Everyone make it through the Fourth okay?

[bif]

I know there are a lot of parties with a lot of drinking. Mine was pretty low key. First sober Fourth of July since I was a kid.

[applegrove]

1. Sober is great. You'll soon start to enjoy not drinking while others do.

They get so happy and sweet, it will grow on you.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

2. No.

I live in an area that does not allow fireworks (largely due to the potential for wildfires), yet last night some mental midget was blasting us into oblivion. Not with the fireworks that shoot colorful starbursts into the air, but the things that sound like mortar rounds and hand grenades. The first one to hit felt like a sonic boom (anybody remember those from the 60s?). It rattled the windows and shook the floor beneath our feet. We felt it before we heard it. BOOM. So loud it hurt the ears. They kept this up for hours. It felt like we were under siege.

Don't know what the blasts were, but they were NOT from LEGAL fireworks.

Next year, I'm not taking any chances. Booking a room at the airport.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

3. Oooppps.

Wrong place to post my thoughts.

I thought this was the Veterans Group.

[Rhiannon12866]

4. Hey, I can identify with you

Local towns and cities around here have annual fireworks displays, but this year it was apparently near neighbors - and I'm not just talking about sparklers! Wednesday night when I was driving home, I pulled into the side street that leads to mine and there was a huge explosion right over my car, good thing I was going slowly since I swerved and screamed - it was the kind of major fireworks I expected to see at an official display. And last night I head the explosions coming from another direction and when I looked it appeared to be coming from right down the street, same huge explosions going on overhead. This is a residential area surrounded by woods, I have never seen this before.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. We noticed the very next day, that there was a network of small cracks in our kitchen floor tile.

When I said the blast was LOUD and POWERFUL, I wasn't kidding.

[Rhiannon12866]

6. Yikes! I guess not!

I was under the impression that ordinary citizens were prohibited from buying major fireworks and setting them off at home, but I guess not.

[bif]

7. You don't live near Detroit. I think I hear sticks of dynamite

on a nightly basis.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

8. You're right about that.

But you know, if people want something bad enough, they WILL find a way to obtain it. You can get anything you want on the "black" market or if you know the right people. It's frightening what you can find out there.