds to the southwest, but they managed to miss us.

We were not so lucky on Tuesday night. That was the night I went to Summerfest to see Weird Al. It started raining an hour before the show while we waited for Al and all through the performance. Of course, after the encore, it stopped. Figures.

The Summerfest grounds near the skylifts


Egg rolls? No, silly rabbit, these are Mader's Reuben rolls!!


The south end of the grounds from the north


While I wandered around, I discovered a really fun cover band (metal-techno versions of everything from Mamma Mia to Sweet Home Alabama) called the Sweet Tarts. They're going to play at the Wisconsin State Fair, too, so I hope to see them again.



Sorry, no pictures of Al due to the copious amounts of raindrops falling on my head. It was a fabulous time anyway. He played most of my faves, including the two most important -- The Saga Begins and Yoda. The geeks were out in fine force. It was awesome.

I hope all of you from the U.S. had a fabulous holiday and I hope the rest of you had a peachy day, too! :)

4 comments:

ollie1976 said...

Sounds like a great time despite the rain during Al's show.
-Jen

Becky G said...

WIERD AL!!!!! I lurve Wierd Al! He even has my hair! Yoda is my all time favorite Wierd Al song. He made another one long time ago called Good Enough For Now. It is a country parody, and I used to play it at the Enlisted Club for my potentials. How they reacted to it had a lot to do with how far the realtionship lasted. If they didn't have the same slightly warped sense of humor that I do, they wouldn't last very long with me.

I'm glad you had a good holiday, despite the rain. My town doesn't do anything for the Fourth because we have that big thing in June.

DawnK said...

Wow! I can't imagine seeing 40 different displays all going on at once! I'm going to my 3rd different display of fireworks tonight. My SIL's city had them last Friday, my city had them on Wednesday and a neighboring town is having theirs tonight! My book discussion group is meeting at the park, instead of at my house tonight! LOL! (The book is The Devil and The White City, and it's about a man obsessed with the building of the Chicago World's Fair and another man obsessed with murdering young women and making them disappear without a trace! Not really my favorite genre of books, but it was interesting, anyway. My book group makes me think outside the box, sometimes.)

Anonymous said...

Ahhh...Summerfest--I'm jealous. It's something I always mean to do but never get around to doing. It was really a lot of fun the one time I went. Sorry you got rained on. I like Weird Al's take on "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--especially when he gargles a glass of water at the end. His parody of grunge had me on the floor laughing.