For some reason, Princeton Township decided to run its firework display this evening. Not exactly on the same calibre as the one given next to the Charles with the music of Boston Pop, but still quite exciting. The best part about it is that, for safety reasons, fireworks are launched from the middle of a relatively sizeable body of water, and in Princeton, that means, of course, Lake Carnegie.

For the past three days, S and I have been moving from our old apartment in Lawrence to our new, more spacious apartment in Butler (the rent is cheaper because we have to pay for gas and electricity ourselves, and the poor insulation in the house means that air conditioning and heating in summer and winter may take an unhealthy bite out of our income). But having a den is certainly a nice thing. (Oh, and WE NEED MORE BOOKSHELVES. The three folding bookshelves we have currently [2 from before, 1 from the wedding] are already all full. And I still haven't had a chance to arrange most of my books yet.)

In any case, roughly half the job is done by today: we've managed to get all of our belongings out of the old apartment by yesterday, and cleaned up the apartment today to return the keys to the university. Most of our stuff are moved in already, a small fraction still sitting at my parents' house. And about a third of the stuff we have unpacked already. So I think we are about half done.

So while we are assembling the hat-and-coat-and-umbrella stand (parts made in Taiwan, put together in my living room), we heard, between the pauses of the music from S's iPod, the Star Spangled Banner, and then low rumblings. So we rushed out to our back porch (we have a porch now! Albeit a miniscule one) and sat for about half an hour watching the fireworks. (Butler apartments is fairly close to Lake Carnegie, and especially fairly close to the launch site for the fireworks, which is just behind the athletic facilities.)

We actually saw signs next to Lake Carnegie about "no trespassing" due to it being the fireworks launch site. But we just assumed that it would be on the 4th. With our stuff in the disarray it is, we have not been able to reliably check our e-mails. And the notice the university sent out regarding the fireworks came in 2 minutes after I checked my e-mail last, so our plan to picnic out on Friday to watch the fireworks is sufficiently ruined. It is quite nice that we have a rather unobstructed line of sight in the general direction of the fireworks from our back porch. Else we might've missed it all together.