Try as I might, I have trouble living in the moment.
In particular, the near end of one season makes me really wish the next one would show up already.
In February, I’m wishing for Spring.
In August? I’m completely done with the high heat, humidity and sky high utility bills. Bring me Fall already! I know technically that doesn’t happen until September 21st, but in my mind, Labor Day is the official end of summer.
Before Fall does come, though, here’s a look back at August at SuzerSpace.
Bike Riding
One of my goals for the summer was to take a more bike rides this summer compared to last.
With a week to go until Labor Day, I’ll consider that one accomplished. 58 rides, 248 miles as of the time I’m writing this. In 2014, when we bought our bikes, neither one of us had ridden in the last 25 years. We ride pretty slow, the routes are mostly short, the hills are still steep, but it’s the best exercise we’ve found for us.
Reading
When I’m hunting for new reading material, I really like to use the Book Concierge at NPR. One trick I’ve learned as a library user is that by going back one year (so, 2016 in this case) more of the books I want are ready for checkout/download vs. needing to put the 2017 hot books on hold for later. For August I went with biographies – You’ll Grow Out of It was a good but not great quick read, and my second choice Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life is quite a bit more serious and QUITE a bit larger, so that’s going to take most of September (maybe October?) to finish.
Foreign Language Learning
I’m a big library fan, and I saw during the winter that it was possible to take Rosetta Stone classes through the library for free, and I kept on meaning to start, but it took me until August to finally do it.
Growing up in West Texas meant I took Spanish in public school, but I really lost most of what I learned, and it’s a language that would serve me well in my every day life so it’s my goal to get better at understanding it beyond being able to order a beer and ask where the bathroom is (although those are two very good sentences to learn, in my opinion).
I’m only three lessons in, but I’m enjoying it, and at the very least I feel more productive spending an hour on Sunday learning vs. an hour on Sunday reading trash on the Internet.
Watching Hummingbirds
This, by far, has been the best month for hummingbird activity at SuzerSpace. This is really Mr. SuzerSpace’s hobby – he picks out the feeders, keeps them cleaned out and full, and moves the feeders for the safety of the birds and for our watching pleasure. I get the easy part – sitting on the porch or the living room sofa and cheering those little guys on.
Quick note: none of the links in this post are affiliate, and while I have PLENTY of opinions, no one has compensated me for any of them.
