Vive la France! It was a lousy penalty kick, but at least it saved us from another thirty minutes of overtime. France and Italy will duke it out on Sunday for the cup while Germany and Portugal will scour the pot of glory for third place.

And the crowd goes wild. Ahhh... Aaaahhh...

So, the fourth of July. An exhausting day to say the least. Alexia and I started the day by going to a complimentary open model session at 9:30. It was my first nude-drawing experience and I'm quite happy with my results. I forgot my glasses, so my common problem of focussing too much on details was eliminated. I'll scan/upload them when I get a chance.

We left the model session an hour early to go to the faculty parking lot and bounce around. The school had hired a couple inflatable bounce houses for our jumping pleasure. It was exhausting, but very fun. I only had the energy to do the obstacle course four or five times. We hung around in the parking lot as different foods were gathered to make up our lunch. I ate some fruits and pasta and potato salads. By the time the sandwiches arrived, I had eaten my fill. Alexia and our suite-mates and I took the sandwiches and put them away for a future lunch. (Suite-mates are the two other people we share our bathroom with. Ours are very nice.)

After lunch, most everyone went on a scavenger hunt around Oakland and Berkeley, but I was too exhausted from the bounce house that I stayed to watch the most ridiculously uneventful one-hundred and eighteen minutes of the 2006 World Cup, followed by the two most exciting ones. It took a long time. More than one-hundred and twenty minutes.

The scavenger kids returned and we got into groups to go see fireworks. (Huttah!) There was a San Francisco group and a Berkeley group. I went to the Berkeley one, mainly because it seemed like it would be closer. It took a damn long time to get to the rocks from which we watched the show and took a damn longer time to get back. But the fireworks were very nice. We saw the Berkeley show as well as the San Francisco show and one other across the bay.

Fireworks!

And then I slept very well. 'Twas a good day.

ZeFrank has a lovely fourth of July The Show for you!