July 4 Discoveries

[Oh so late. I've been preoccupied with my new bundle of joy.]

Hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th weekend and found some place to watch fireworks.
I saw some after a soccer game, driving past the local theme park, and some (most-likely illegal ones) people in my neighborhood were putting off (all night).

SOCCER
I didn't know soccer was such a big deal over here. Maybe I'm used to peewee soccer games so I went to a San Jose Earthquakes game with low expectations. A grassy field where people brought lawn chairs and maybe there would be some rickety bleachers and hopefully a food stand selling churros. When we approached the stadium the stomping and roar of the crowd reminded me of scenes in Gladiator as fighters entered the arena. There were over 31,000 in attendance at the game. So much for lawn chairs.

The game was just like FIFA video game, guys really do make a line in front of the goal and cover themselves with their hands, except better because there were people walking around selling cotton candy and kettle corn and the players kept getting into fights.

Afterward, they turned off the stadium lights and there was a fireworks presentation complemented with music. Fireworks remind me of the part in Little Mermaid where Sebastian sees some in the sky and exclaims "Jumping Jellyfish!". Beautiful.

GRAN VINA SANGRIA

I'm not a huge fan of the stuff. But someone brought this kind brand from Whole Foods and it was so good!

KITCHEN MAT
Jbear got a new kitchen mat. Very squishy. Almost as squishy at my housemates' yoga mats. I pulled it to the place I chopped and skewered vegetables for a few hours since my knees were already feeling wobbly and sore after baking a cheesecake. Fantastic! I thought my footprints would be stuck in there because they were so deep. But the magical mat swelled up back to its regular surface.