The Summer That Was

Okay, I officially feel sorry for my two daughters – Summer 2019 has been the fastest summer ever on record. Seems like only last week I was attending graduation ceremonies. Now, we’re gearing up for the tenth and sixth grades – high school and middle school.

Once again the girls had an awesome summer. I better not hear of therapy bills from future them due to a “horrible childhood.” Aside from our awesome early-August week down in Hilton Head (kayaking, paddle-boarding, biking, swimming, fireworks-watching, and on, and on, and on), they spent two separate weeks visiting their grandparents over in the Pennsylvania woods. Little One saw a half-dozen games of her beloved Yankees over in the Bronx. Patch spent a week in soccer camp. We spent coin on a sitter to help drive them around to malls and parks and libraries in the afternoons. While I was slaving away at the payroll mines, they were having a damn good summer.

How about Hopper here? Let’s see …

Books? As far as reading goes, it was a good summer. I put away sixteen books; the best of which being The Bridges of Toko-ri by James Michener, The Warrior Ethos by Stephen Pressfield, both highly recommended, and A Galaxy in Flames by Ben Counter, a relay nice non-PC SF. The worse was one of those normally-decent Very Short Introductions book, this one on Thomas Aquinas. Why can’t modern authors get Aquinas right? Oh yeah …

Movies? I really liked the gator flick, Crawl, I caught one night with my buddy after a couple of beers and mixed drinks. Also enjoyed, much to my surprise, The Meg, watched one night when the girls were all scattered about the country and I had the house alone with the dog. Got caught up in the hype of the corny Zombie Tidal Wave, but only made it a half-hour in before I left for, well, a better use of my time.

Music? Unlike my usual self these past few years, I listened to a ton of music, most of it Beatles, mostly Revolver and The White Album, with a bit of Magical Mystery Tour thrown in. Listened to some George Harrison, some early Journey, as well as my favorite opera, Das Rheingold, and my one of my favorite symphonic composers, Anton Bruckner.

As far as the crawlspace between my auditory organs, I began the summer deeply immersed in Theravada Buddhism. Then I re-oriented toward traditional Catholicism. Then Christian Science care of Mary Baker Eddy piqued my wee early morning interest. Then, a return to traditional Catholicism. Then a detour to existentialism, care of Jean-Paul Sartre and some internet dude who says Life has no Meaning, and Here’s How to Be Okay With That. Then I fell back into the arms of traditional Catholicism. Notice a trend here? Me too. Now to figure out why the pattern keeps repeating.

The day job is getting quite busy. Extraordinarily so. I received a bonus back in July for a project I did late in 2018, a bonus just about equal to what I earned doing the tax thing at night. I’m working on a similar project so I think I can expect a similar bonus. This fact, plus the fact I may be moving up there, plus the fact the wife is still gung-ho on moving us across country (she’s had a dozen interviews with a handful of companies, all of which she’s in the middle of lengthy hire processes), plus Patch now resuming travel soccer and travel basketball – all this means that I think I’m not going to do the tax thing this January. I may go back the following year, I may not. But right now I have enough on my plate that I need evenings free.

Yet I feel I can be doing more. Should I actually start promoting my science fiction book? Revamp it? Create a website for it? Finish that second novel (it’s about 95 percent done) and do all the above to that one? Start a bunch of differently-themed websites? I dunno. Probably do one or a couple. Or maybe the whole thing and more.

What’s on the immediate horizon? Well, aside from the previous paragraph, we’re making a concerted effort to make the house sellable. You’d be surprised how much accumulates in fifteen years, and how much upkeep a house needs, especially a house owned by a guy who’s all thumbs. I’m slowly getting back into shape, lifting weights and walking with the Mrs. Despite a strong April and May, I actually went off the deep-end this summer and now weigh the heaviest I’ve ever weighed in my life. I’ve also been bitten again by the astronomy bug (possibly after marveling at the constellations seen from our balcony down at Hilton Head), so I may break out the telescope and go planet hunting.

Should be an exciting Fall …