Rant #2,384: Here Comes Summer

No, the summer technically is not here yet, but the just-past Memorial Day Weekend pretty much put that summer bug in our heads.

I know that several places in our country are receiving horrific weather right now, but in the northeast, we got just about the nicest Memorial Day weather in recent memory this past weekend and holiday.

It almost always rains on Memorial Day in my neck of the woods, and the temperature is usually in the 60s. Well, this past weekend and holiday were just the opposite of that, as we got almost entirely sunny weather and the temperatures were in the 80s and very low 90s.

It still wasn't beach weather--the water temperatures were only in the 50s--but plenty of people donned their bathing suits and at least tried to get a tan.

Memorial Day, along with a tribute to the troops who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, pretty much signifies summer to most people, but in reality, we still have to wait until late June for that to actually happen.

But that doesn't mean that we don't prepare for it and wish it was here right now.

It has become a ritual in my family that we bring up the summer clothes out from hiding during this weekend.

We basically switch clothes from the warmer clothes of fall and winter and even part of spring to the warmer clothes of summer, and what we do in my family is that we go down to the basement and bring up the summer clothes, which have been neatly packed away in two crates during the cool periods of the year.

My wife and I lugged the two crates up the stairs to our bedroom, where my wife then took out all the colder weather clothes and replaced them with the warmer weather stuff.

It takes a while to do, but my wife did it as she always does it, with great precision. In addition to our clothes, she also did my son's clothes, too, and now the two crates sit in our room, filled to the gills with cold-weather fare, which we are going to have to bring back downstairs.

The ritual will continue after Labor Day in September, when we will have to lug up the crates again, and replace the winter wear in those crates with the summer wear that we just used for a few months.

I guess we could have lugged the two crates into the basement yesterday, but we decided to leave them where they were. Yesterday, on the actual holiday, we just relaxed.

On the Sunday before the holiday, we visited my father in law at the VA home in Stony Brook, and then met up with my wife's brothers and their wives in Port Jefferson, a big tourist attraction this time of year.

We ate there, it was a fun respite from the same old same old, so yesterday, we did absolutely nothing.

I watched baseball--the Yankees continue to amaze--my wife watched some movies, and my son watched YouTube videos. We didn't barbecue because the deck is a mess and the house is going to be power-washed on the outside in the coming days.

It was a fun throw-away day, and now we all come back to reality.

We all have to go back to work, and the holiday will simply be a pleasant memory.

But at least this year, we were able to have it in grand style, and hopefully this will be a precursor to the real summer, where we can do some swimming and have some barbecues ... and when my family and I can go on vacation and really get away from everything.

So I hope your Memorial Day was as nice as ours was, and onward and upward!

It is time to go back to work.