We have solved our pet care problem, and many thanks to those who wrote in offering to help. I found a guy online with whom we have met and about whom I feel as comfortable as it's possible to feel under the circumstances. He's going to be staying overnight at our place while we're gone, exactly what we needed and unbelievably hard to arrange even though we started two months ahead of our vacation. Seriously, this is as bad as finding a decent daycare program for children. Our other pet care people barely managed to return our increasingly frantic calls. They've been great, but I think they're overwhelmed with business. It's weird as hell having a complete stranger stay in my house taking care of my beloved animals, and although I have called his references I'm relying mostly on faith and instinct that everything will be okay.

So that's a relief. There was no relief for Jasper on the Fourth, though. Independence Day is very hard on dogs. He was upset and trembling all afternoon and evening, although not at the frantic pitch Dixie used to achieve. Dixie, as I've mentioned, was actually shot at in her wandering days before we adopted her, so she had a memory of pain associated with loud bangs and never got over them. Jasper was unhappy and restless, but he was brave. There was no chance of a walk, of course. I could barely get him to relieve himself in the backyard. The neighbors on the next street started their fireworks at about 5pm and sudden booms were still startling us at 1am. The worst is over, but the neighborhood kids haven't run out of their stash yet. I expect the whole weekend will echo with left-over firecrackers.

We had Jim "Our Man in Washington" Young with us for a few days. He's a vastly entertaining houseguest, being a career diplomat, science fiction author, and musician. Clearly, this is not a fellow who runs out of things to talk about. He and John met while they were getting their respective doctorates from the University of Minnesota. In memory of days gone by I put on an Internet radio station which played nothing but 60's and early 70's psychedelia to accompany our Fourth of July barbeque. Jim and John talked about their favorite music from that period, and identified all sorts of bands from practically the first bar of music. I couldn't identify any of the songs ("Somehow I thought Country Joe and the Fish would be more, uh, country.") except one by the Monkees. Oh, wait, that was a different oldies station.

Today I went over to a friend's and watched some Season One Buffy episodes on DVD. Man, those were dark. I mean literally dark. I don't know if they had budget limitations and couldn't afford enough lights or what, but it was really hard to make out what was going on in some of the episodes. Afterwards we collected John and went out for drinks in Alviso, a tiny Steinbeckian town on the southern end of the bay. It's all salt marshes now, silted up and overgrown. The wind is heavy with salt, seagulls hover and bank overhead, red-winged blackbirds sing their beautiful liquid song, and long-deserted boat ramps peter out into a rustling sea of reeds. If you climb onto one of the picnic tables you can see the bay is less than a mile away, but from the ground the open water is only a memory. The cannery is deserted, the freight trains hurry through the edge of town, and the waitresses at Vahl's are all septegenarians. I loved it.

Tomorrow I have a firm, unshakeable plan. I am going to do nothing. No errands, no chores, nothing but pure self-indulgence. Sims? Hours and hours of 'em (I broke down and ordered the Hot Date Strategy Guide because I'll be damned if this version of the game gets the best of me). Shopping? Only for DVDs or books. Listening to music, talking on the phone, snoozing in the sun with the cats: this is my agenda. Sunday I will do more of the same, with a fun evening of seeing Mamma Mia with Trish "Koroshiya" Homis to finish off the four day weekend. And sometime next week my new iBook is due to arrive so I have something to look forward to in the interim period between national and personal holidays.

Yes, I finally bought a laptop after talking about it for four years. I am so 20th century now. Color me lame, but I am never in a rush to get the latest gizmo or learn the newest tech trick. Trish, bless her early adopter heart, frequently gives me her old technology when she's got new stuff. Then she usually has to show me how to use it. We're planning a tech session before I take off for Flyover Country in a couple of weeks. I'm following the progress of the iBook's shipment with great interest via the FedEx website. You'd think, since Apple is based here, that there would have been some hanging around locally, but no. It's making its way from Taiwan, where it was built, to Alaska, on to Indiana for some reason, and then eventually distributed to me. I'm hoping to see it on my front porch by Monday.

All hail Dave Schumacher, the man who made it possible by letting me use his employee discount at Apple. He wins a free sushi dinner, the pleasure of my company, and the joy of keeping me on the Macintosh side of technology. I came thisclose to buying a PC laptop because it would have made playing the Sims much, much easier. This is better, though. My laptop and my desktop won't have communication issues this way.

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