Sitting on the front patio, listening to birds and feeling a wonderful, caressing breeze, I sit here typing away on my little high tech gadget and, just now, my girlie-girlie-girlfriend brings me out a cup of coffee and says, "It's pretty out here." We kiss, and tell each other how much love we're feeling, and she goes back inside to finish cooking breakfast.

Now, I tell you, there is no better way on Earth to spend a Monday morning.

Lauren makes jewelry...

...and Friday night we were at Cafe Brazil sharing some coffee and cheese potatoes...

...and my sweetie pulled out some of her bracelets to show our waitress...

...and within minutes we have a crowd around us, and Lauren has opened what I have come to think of as her "flash bang magic jewelry shop" which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects, and which just appears out of nowhere. She makes quite a bit of money all at once, enough to pay our tab several times over, and then flash-bang-boom the jewelry shop is gone again, and we're just sitting there sipping coffee and watching the space aliens that tend to show up every night.

On July 3rd we went to Addison and celebrated "Kaboom Town" fireworks, sitting on the lawn in front of a Bank-of-America with several dozen others, and we got goofy and I started taking pictures of us together. So here I present to you, me and my girlfriend...

Hope you had a happy July 4th and, for all you out there who don't have the day off today, don't work too hard!