Celebrating Independence Day in the traditional way . . .

. . . with two Canadians. After roundly dismissing Canada Day last week even after Bonafied Gangsta swaggered into the apartment with a Canadian flag draped over his shoulders, I gathered up Awesome and Justin Timberlake (who are also both Canadian) to help me celebrate the Fourth.

The big fireworks display that goes out over Puget Sound was canceled this year, undoubtedly due to lack of funding, and I wasn’t willing to go to Spencoid’s Fifth of July celebration, so it was heave-ho to Lake Union to see fireworks. I wanted a fun, relaxing weekend, free from work, and I was determined to get it, whether I had to trample on the sensibilities of a few Canadians or not.

I met the boys downtown on Saturday afternoon in the courtyard next to the fancy apartments they have near Pike Place Market. It was pleasantly sweltering out, but JT and I had some lentil soup because we needed the roughage, and then we schemed to stop by the Whole Foods on Denny on the way to Lake Union to pick up more snacks. I was happy, because those kids are always taking me out to dinner, and if we went to the grocery store I could buy food for us with my freshly-reapproved food stamps.

We left at 8 while it was still quite light out, and headed for Westlake (the central downtown patch of stores that isn’t west of any lake) to catch the SLUT. The South Lake Union Trolley was built and unfortunately named a couple of years ago, and it embarrassed the city to no end when the acronym was quickly pointed out. You can buy “Ride the SLUT” shirts online.

But I have no sympathy for Seattle because the SLUT was just another half-hearted attempt to provide some transit for this town that right now still has no unified transportation system. In between the buses and the SLUT (which only goes to Lake Union) and the Monorail (which only goes to the Space Needle) and the Light Rail (which right now doesn’t go anywhere) plus the fact that there is still no real, safe accommodation for bikes, I am quite fed up, though that is a rant for another day.

We got to Westlake but you had to buy a special ticket for the SLUT, which jibed at the boys because their bus passes wouldn’t work, plus it was not a long walk to the grocery store anyway, so we let the trolley go. At the store we stocked up on sushi and dates and fresh fruit and other stuff to accommodate the weird trifecta of food restrictions the no-wheat, no sugar/halal Muslim/IBS dream team JT, Awesome and I constituted.

We hit the park at the southern tip of Lake Union around 9. The fireworks were going to go off at 10 from Gasworks Park, which was opposite us across the lake, and for an hour I used what apparently are both very poor navigation skills coupled with rotten intuition to walk us half way up the west side of the lake and then all the way back down again in a failed attempt to get a better view. We wound up where we began, in a ditch next to the SLUT tracks.

The fireworks were beautiful, and I only partially sulked about the financial and political inequality of this country, and then we headed off for some delicious McDonalds (again near the Space Needle), where JT got “spotted” again, because he is such a rockstar. Awesome got spotted as the guy from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, which seemed pretty ridiculous to me, but apparently all brown people look alike, idk.

Then some coffee in Belltown, and movies until 7 am. We were supposed to go to bed at the reasonable hour of 4 after watching Seven but then JT and I decided The Bourne Identity was in order, and I am sure the coffee and even the lentils had something to do with that decision. Happy Independence Day, everyone!