Summertime

Last year, I linked to the text of David Foster Wallace’s speech to a graduating class, which is great and you should read it if you didn’t get around to reading it last year.  In the wake of his death last year, they’re releasing the text of it in one of those little gift books that they do.  (They are, however, removing the section where he talks about suicide.)

I also linked to this 2008 graduation “speech”/post by a blogger on Deadspin.  Despite the sexist overtones, it’s pretty funny and right on.  I often think of the section titled Your First Job Will Suck and You Will Not Work for a Cool Company, especially how you don’t get to do anything cool with your job until you’ve been there for 10 years, and by that time you’re so jaded that you don’t even recognize that it’s cool anymore.  

That blogger (Drew Magary) wrote a new post for 2009.  Once again, it’s hilariously apt.

It’s summertime, folks!  I hope that you’re going to make the most of it with lots of great plans.  I usually don’t like seasons to start until their actual appointed start dates (December 21, March 22, September 22), but in the case of summer, I have to make the exception.  If you wait to call it summer until June 21, you will miss half of it.

My parents left yesterday for a weeklong vacation to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and Tracy and I leave next Tuesday for a few days in Florida.  I am looking forward to several hours spent on the beach with cheap paperbacks, plus the high probability of a rum-based cocktail.  (I drink about once every two years or so, so it’s about time I had something alcoholic.)

I spent most of the holiday weekend traveling to do family shoots in different parts of the state, and then stopping by antique malls on the way home.  The shoots went well, and I came home with more stuff.  Yesterday was a full day off and at home, and I managed to actually reach the end of the laundry pile!  I just love getting all the laundry done and facing a new week with a closetful of clean clothes.  I worked on some pictures from the shoot and ate a lot of junk food.  Tracy spent the whole weekend in Kansas City and came home yesterday afternoon, and we watched Mulholland Drive together.  I didn’t love it.

And it’s a short week!  Nice.  Very nice.