Summer Solstice

At this point, postings on this blog have become so infrequent that I imagine there's probably only four or five of you who still bother to check in regularly. To those stalwarts, happy first day of Summer. Of course, some argue (fairly persuasively, I might add) that today is not really the first day of Summer, but actually Summer's midpoint. But whatever you want to call it, today is the longest day of the year, and that fact always makes me happy.

There's something very real and life-affirming about today, but there's also something of the ephemeral nature of life in the Summer Solstice. From this point on the hours of daylight will grow shorter and shorter until they reach their nadir on the Winter Solstice six months from now. In a sense, Summer starts slipping away the very day it begins. All the more reason to get out and seize it while it's there.

This year, that's not going to be too easy for me with all the projects currently underway. The majority of the move to the 'burbs has been accomplished, but there's still much work to be done. The last week or so has been a blur of physical labor, cursing myself for having accumulated so much stuff, signing papers containing promises to pay obscene amounts of money, and arguing with service installers that ordering someone to be home between 8 a.m. and 12 noon on a weekday is a completely ludicrous thing to ask of a person who works for a living. The good news is, as of last Friday I am the owner of a beautiful 1/8 acre piece of heaven up in Reno's North Valleys. Unfortunately, this particular 1/8 acre piece of heaven is still currently without phone service (that kicks in later today), Internet (some time this week) or TV (the Dish Network guy comes on Saturday--right now all I get is Fox). Luckily, I have already discovered several fantastic dirt roads and tracks lacing the nearby hills, trails that make for fantastic mountain biking. Not a bad way to make use of all this daylight.