Vaya Con Dios, Verano 2013!

In hindsight, it was a great summer. Bookended with trips down to my father-in-law’s down the Jersey shore on Memorial Day and Labor Day. Got lots of reading in, had lots of fun with the girls, got a lot accomplished. A fun summer.

It started three months ago with a trip to Yankee stadium to see the Yanks beat the Indians in an exciting contest. The big thing I did this summer, through no real conscious preplanned effort, was to get into baseball, for the first time in, oh, about thirty-five years. Now, we’ve always tried to see one Yankees game a year (though that was cast aside after the girls were born and money tightened). But I watched a few games early in April and it stuck. This summer I must’ve watched, to varying inning lengths, fifty or sixty games, predominantly Mets.

Let’s see … the end of June I painted Patch’s room bright pink and my folks helped stock it with cool post-toddler pre-tween furniture. We got rid of the Fisher Price slide and play house in the backyard that’d been there seemingly forever. In mid-July we bought a new car, well, a new used car, a 2012 Honda Pilot, all because the wife scored a huge promotion moving on to another company, her first career move in nearly seven years.

Reading-wise, I never did settle on one topic to investigate, like I did last summer (then it was WW2). So I hopped around, and it was satisfying. Listened to and read the massive Stephensonian tome Anathem. Burned through a couple of Westerns and a couple of slim SF paperbacks. Got back into Civil War history with a trivia book and a pair of battle analyses (Shiloh and the Wilderness).

Movie-wise, me and my pal went and saw World War Z and Wolverine. Were there others, or were we just sticking to movies that began with the letter W? Don’t know. I think there were parts of others, as my friend has a knack of convincing me to sneak in to other movies while the endless trailers for the one we paid for are rolling. So, I saw parts of Pacific Rim, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Men in Black Some Number Or Other.

Me and my lovely little ones watched a few Saturday matinees, most notably The Incredible Shrinking Man and Clash of the Titans, the Harryhausen original. When I’m on my deathbed (hopefully more than a few decades hence), I won’t be thinking about the 100,000 hours I spent pushing papers and balancing the debits and credits. No, I’ll be thinking of the handful of hours I spent on the floor, sharing a blanket with Little One and Patch, watching corny SF flicks.

I started off the summer without missing a single workout – be it the aerobic bike riding / jogging or the anaerobic weightlifting I alternated in my garage – until, er, the fourth of July. Then I spent the second half of the summer griping about how out of shape I was. Hopefully this is a lesson learned, and I can rectify this disconnect now that fall is just around the corner.

There were other nice experiences this past summer: my Gospel Church experience, a trip to Brooklyn and the zoo there, the twelve or so hours I wasted watching Falling Skies (skitters!!!), some hilarious weekend afternoons spent with our best friends next town hours (more on that tomorrow), a trip down to Maryland for my sister-in-law’s engagement party, my introduction into the world of Lemony Snicket care of Little One, Sharknado, and, on a more serious note, the decision to home school my daughter re: Sunday school (more on that, too, in the days to follow).

So … while I agonized with plenty of sleepless nights these past hundred days, all in all, ’twas a great summer.

On to the greatest season of the year, fall!

Fall! Fall! Fall!