Yessir I am and Yessir it is: Sunshine lollipops and rainbows everywhere. Way better than the 22 days of rain down south.

Butte is not, in general, my favorite town on earth...it's basically a giant hole in the ground. But it's got a kind of town-that-time-forgot charm about it.

We're staying in an old mid-century-modern style house wayy up on a hill. The frontyard overlooks all of old uptown Butte. The backyard overlooks new Butte (such as it is).

We're having a blast.

Aside from being the nation's largest superfund site, Butte isn't all that bad. Of course, that's a pretty big thing to ignore. I could go off about that hole in the ground but my patriotism dictates that I refrain for the day.

Another new-found Montana favorite: fireworks. Never been up here for the fourth before, and I've missed out. We only got small crappy stuff in Utah growing up. Yesterday I bought enough armaments to take on the Taliban by myself.

Isn't it awesome? There's nothing like being in Montana on the Fourth of July. These people take their arsenals seriously.

Not trying to threadjack this, but I have a good friend that is rural born and rural raised. His dad gave him 2 sticks of dynamite for his 16th birthday. He had a lot of fun lighting those off.

Rural-born and rural-raised nikuman would have liked that very much. All I got was an AK-47 and a keg of black powder.