We are a day in front of you guy,s (Timewise) but I wanted to say "Happy Fourth of July" from all your C+V friends down here in Australia, (Party hard cousins ).

Thanks, we'll celebrate what freedoms we still have left.
I'm sure there's a new regulation about celebrating, somewhere....

You mean, "Happy Independence Day". The fourth of July is just the day it falls on.

Here in Chicago, every idiot with a match is celebrating in dark irony, the fact that Americans (oh, I mean, the people of the United States--- remember, people from Costa Rica are "Americans" too...) love to blow things up and make a ruckus while intoxicated. They mindlessly utter slogans they think are meaningful... and which don't bear out after any scrutiny.

Fireworks are illegal in Chicago... but 20 miles away in Indiana, there are crops of huge billboards advertising "Krazy Kaplans, buy 1 get 10 free fireworks. Millions of pounds of explosives get fired off in Pilsen. So I guess we celebrate our Independence by breaking laws and endangering our neighbors. God Bless America!

(end rant)

((Full disclosure: I was nearly killed in a fireworks disaster in 1986.))