Rah, Summer

Technically it’s the first day of summer today, though everyone knows that summer either begins on the last day of school or Memorial Day, whichever you prefer, so it’s felt like summer for a while now.  A bit on the cool and rainy side compared to recent summers, but I’m okay with that.  My kind of weather really.

It’s been quite a summer so far.

Mostly busy.  They all are these days, beating back the alligators, trying to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.  Honestly, I don’t know anyone with free time anymore. 

Summers used to be about free time, way back when in the Jurassic Age when I was a lad.  School would let out sometime in mid-June and there would be nothing in particular to accomplish until the first bell rang again on the Tuesday after Labor Day.  Two and a half months of glorious unstructured time.

It was mostly what I liked about summers back then, since they generally tend to be far too hot for my taste. 

This summer is just a blur.  Classes to teach.  Classes to revise.  Far too much computer work, most of which seems to be scientifically designed to get on my nerves (you mean the new course software doesn’t actually allow you to make submodules?  Seriously?  What halfwitted never-set-foot-in-a-classroom misanthrope designed a piece of educational software that doesn’t allow you to make submodules?) and the rest just more work than advertised.

There are fun parts too, of course.  All of us are home this summer and this will not be true after August so I’m going to enjoy that part immensely.  That’s the thing about raising kids – they grow up and find things to do that aren’t nearby and then they’re off.  It’s how things are supposed to work.  So I’ll enjoy my time with them this summer.

The Women’s World Cup is on, and that’s also been good.  I enjoy the women’s game, probably more than the men’s, since they tend to rely on thinking and tactics rather than simple brute athleticism.  Makes a more entertaining game.  And the Stanley Cup Finals were captivating as well.  You have to love the “worst to first” story of the St. Louis Blues, and even more the fact that they kept the most drearily entitled sports fan base in America from claiming yet another championship.  It’s the little things.

I haven’t had much focus on blogging this month, though. 

It’s been hard paying attention to politics, for example, since der Sturmtrumper and his minions, lackeys, and enablers are systematically destroying everything worthwhile about the United States and turning this country into a national disgrace and an international embarrassment even as his supporters continue to see nothing wrong with opening actual fucking concentration camps inside our borders, aggressively pursuing bullshit wars (which they have no intention of rushing to the front lines for, you’ll note), and turning the place into a medieval society of nobles and peasants through a campaign of economic warfare and political suppression against everyone not rich, white, male, and so right-wing that Francisco Franco would tell them to ease off a bit. 

Plus I spend most of my time in front of a computer as it is.  I really need to stop that.

So I’ve been trying to read more, and planning some other activities that don’t necessarily involve the computer, at least to the extent that I can.

Posting may be light for a while, is what I’m saying.  We'll see.