summer

I've been thinking about this in various forms for the last few months and I'm still not quite sure when it will sink in for me: summer is a completely different concept when you're no longer in a form of school. Even my friend Liz, who is going to China soon and will be there until December taking classes, is in a form of school. We talked about this before she graduated last month and we agreed that it won't really hit her that she graduated for a really long time. Right now is her "summer" and then she'll be taking classes, dotted with weekends off and other breaks until December when she'll be home for Christmas, just like in previous years. And for me it's even more different! I haven't been in school since November. Summer has always been a time of making money but also relaxing and doing whatever possible to not think about school and the upcoming semester. I no longer experience those things. Yes, I would like to go back to school someday but it probably won't be for another two years or so. In the meantime, summer is like the rest of year but warmer. It's so strange to think of it that way. It almost looses some of its appeal.

Along the same lines, my birthday is coming up (a week from today- how crazy!) and I'll be discarding my "22 before 22" list and making a "23 before 23." I've been brainstorming lately about what I'll put down, now that I know better about what goals were challenging enough but still possible to do within a year. (Actually, I made my list in January so I purposefully made some of my goals small so I wouldn't get too discouraged.) Anyway, one of the things that will absolutely be on my list and is also on my bucket list, is to read twenty books in one summer. I really want to push myself to read more and I think this may be the summer it happens. (I'm counting summer this year as the beginning of June to the end of August.) I am planning on working a lot more and soon we'll be having more guests stay with us but it won't be every week. Tanner will be gone quite a bit in July and August so I'll have plenty of alone/quiet time to get some good reading in. And when the rain stops I can go to the beach and read while enjoying the ocean and simultaneously soaking in some Vitamin D. Could it get any better than that? So, in hopes that writing it down typing it out will make me remember and more likely to read them, here are some books I would like to read in my lifetime/this summer:

• any Jane Austen (I still haven't finished "Pride and Prejudice")
• Moby Dick
• The Collector
• The Book Thief
• Infinite Jest
• some Rudyard Kipling
• Catch-22
• some/a lot Oscar Wilde
• some 1001 Nights

Here's to summer reading!