An Easy Day

Friday, July 4, 2003 Today was going to be a short day at work. Tam was only working 9-3, and Ben Franklin was closing at 4. Since I had taken Thursday off, I was not aware that we were not opening until 10 o’clock, so I had an hour to kill. Since I had not eaten breakfast, I mosied on down to the café. There, I found a great deal. The special of the day was biscuits and sausage gravy with coffee for $1.99. I could not pass that deal up. After eating I read my book some and then walked back down to the store to wait for someone to open up. Since it was a holiday, we could work as long a time as we wanted to. Joy only worked till 1 p.m. I was going to work till whenever Tammi got off work and picked me up, I figured till about 3:15 or so. Wouldn’t you know it, when she got there I was in the middle of filing and decided to finish before I left! Made her wait another 10 minutes. But I don’t think she minded as she always likes to look at the beads and try as she might to figure out what one’s she wants next. Even though we had seen a great fireworks show the previous day, we decided to go see another one. Rapid City was having a show at Memorial Park, which is near the convention center located in the north central part of town. Instead of going to the park, we decided to drive up Dinosaur hill and watch from up high. Quite a number of people had the same idea, too! We did not go all the way up, but instead parked on this one curve that has a retaining wall on the outboard side of the road. There were around 10 cars already parked on this small patch of land on the inside of the curve, but there was enough room for us and a few more cars. Tam set up her chair on the 3ft tall wall, while I put my tri-pod and camera on the wall directly behind her and prepared for more photos. You know me, can never have enough pictures! Laura and a friend took off walking, too much energy to just sit there and wait for the show to start. Speaking of the show, it was to start at 10 p.m., so we had another 20 minutes or so to wait. While waiting, these ignorant butt heads pulled up beside us and instead of parking their car and watching like the rest of us by standing or sitting at the wall, they covered half the lane with their car, just so they could keep the air conditioner going and not have to get out. I mean come on, the temperature at this time was in the low 60’s so that was not even needed. There was quite a bit of traffic in both directions so I was just waiting to see what would happen when cars would come from both directions at the same time. And sure enough, when that happened, the cars could barely get through. That prompted our idiots to move to another location and that my friends made me feel better. Too many cars in too small of a space and sooner or later you will have an accident. The show itself was pretty good, not as good as the day before, but never the less, pretty good. The best part was there were fireworks going off at two different spots so you had like dueling shows and I was able to get both in my lens at the same time. If I am worth my salt as a photographer, I will have some really good pictures to show everyone. That is once I get my film developed. We have 17-18 rolls that need to be developed, so I have to get busy and get them sent off soon. All in all though it was another good day for us.