. . . I hope that all of you Americans stateside are doing something good with it, because we're certainly not. In 2000, one of my friends here was the daughter of the Norwegian Consul, so she got to go to a fancy celebratory harbor cruise/dinner hosted by the American Consulate -- they might well be holding that event again this year, but it's not as if that's something us little people get invited to. (Why not scratch the black-tie soiree and invite all comers to a Fourth-of-July weenie roast on the Consulate lawn?)
We had a half-hearted plan to go to the zoo today, but we scratched that, since (surprise!) it's been raining on and off all day long. (I've been to Hagenbeck's in the rain before, and it wasn't much fun: just wetness and cowering animals.) So, it's been a lazy day around here: sleeping in, reading, and working on this and that.
But just because nobody over here is celebrating American independence doesn't mean that July 4th isn't a really big day: later tonight we'll be heading out (probably to Down Under again) to watch the final game of EM 2004, the European soccer championships. Greece and Portugal will be duking it out for the title; I'm not really sure who to root for. After Germany was eliminated, I started cheering for England -- solidarity of the English-speaking peoples and all that -- but then they were knocked out by Portugal, and I've been at a loss since then. I guess that it would be sweet for the Portugese to win this time, since they're the hosts. We'll see.
[Speaking of Fourth-of-July weenie roasts, all of you Americans who haven't selected your franks-of-choice yet might want to check out Slate.com's hot dog taste-test roundup before you head off to the grocery store. But inquiring German-based minds want to know: how well would Trueman's American-style Hot Dogs have fared in this contest??]
Posted by Kevin at July 4, 2004 03:27 PM