Weekend!
According to the government, Summer begins on June 22nd.
We, however, all know that that is not true. Summer begins on the 3-Day Weekend of Memorial Day. Opinions differ whether it begins on the Friday on the ride home from work or whether it begins with the sunrise on the Saturday morning after. The main point is that summer doesn’t start in 3 weeks, it started last weekend.
Which makes this weekend the first non-holiday weekend in the summer.
We set up the air conditioning floor unit for the bedroom, planted the radishes, and otherwise got ready for summer proper last weekend. So, this weekend will be dedicated to middle-of-summer kinda things. Do we have enough fluids in the fridge? Do we have those little sundae cups in the freezer? The ones that come with a little wooden spatula? Oooh! It’s time to get some of that Newman’s Own Lemonade again. (oooh, maybe freeze some strawberries and use those instead of ice cubes.)
And that involves going to Costco, and King Soopers, and PetsMart, and maybe hit up a handful of the little places like Whole Foods or Sprouts or whatever to get the carbon-based fruit that manages to be bigger and better than what they get at the mainstream grocers’.
And make sure that the summer keeps going as well as it started.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
Is this a problem of some sort? What will be better if it gets changed?Report
It’s mostly a structure thing.Report
Better funded Beltane festivities?Report
I’ve been in Detroit all week getting my shiny new intern all settled in (dear FSM she was born in 1997 – starting to feel old here).
Saturday I fly home, but first I have an extended layover in Milwaukee to go visit my dad. He’s not doing so good (congestive heart failure), the medicos having given him clearance to take morphine as needed for the pain and discomfort. So it might be the last chance I have to see him alive.
Flying home to Seattle Saturday night.Report
Good luck to both of you at the meeting. I hope it goes well.Report
I hope the weekend goes well. I’ve been there and i’ll be thinking of you.Report
’97? Dang, even my kid is older than that!
Sorry about your dad, that sucks.Report
That’s pretty terrible news. Safe travels and I’m glad you can see him.Report
I’m sorry to hear about your dad. I hope the visit is a good one.Report
Visit with dad went about as well as could be expected. His heart and lungs are just not up to the task much anymore (a lifetime of smoking, drinking, poor diet, and being overweight will do that to a person), so he can only be awake for an hour or two at most, and he has tons of meds to take, and is permanently on oxygen (he quit smoking finally a few years back), and can barely talk without getting winded. He’s also skin and bones, since the meds mess with the way food tastes, so he has no appetite.
But it was a good visit, and he enjoyed hearing about all the things I’m up to, and how Bug is doing, and all the other minutiae. And it was good to see him again. We’ve not had the best of relationships after I grew up, but we largely buried the past.
But aside from Skype, I fear I won’t see him alive again. I sincerely hope he has an advanced directive and a DNR, because his quality of life… I really don’t want to see him kept alive by machines with no hope of getting better. My wife had to pull the plug on her father, and that is something that will be with her always.
On the plus side, I did get to have breakfast with a friend I haven’t seen in maybe 5 years, and I got to meet her fiancee. We talk online often enough, but it is nice to get an actual hug from am old friend from time to time, rather than an emoji hug.Report
Glad you got to see him.Report
PS Thank you everyone for the thoughts.Report
The government does not establish summer, nor prevents the free exercise of observing any summer that one wishes. For example, meterological summer is a perfectly cromulent summer.
(To the extent that publically run education institutions observe summer, vanishingly few observe its commencement as late as the solstice)Report
the gub’mint has nothing to do with the beginning of summer.
the concepts of summer/winter are misunderstood.
summer happens all in a day, to rhyme with ray bradbury’s story all summer in a day. june 21st this year will be the longest day of the year. december 21st will be the shortest day of the year. everything inbetween are varying shades of spring and autumn. if the days surrounding the solstices, fetch your silver bowl and athame, were also as long as the solstices then one could say that period is summer.
in short, solstices are just a way of marking time. the summer solstice is high noon while the winter solstice is midnight. bloodletting, nudity, and shouting at the heavens are optional.Report
This is why I like the Celtic / Germanic seasons – centred on rather than bounded at the solstices and equinoxes.
Of course they didn’t know about the tropics, but what are you gonna do.Report
While the Summer Solstice may be the longest day of the year, the hottest day actually varies widely by region within the US, from mid June in southern New Mexico and adjacent regions in Arizona and Texas, to late August and even early September along the west coast.
Not sure what’s going on with that map of Puerto Rico.Report