Summer Has Died

It's been a weird week, and as much as I looked forward to the weekend, I find myself staying up later and later, throwing my sleep schedule off by more and more. Last night I was up until almost 3 AM. Today, I'll still be up at 4 AM.

It's not a choice, it's just that my sleep schedule has been getting jerked around by external factors and it's snowballing into a nastier beast to have to face on Sunday night when I will have a) an inevitable phone call from the NOC in the middle of the night and b) a 10 AM meeting.

Summer's over. I think Seattle has a giant on-off switch that gets flipped a week after Labor Day. The sun goes away and the clouds roll in and the entire place gets a decidedly autumnal vibe to it. The leaves are going to start changing color any minute now. It;s become grey, chilly, and the seemingly endless rains have started. It's hot soup and sweater time again. It will stay this way until next June.

Somewhere, I'm certain someone would be enjoying this kind of "curl up and read a book while you listen to the raindrops hit the window" weather. Me? I miss the sunshine already. The sudden, spontaneous death of summertime means I'm fast coming up on my one-year anniversary of Operation Kiwi. It's a time of retrospective thought and appreciation for all the things that I've done and all the ways I've grown in the last year.

Just after I sliced the bejeezus out of my finger, my friend Matt from Cleveland came through town. Considering he lives 2,000 miles away, it's a rare occurrence to say the least. I showed him the sights, we caught up on his life and mine, and we reminisced about the good times and bad, circa 2006 to 2007. His perspective is one I value given his depth of knowledge in both my professional and personal spheres, as well as the unique fusion of the two when they did happen to intersect.

He's concluded that I'm doing well for myself. I concur.