Yesterday evening to celebrate Independence Day in suitable style, we took Rebecca and two of her friends-of-the-moment to see Jessica Simpson. Many thousand adolescent girls decided to do the same thing. I don't know if the screaming was louder for Ms. Simpson or her opening act, Ryan Somebody, who looked and sounded like a generic white-boy singer to me. Jessica (who defended herself as "not stupid, just ditzy") can neither sing nor dance nor connect with her audience. But the girls had a good time and we got to sit in air conditioned comfort on "parents' row" in the lobby, eating our free hot dogs and soda (and $18 value at concession stand prices; a $4 value according to my stomach).

Isn't it odd that you never have to pay a toll to get into New Jersey, but always have to pay one to leave the state?

Roxy went to the groomer today for the first time. She was bathed and combed out and the groomer said she was very well-behaved. Now you can see how truly skinny that dog is. No matter what we feed her (cat food, dog food, people food), she never gains weight. My guess is that she still has an intestinal parasite of some sort, which warrants another trip to the vet.

Dreams: When I was growing up I lived next door to my mother's parents. We were surrounded by corn fields and cow pastures, with a small stream that started at a spring run behind my grandparent's house dribbling along between our yard and the fields. Beyond the spring run was a small white clapboard house. The family of one of the farmworkers lived in the house since before I was born. Under the exterior boards was a log cabin that dated to Revolutionary days. To my knowledge I was never in the house, although I went to school with the kids and the mother would frequently bring vegetables from her garden to my grandmother, her only neighbor.

Last night I dreamt that I walked up to the house with someone beside me. My companion explained that there are many studies that show how unhealthy it is to live in a log cabin. I had visions of asbestos insulation leaking out from the joints between the logs. We looked up at the second floor of the house and saw a big plate glass window that had been installed seamlessly in the logs. Through the window we could see a plasma TV, which gave me an indication that the house had been modernized.

When we entered the house, we came into the kitchen, which had a linoleum floor, much like my grandmother's. All six of the family's kids were sprawled on the floor, along with several of the spouses, watching TV. In reality, the family only had 2 kids and they did not roll around on the kitchen floor like puppies. They all looked happy, in an almost cult-like way. The oldest daughter looked liked the older daughter on Father Knows Best. I'm thinking this was a secret hotbed of Scientology that I sniffed out when I was younger, but was brainwashed to forget until something triggered the memories. Then again, maybe I'm just upset that the filthy, potato-farming, health ordinance-ignoring morons who bought my grandparents house have now demolished it and are allegedly going to rebuild it in some hideous Baltic-Gothic pseudo-style.