Much noise yesterday, especially after dark.
Compared to last year... well, the family across the road had an even bigger Independence Eve party (they hold theirs a day early), with enough miniature people swarming around on the lawn for a hobbit's eleventy-first birthday party and a spectacular fireworks extravaganza (albeit not Gandalf-grade). Everybody else, on the actual Fourth? Seemed to be more families with fireworks, but not as many (or not as showy) fireworks.
Which may relate to what a guy at a fireworks tent said a few days ago: last year was unusually busy, most likely because people had missed a year and were just coming out of hiding.
Hm. Maybe some of the tents will be open today, with closeout sales? If things aren't too busy, I'll have to swing by a few. So much I need to be doing....
I did hastily throw together a frame to hold a bunch of 1.92"-ish caliber HDPE tubes, and that worked well. I think I want to angle it a bit more away from the house, and electric firing would definitely make life easier and let me have a better view.
Still haven't worked out a scheme for launching bunches of bottle rockets, apart from just buying Saturn missile batteries. Which is kind of a weird name: Saturns aren't generally called "missiles", and it's not like they were ever launched in groups. I suppose for clusters I could build some sort of launcher with a little annular pan to hold (1) the fuses and (2) a little bit of black powder to light them all more or less at once.
I didn't hear any sirens, so presumably there weren't any serious mishaps in the immediate vicinity. Things did remain noisy until after 2300.
We did have one malfunction: I put three festival balls in adjacent tubes and lit the first, and an ember from the launch fell atop the next one over, causing a flowerpot. No apparent damage to the tube. Note for next year: paper covers over the tubes, with just the fuses poking through, might be a good idea.
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