BOOM!

What a great weekend. Just up one side and down the other, awesome. It started off with a bike ride around town + dinner with Tyler (oh, how I miss you, friend), and some congratulations beers for Ben at Solly's. Which was actually incredibly packed and loud, but my friends are fun to talk to even in uncomfortable circumstances.

Friday morning Holly and I took a trip to Sweden, Maryland for some modular furniture and lingonberry sauce. I outfitted my back yard with some sweet duds, got a new bedspread, and apparently shocked the entire line of people waiting to eat when I said the words "Swedish Meatballs." A full conversation stop, heads whipping around to stare at me awkward whiplash fell upon the cafeteria line after I responded to Holly's question of what I was going to get. It was sort of inexplicable. A nap and some house project time later, we went to Sticky Rice for a quick bite, then to Nat's park! I had never been before! It is pretty awesome! And Sam and Dan were there, so the whole experience pretty much gets an A+. We capped off the night with some stooping at Andrew's, as all Bloomingdale nights should.

Holly was my partner in crime all weekend; Saturday we spent the day getting supplies for the Big Bear 4th of July extravaganza. I thought that two cases of sparklers would be too much. It was, in fact, not enough; tons of people brought tons and tons more, and the huge crowd of party people went through them all. And it was great. Really an awesome, awesome party. The Big Bear 4th of July is officially my favorite event of the year, after two consecutive summers of just being the best. Amazing food, great music, a huge dance party, roof top fireworks viewing (the citizen fireworks displays in DC are really phenomenal). It was glorious.

Sunday, I did my weekly big bear/farmers market ritual trip and made a blueberry cobbler. The intended destination of the cobbler was out to The Manor, where Josh so kindly invited us to visit. The cobbler was a total fail -- I used about twice as much fruit as I should have, so there's a thin crust atop what is essentially blueberry soup. Still tasty, but not Manor-worthy, so it got left in the city. Josh got off a plane, came to bloomingdale, picked us all up, and drove us out to his absurdly amazing little slice of heaven out in Virginia (because Josh is the nicest person in the universe). 100 and some odd acres of woodlands and wetlands and river and a swimming pool and a house with so many doors I got really turned around and bathrooms with heat lamps and... trust me, it was amazing. We cooked out and took a really cold swim, pumped some fat jams, watched some buy-one-get-two-free fireworks go boom, and all pretty much passed out after a really long, really great weekend.