Stifling Summer?

I have not blogged for ages. Mostly due to apathy and the all-consuming absorption with job transition, home and heath. Much has happened and nothing has happened. Summer hols are here for the kids and so it is daily gripe over computer games and boredom and the usual litany of "i am not going out..." for one and "curfew, yeah right..." for the other. Where is the happy medium?

We have no plans for the summer since we scratched the trip to Palm Springs that was supposed to happen next week. It was a bad idea to plan it for July - temperatures are well into the triple digit zone and we would have sweltered and withered under the relentless sun. Golfing would be suicidal. That is now going to happen in the cooler month of November.

Yesterday was Fourth of July and we did the mandatory visit to Central Park to spend some hours with the crowd celebrating America's birthday. The highlight of course was the firework display which was much better this year than last. To our delight, the Man came with us and we sat on the two portable chairs I bought cheap at Lucky supermart just a couple of weeks earlier and the two stools from last summer in Vancouver. Those are proving to be good value for money too. I can't wait for the summer concerts to begin so we can lounge out on the slopes of Central Park and enjoy summer while it lasts. Too soon, the days will start to get real short and cold.

This is definitely a year of change for the ol' US of A. The high gas prices are likely to result in some fundamental shift in the American way of life, at least, in the penchant for gas guzzling trucks and SUVs and the suburban lifestyle. You can see more condo's springing up - maybe this is a precusor of a long term trend for people living closer to where they work. The presidential election will be an interesting event to watch - it will be history in the making. People are staying home more and you can tell car prices are already taking a hit. Home prices are softer but not soft enough in this area to make it feasible for us to consider anything but renting. I cannot see myself living from paycheck to paycheck like we used to simply because of a dream to own a piece of real estate. The employment situation too is not looking so good. Let's hope America does not slide into a recession. For selfish reasons too. I am not ready to go back...

The weather is gonna get hot this coming week. I can just feel the lethargy setting in already. Today is just so lazy, a day of lying around, too inert to do anything with the heat just on the edge of beginning to get stifling. Everyone is just doing his/her own thing, ignoring each other because the slightest interaction would potentially explode into irritation - it is just a tad too hot to be cool to each other. Ahh, the long lazy irritable days of summer...