Red, White, and Bust

Today is the Fourth of July. The day to celebrate freedom and Independence. Well, kind of, but not here.

Here we are still under the rule of the colonial oppressor. The Navigation Acts and the Stamp Tax evidently were just the cost of doing business. We still pay the stamp tax, in fact. When I got my police check done a few weeks ago, I had to buy a ten dollar stamp from the post office to affix on my application.

"NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION," say I.

Well I guess since I have a US tax exclusion that nets me quite a dollar maybe I should whisper.

"no taxation and no representation, please."

Anyway, whats the bust? Last night was the largest party of the year in Columbus, Ohio. I tell people here that the "4th" is our biggest holiday. So big in fact that it starts on the "3rd."

We threw a party at the museum last night. It was a musician's jam. No one came. Well, that is not entirely true. It was me playing with five percussionists. So a good practice is what you could call it. But, it was cool and fantastic, and great. We have not played since May. It was great.

Today I was going to teach Lucas how to spear fish. As an aside, this was my first time spear fishing, too. We were then going to have a big fish BBQ in the new smoker I made last week out of trash (soon as I get it painted I will post a picture).

Deneen asked why in the world I was spending so much time working on a BBQ smoker. She does not get it. Because whenever anyone comes over for a BBQ I am going to show them the BBQ smoker I made out of trash and they are going to say...

"I can't believe you made that BBQ smoker!"

And that will make me feel cool.

But I digress. So we took a day trip to the east side of the island today. We loaded up the car and drove out to the deserted 1980s hotel, Coral Gardens. The water is usually rough on the east side but there are lots of coral heads. Lucas and I swam for an hour and twenty minutes. We did not find a singel coral head and we did not see one fish.

So much for the 4th of July BBQ. I am exhausted and we have all had too much sun. I thawed the pork chops that the Harrisons left us when they went back to the states last week. Dinner will be on before you are finished reading this post.