My front lawn

I just had a vision... or maybe it would be more appropriately titled a flashback, to hen I was around 6 or 7 years old, and my Dad's English friend Nick Lawson had come to visit us here in the states. Dad took Nick, myself and my cousin Brian to a Planetarium somewhere and it was absolutely fascinating. When we left the planetarium, the sun was about setting, and we stopped at a large water fountain which was spurting water up and was located beneath big oak and maple trees, whose green leaves were illuminated a light yellow color as the sun filtered through them. I am no where near a planetarium right now, nor am I accompanied by my cousin, father or an Englishman named Nick.

I was just wallowing on the front lawn of my house with my dog Hobbes. The sun is reaching it's golden hour, the air is slightly warm and still, and perfect long shadows are being cast along the newly fertilized and therefore exceptionally vibrant green and comfortable lawn. You see, it was damn near perfection. For some reason it made me think about that trip to the planetarium, though the two experiences have very little in common. More importantly, I realized that I couldn't shake this overwhelming feeling of boredom. The whole day (well, actually, the past many months fall into this category as well for the most part) has gone by where seemingly nothing has happened, yet somehow it's a quarter to seven and I face the prospect of a repeat of this experience tomorrow. Part of it is that not too many folks are home on Long Island to spend the days with. We're mostly nite folk out here it seems. It seems no one wants to do much during the day, especially if it involves doing nothing. But please correct me if I'm wrong.

My dad just gave me a cucumber to eat. I'm pretty sure it's one of my most favourite foods in the world. It can be eaten plain, pickled (which means it has then become a pickle), or one of my personal favourite ways, in a cucumber salad with some shredded onions and white vinegar. Cucumbers remind me of summer in all its forms. So does picking blueberries and raspberries, eating snow peas from the vine, giant sunflowers, mesh shorts, the taste of tap water from my kitchen sink, the smell of campfires and dried pine needles, Calvin and Hobbes, climbing trees, low tide, high tide, saltwater and exhaust from boat engines, just to name a few. Point is, it's summer. If you're not happy about that fact it can only mean one of two things:

#1- You have no soul

#2- You have a job that requires you to work during these, the most precious and beautiful few months of the year. Excluding the week and a half in autumn when all the trees change colour.

In other news, I've been meeting a lot of folks online who are heading over to South Africa with me in July, and we've all been in contact with people who are currently volunteering in SA, and they have been giving us many helpful hints as far as what to bring, what to expect, what the weather is like etc. I'm sure I'll write something more detailed about all this in a future post.

For now, my overwhelming boredom has subsided because at least I got something accomplished, which is writing an entry in this blog-thing here.

Of course, this would have been infinitely better if I could have written all of this on my front lawn.