Yesterday was a beautiful July 4th. Aside from the thunderstorms and the lack of power now and again over the course of the day, the holiday was wonderful. The sky was overcast and it rained here and again, but we still managed to make a nice big meal for the daily festivities and relax and enjoy ourselves. (including some barbequed-okay, fried, but still fried like barbeque-meats for myself, and a massive teriyaki vegetable stir fry, and a little dessert for both of us) But perhaps the best part of the evening was that we were planning not to go and try and catch a fireworks display anywhere since we were lazy and just wanted to relax at home, stay in our pajamas, and play video games all day; (which we pretty much did) but fate had other plans for us. We heard loud booming outside in the early evening, and thought for a second that maybe we were close enough to a fireworks display that we could see them from our house, so we went downstairs and opened the front door, expecting to look around the sky and see some dim flashes from fireworks far away.
Boy were we wrong. We opened the front door to be astonished by a fireworks display literally walking distance from our house. We stood on our front porch, about half-in and half-out of the door for a good long while, watching the fireworks leap above the trees between our house and the community college we live next door to that must have been hosting the fireworks. Since we didn’t live in this same house last year, we didn’t really know that this was going to happen, but it was a pleasant surprise. Literally standing in our doorway, we had one of the best seats in the house. It was amazing, and a very pleasant surprise.
Aside from that, it was, as usual, difficult to head back to the office this morning.
In other news, it looks like Ken Lay bucked the kicket. Hm.
In similar business-related moronity, National Semiconductor had apparently a “record-breaking” year a year or so back, and gave all of its employees iPods. Great, right? You’d think that’s an awesome thing-until the company hit hard times a month or so ago, laid off 35 employees, and then demanded that they give their iPods back to the company, stating that they were just on “extended loan.” Wow. A whole host of words are floating through my mind to describe that kind of activity by the company, but I’ll refrain from stinking up the journal with my language. I’m really impressed sometimes at corporate America’s ability to sink ever lower in the way it treats its employees like crap. “human capital,” is the way it’s phrased in the business world. It’s supposed to command respect for a firm’s most valuable resource, but often it just means “drones and sheep,” which is outright sad and disenheartening.
Alas. If nothing else, I can definitely say that my company is a good one, and wouldn’t treat us that way, although I suppose anything is possible.