Summer's End

Officially, we’ve still got three weeks left and I don’t start back to work for another fortnight, but as of today—even before Labor Day—it really feels like summer is over.

The kid went back to school today; it’s raining; and the sports section in the paper is all about football, with baseball scores (admittedly, Mariners’ news hardly merits the front page) relegated to an afterthought; fall is upon us, de facto, if not de jure.

Consequently, I can’t help looking back over the last three months and wondering what the hell I’ve been doing with my life and whether I’ve made a meaningful contribution to the world, my town, my family, or even myself. Probably not, but some of the things I’ve accomplished include:

• Starting a small business marketing the world’s best-loved bicycle trailers and managing, already, to have sold two to (I hope) reasonably satisfied customers

• Making it all the way through Thomas Pynchon’s masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow, even though the last hundred or so pages were really little more than flipping through and looking at the words

• Writing and posting a 327-word essay nearly every day

• Co-teaching a 2-day Philosophy for Children workshop for elementary and middle-school classroom teachers

• Participating in a 3-day Philosophy Camp with about 20 other philosophy nerds

• Riding my bike to Vancouver, Canada with about half a dozen other bike nerds

• Learning to play most of the Ian Anderson flute lead in the Jethro Tull version of Bach’s Bourée in E Minor

• Managing (so far) to make it home in one piece on each of the Thursday night .83 rides I’ve been on

• Growing a small garden and mowing the back lawn frequently enough that the dandelions have not taken over

• Treating myself to an afternoon nap with great regularity

It’s not a particularly impressive list, I realize, but at least I didn’t spill 5 million barrels of oil.