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Friday was a holiday in Gainesville.  Most of the city gets Homecoming off, even elementary school children.  The Gainesville Roller Rebels were participating in this year’s parade, so I got up early and drove in the rain to the severely parking-restricted University of Florida campus.  There is apparently a rule about parade participants arriving by 8:30AM.  Since the parade doesn’t begin until noon, that’s a pretty long time to be standing around…in the rain!  We realized that one of us could have shown up at 8:30 to check in, and the rest of us could have slept until ten o’clock.  I think that’ll be the plan next year.  But the GRR girls are great, and the Wendy’s at the Reitz Union was (surprisingly) open, so I had a Frosty and chatted it up with the team.

It was neat to see the way the Homecoming parade is put together, having only seen it from the sidewalk in years past.  All the floats and marchers line up in the O’Connell Center parking lot, or on North-South Drive in front of the stadium, and then, one by one, each contingent makes their way out onto University Avenue and walks east down to Main Street, turns south, and heads back down SW 2nd Avenue. The whole route (on skates for the girls, on foot for me) took less than a half hour.  In spite of the rain, there were still thousands of people sitting on the curb of either side of the street, on lawnchairs on the sidewalk, on the low brick wall in front of campus, at tables in front of restaurants, and even from windows of the Seagle Building.  It was delightful.

The sad part about marching in a parade is that you don’t really see the parade.  I was sad to miss the Pride of the Sunshine.  But a couple positions behind us was an old Studebaker truck, on the back of which was a brass contraption which proclaimed it to be the “world’s largest calliope”.  I cannot verify that claim, but it certainly made a glorious noise!

When we got downtown we ate together at Big Lou’s, then Karla and Ryan drove us back to our cars.  This was my first parade, and it was a delight.  And it was fun to see Patsy Clothesline and Ms. Rebel in their costumes.

Happy second anniversary, Jeff and Sandi.

I can scarcely believe that it is the first of August, the swelteringest month of all the year.

Naturally, August 1 affords me a sense of relief, since it means that I have but one week left of Summer B at the University.  In retrospect, three classes was a big mistake.  I’ll do well–straight As, maybe–but it has come at a high cost: neglect of friends, chores, television, hobbies, etc.  I would say that the eye of the storm has just passed, though, since I have already turned in two of the four big papers I have due before next Friday.  The last two, however, may be the worst two, since for one of them–Age of Johnson–I haven’t the slightest idea what to write about.

The end of the semester also coincides with the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics, which I have looked forward to with great anticipation.  I love track and field, diving, men’s gymnastics, women’s beach volleyball, and, for some reason, rhythmic gymnastics, with the ribbon and the ball.  Each successive Olympic games, too, I am more and more amazed at the improved television technology.  In Athens they debuted a freeze-frame effect during the diving competition, where you could see the athlete’s entire dive in still pictures; it was fantastic.  This will also be the first Olympics I watch in HDTV, though just barely, since the TV here has ruined my life, with its pronounced white line across the top third of the screen, above which every shape is distorted beyond recognition.  Alas, this line falls precisely at eye-level for most human faces on screen.  It actually makes watching television an unpleasant experience.

I don’t recall if I mentioned it before, but I briefly saw Sandi last weekend when she came to town for the afternoon.  School work prevented me from spending any degree of quality time with her, and since most of the little time we were together was spent consuming Satchel’s Pizza, I felt like I didn’t really get to catch up with her as I’d have liked.  She and Jeff went to Prince Edward Island this summer–making stops in New York City on the way there and back.  This is the first summer in several years that I haven’t been able to make it down to see them in Miami, which is sadder now, since they bought a house within the last several months and it has a swimming pool!  In any case, what I don’t understand is why I didn’t bother to get a picture of Sandi, Kathleen and Steve when we had lunch together last Saturday.  I took a picture of Kathleen’s pizza, and the menu, but not my friends.  My constant reading and writing has me off my game.

