Coming Of Summer

It is late April, which is a time of year that I grew up associating with spring. The seasons were then of largely academic concern, growing up as I did in Phoenix. March, April and May were all spring months, with the subsequent three falling in summer, the three after that autumn and the three after that winter. Spending time in Chicago taught me that spring could take longer to come, and being in California taught me that it could come and go faster.

I feel now that summer is fast approaching. It was a while ago already that I smelled a barbecue cooking for the first time in a while. Plenty of cooking happens outdoors around here, but there is a special quality to the smell of true summer barbecuing, or maybe there is something extra-sensory to it. Anyway, that smell was the first sign to me of summer coming, and it was welcome enough, although there is always a bittersweet feeling at best to passing time now.

Summertime

The summer is coming, and this year I hope to really take advantage of the things that make it a good time of the year. I've written exhaustively about how I have spent that time in the past. One doesn't have to work  at doing summer things while at summer camp. On the other hand, it has made the range of my summer activity experiences somewhat limited. Apart from camp, I have spent some time at the beach in past years, and a lot of time at the ballpark lately.

As I said, this has got to be the year I open things up. I almost got into something that would have begun this fairly well- a baseball league out in Pasadena. Rec league athletics- that's something that people do in the summer, right? The key thing is outdoorsy and other seasonal stuff. The beach is the thing I hope to do a lot of. Perhaps finally going to the pool is something I could do. There's one right in my building, and yet I haven't set foot in it during the past two summers I've lived here. That's something I'm constantly guilty of- passing up even the easiest and closest to home stuff for no good reason.

Changing of the seasons

It's at this time of the year that I start wishing that I had central air conditioning like I'm used to. It gets rather warm in this apartment, particularly during the day. It cools down after nightfall, after a fashion. I have a little system. In the morning, I close my window and draw closed the blinds. Then I turn on my tall fan. I keep things like that most of the day. When it starts to get darker in the evening, I open the blinds and the window, turning off the fan. In this way, I survive.

I look forward to a nicer place in the future.