It’s a big weekend here in my little town, with the 2013 Olde Home Days ushering in the official start to summer, which has been going on annually since, well, since they spelled old with an “e” I guess. Yesterday was the parade and fireworks, and today of course is the big duck race (for five bucks you get a yellow plastic ducky to toss into Nine Mile Creek – which is actually about 25 miles long – and if your duck comes in first, you win). For me, this means I try not to go near the village until all this is over – too much traffic and too many tourists milling about the streets, getting in the way.

We don’t have a very long swimming season in these parts – roughly Memorial Day to Labor Day, if you’re lucky, and a lot of those days aren’t really conducive to getting in the water. Mostly, it isn’t really worth the expense and the hassle of having a pool, and if the house hadn’t come with one, I certainly wouldn’t have gone out of the way to put one in. There are a few days during the year when it’s a really, really nice thing to have, though, and Friday and Saturday were definitely two of those – hot and muggy with temperatures in the low 90s (not hot by many of your standards, I know, but pretty hot for here). It looks like we’ve got one more warmish day to go, and things will cool back off again.

I hope these tornadoes leave Oklahoma alone for a while. Maybe somebody should explain to Mother Nature that James Inhofe thinks Climate Change is a hoax (his Jesus told him so) so that she’ll go pester Ohio or something for a while.

Stay safe, everybody.