Take Cover

Have you ever been in a war zone?

Of course, I haven’t either, but I got as close as possible this weekend. NEW YEARS! Which, over here, is apparently synonymous with spending 2 month’s salary on fireworks. David and I prepared in our normal way – going out to buy some fun sparklies to ring in the New Year. After that year David set an artillery shell off in his face and I thought I was going to be married to a blind man, there has been a ban on anything larger than a bottle rocket.

Back to the story: for weeks everywhere we went there were firecracker sections – Wal-Mart, Sears, I even saw one in Macy’s. Not to mention Sams and Costco – the giant bins that previously held enormous packages of fireworks were pathetically empty by Saturday. David had people pull him aside at work and solemnly ask him if he knew what a big deal firecrackers were over here, and I heard stories from my boss about firecrackers he has bought that 2 grown men could not get their arms around. I’m not even sure you can call them firecrackers at that point – more like FireBombs. Is that even legal? I honestly think that maybe a full 1/3 of the fireworks supply consumed by our great nation was concentrated on Oahu. Some of you are wondering why we never go down to Waikiki for big celebrations. While I am sure that it would have been cool for our first New Years here, we have a fervent wish to not die on the roadways. I will explain sometime later when things quit happening to us, and I have space for some misguided opinions on Hawaii in general. Get excited. When New Years itself finally rolled around, we were fairly low-key. Having family around that you can hold hostage to hang out with you comes in pretty handy, so we planned on hanging out together later that evening. However, over here partying starts at 10 am, which was when we started hearing the sonic booms and pops of the fireworks. Court actually had to work that night, so we dropped by to have dinner while she was still on shift. After, I needed to run by the store, which was where I came upon the Last Scrambling. In truth, it really wasn’t that bad, but David got into the spirit with his timeless logic that he should be given everything on sale, because in a few hours, what were they going to do with any leftovers?

David's flair for the dramatic

One thing that I noticed while there was the smoke. Courtney works in an area called Waipahu, and while it is still on the outskirts, there are a fair amount of people living there. By 8:00pm the smoke from all the firecrackers was already so thick, I was starting to cough. By 8:00, people. It felt like you were in a giant chimney. Naturally, we felt the need to add to the general smog, so around 10 we headed out to do our part in destroying the ozone layer.

I like sparklers.

But first, Paul decided now would be a good time to test his new spear using a hapless Taco Bell cup as skeet. Please, don't drink and spear. I stayed well out of the way.

Manly triumph

I was actually kind of impressed. I think he got it the first try. After hiking into the wilderness for what felt like forever, we finally found a clear spot where we had a better chance of not burning the whole place down to the ground. We had fun; Courtney and I dancing like idiots with our sparklers, the boys naturally freaking the hell out of us by throwing smoke bombs at our feet – of course, you couldn’t tell they were smoke bombs – all we saw was a lighted fuse heading your way. There was much high-pitched screeching, and your basic young-people hijinks. If you look closely, you can see David throwing the firework in the right-hand corner.

You know those tiny fireworks that come packed in sawdust and pop on impact? We are going all Riverdance on a bunch of those in this picture.

Running from a boy-propelled firework

Best of all, the night produced this awesome video below:




If you don't recognize the totally boss theme music, you have not seen Arrested Development – for shame. You must head out immediately and mend the error of your ways.

Our booty spent, we reached a rise in the hike back to the house just as midnight hit; I’m not sure I can even describe what happened next. One important thing to note is that there are practically no fireworks restrictions – just about anyone can set off fireworks in their front yards. So, that small detail combined with the housing reaching back into the sloping hills gave us a great view. It was like Stadium Seating for fireworks. You know that scene in the movie where Armageddon has hit, and the main character looks out over the vast land/city -scape and you can see bombs going off everywhere? It was just like that. But with less death and slightly less destruction. It was incredible.

After the finales, which never actually ended until a few hours later, we traipsed home to match our wits: Girls Against Boys Cranium. Without saying, we absolutely crushed the boys… twice. It was almost sad. David claims lucky rolls and easy questions…. I say the questions were only so easy in the shadow of our stunning brain power. Even though watching David act out ‘Cocktail Dress’ was pretty humorous, I sadly take the cake with my mind-bending interpretation of ‘Butternut Squash’. I think the closest Courtney got was ‘Butternibble Crush”. Who came up with these dumbass words? Did they actually let the people out of the sanitarium, or was it done all in-house? I looked ridiculous. Thank God we didn’t have the camera rolling for that one.

Notice David's happy face. This must have been taken before we destroyed them.