On July 4th, I attempted to social-butterfly my way to as many events as possible, but it was a tough balancing act for me; when you try to see everyone, it’s hard to spend as much time as you’d like with anyone.

After gathering at Jess’ place, we crossed the street to Bell Square Park, where they were having their festival, complete with sad cover bands, dogs in tiny patriotic sweaters, and NO ALCOHOL.

How wrong is it to call your stand ‘Margarita Village’ when you don’t serve alcohol? I’m going to go out on a limb and say pretty goddamned wrong. A few of us kept searching the grounds in disbelief–surely there must be a beer garden cordoned off somewhere! No. This was a completely dry festival. And that, friends, is how I know Bellevue sucks. It was a lovely day, but I personally do not deal well with the proximity of hundreds of screaming children without a drink.

Everyone else felt much the same, and as it was quite a while before the fireworks were due to start, we went back to Jess’ place. On the way there, we spied a short, very steep hill; I’m not certain who first voiced the desire to climb up and roll down, but I’m absolutely not one to say no.

My grandparents used to own a cabin in Eagle River, Wisconsin, next to a very steep hill that went down to the lake (Otter Lake, as I recall). My brother and I used to play a game wherein we’d roll down the hill, making ourselves dizzy. One night, while our parents/grandparents/every adult in the park were drinking and socializing (because that is all there is to do in the evenings), my brother and I and a few other kids decided to push the boundaries and try to stop on the rocks at the very edge. As usual, I went first. I hit my mark on the large, flat rocks, but they were slick with lake-slime and I went flying off the edge and directly into the lake. My parents were slightly less than ecstatic when I trudged into their party, waterlogged with stinky lake water. (Note: This is the same lake where I jumped off of a raft and had a beer bottle go through my foot, AND got smacked in the face with a baseball and have scars on both places to remind me why I should never go outside. I will tell you ALL of my hilarious injury stories later, if you would like to hear them.)

This hill in Bellevue did not end in comparatively soft lake water; this hill ended on cement, making the stakes a little higher in case I wanted to do some more permanent damage to my face. Jess wisely decided to roll after me, to assess if it was more dangerous than he’d first believed. So, in a desperate attempt to feel young as a twenty-six-year-old who is never carded for booze anymore, to the great amusement of everyone around me, I lay down and started my roll. I rolled so fast, it was almost as if someone had shot me downhill with a rocket launcher. As you can see, I’m not bleeding from anywhere, which may only serve to encourage me to do this sort of thing again.

Not long afterward, it was time for me to skedaddle if I was going to make it to gehn and fraxl‘s place before the fireworks started.

I mainly took the below picture to frustrate the latecoming vultures who were circling around, waiting to nab my parking spot. Bellevue’s festivals may be sad, sad affairs, but the buildings are very pretty at twilight.

When I arrived on Capitol Hill, I miraculously for the first time ever found a parking spot without having to circle every surrounding block. This is madness!

By the time I got to the party, everyone was well on their way to drunk land, but had made a ‘bro pact’ not to pass out before midnight.

We went upstairs to watch the fireworks from the roof; deqlan pointed out that Amazon’s headquarters looked like the Lizard Fortress in Heroes of Might and Magic III, and I can’t say I disagree:

After the fireworks were over and we stopped singing ‘America, fuck yeah!’ on the rooftop, we played the sort of asinine games that are only fun when you’re drunk….which may well be the best kind of game. We also learned that if you play ‘hide Nicole’s phone’ over an extended period of time, she will start biting people in order to have it returned, which is less sexy and more painful than you can even imagine.

All in all, it was a fab Fourth, superior to last year only in that I did not end it by vomiting out a car window on the freeway.