Post-4th bliss

Hello sweet readers!  I hope you all had a lovely long weekend celebrating America's birthday.  I had a fantastic time at my parents' lake house in Tennessee- it's just at the foot of the Smoky Mountains and couldn't be more picturesque.  The lake water was the perfect temperature, all of the boats behaved (with a minor slip up from the pontoon boat while watching fireworks, but all ended well), the guests were in top form and the food was flowing. 

I (of course) manged some productivity:  an 8-mile run on Saturday morning (per my Marine Corps Marathon training schedule) and I finished the first Harry Potter.  I know I'm an extremely late HP bloomer, but as I mentioned I'm tentatively planning a trip to the new park with Mumsie so I figured I needed to get my act in gear and read the series.  Given their popularity and the low reading level, I won't grace Rowling with a full-length book review, but I will say that I enjoyed the "cheap-n-cheerful" read and will gladly move on to the next this weekend.  I should wrap up Lolita soon and will more than make up for it with that review because it is juicy y'all.

In other news, my blogging bestie is officially coming to DC and I cannot WAIT to host her for what is sure to be a superlative weekend of champagne wishes and caviar...err...veggie burger dreams!

I have listened to some titillating podcasts of late, and just stumbled across a blog written by my favorite podcasters:  Sara and Katie from Stuff You Missed in History Class!  Woot!  I almost always need to follow up on wikipedia after one of their teaser history lessons, and now I can go straight to the source.  I revisited some of my Irish travels this morning while learning more about Bloody Sunday, which was an incident on January 30, 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland.  Twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by members of the British Army (a la Kent State), and the facts of that fateful day were finally released on June 5th of this year in the Saville Inquiry, originally commissioned by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.  This recent report could re-open the controversy and potentially lead to criminal investigations for some soldiers involved in the killings.  Britain intentionally delayed release of the results until after the most recent Northern Ireland elections because anything involving "the troubles" is sure to be loaded with baggage, and they were right.  If it ain't the piss ants, it's the bed bugs, as my Memom used to say, and these fools could really use a big dose of getting over it if you ask me.  (And by "it," I mean the differences between Protestants and Catholics, and not the dead, of course.)

So there's your history lesson y'all!  Enjoy this hot hot hot day (102 degrees in DC yesterday, and even hotter today!) and stay curious!

xo