Last, but not least, the flowers in the garden are all blooming–at least the ones that haven’t been eaten by caterpillars–which is beautiful.

Independence Day has always been among my favorite holidays, falling as it does in the middle of summer, and celebrated with food and fireworks.  I’ve also always appreciated that it’s a holiday every American can appreciate regardless of religious affiliation. In the past, Fourth of July’s falling in the midst of vacation from school has given it an extra degree of joy for me.  Less so this year, since my semester has just begun.  Nevertheless, this year Independence Day fell on a Friday, and that, coupled with a great group of friends has made this one of the best July 4ths in years.

In Gainesville, the well-organized fireworks display takes place on the 3rd, presumably to allow students and others to head home and spend the holiday with their families.  This year, with huge budget cuts harming nearly every department on Campus, WUFT canceled the display.  Shortly thereafter, an anonymous donor ponied up tens of thousands of dollars and the event was back on.

So, at eight o’clock on Thursday evening, Sara (aka PopHer), and Steven and Kathleen arrived at our home and we chatted for a bit waiting for Sarah Jean (aka Ruby Typhoon).  Steve and Kathleen, traditionally not fans of fireworks, opted out, and Sarah Jean seemed unconvinced that the weather would cooperate–it had been thundering–also appeared to bow out.  But Robin (aka Patsy Clothesline) would be there, and Kat (aka Demonomia) was scheduled to appear.  It wasn’t long, though, before Sarah Jean and her husband Andrew did arrive, and we listened to the Gainesville Community Band and watched the fireworks with thousands of others at Flavet Field beneath a clear sky.  There was watermelon and chicken, cupcakes and drinks, and, though the pyrotechnics didn’t seem as substantial as in years past, we all still had a great time.

Friday morning Miriam and I drove down to Micanopy to experience the kind of small town parade that you only see in movies.  There was no marching band–Micanopy doesn’t have a high school–but we did see lots of tractors and horses and politicians waving flags.

In the evening we went to Steve and Kathleen’s house where we enjoyed a spaghetti dinner with Robin, Sara, Sarah Jean and Andrew.  Then, out in the street in front of the house we set off all manner of firecrackers.  We all had a fabulous time, even as revelers on nearby streets set of vastly superior pyrotechnics.  Inside we had ice cream novelties and played the most recent installment of Grand Theft Auto, continuing a tradition that harkens back to the legendary BBQ 2000, when I first experienced a video game that was actually fun to watch as well as play.

Today I worked all afternoon, but tonight is karaoke with the GRR girls downtown.

As you may have read yesterday, Monday witnessed two significant technological catastrophes at home: a broken air conditioner and computer.  And, as you may have read, Kathleen helped solve the former on Tuesday afternoon. 

On Wednesday afternoon (her birthday!) she called me at work and told me she’d see if she could wrangle me a loaner computer to use until Miriam and I could get a new laptop.  And, sure enough, at 8:30 last night she and Steve came by with a computer and a CD-ROM of Windows XP with all the significant security updates and such.  It was incredible and entirely undeserved.  There’s kindness and generosity, and then there’s this.

So, Miriam and I will try perhaps this evening to shop for a laptop computer, and I am going to attempt to salvage the data from the hard disk of our deceased computer, but it isn’t looking good.  When I plugged it in to our loaner, it immediately recognized the drive, but 90% of the data was missing, including all of my pictures and MP3s.  I’m going to try and run some file-recovery software, but it’s a nerve-wracking process.  The only consolation I have is that I have made DVD backups of my images going back several years, so the only total losses will be the most recent images - those from March and April, perhaps.  Many of these have already been uploaded to Flickr, but many more haven’t, and they may be gone.  Also possibly lost are the outtakes of photoshoots with GRR girls Patsy Clothesline, Ms. Rebel, and Demonomia and the outtakes from their first bout, too, though the Flickr galleries are safe, of course.