The Boys of Summer

When I first typed the title of this blog, I made a small typo and missed an "m", which caused me to chuckle. As this is something of an end-of-summer recap, I had this picture that floated into my mind of a bunch of guys playing baseball with epic Gilgamesh beards! End of Sumer, indeed!

It took just a little bit of time to come up with the title. It's a bit of an onion this time, with a few different, but related meanings. The first, and probably most obvious one, is to baseball. In the United States, the boundaries of summer seem to be Opening Day and the last game of the regular season (that is, the last game before the playoffs). Next, of course, is Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" which I think is a great song, but I never really liked the video (I have not posted the video, as YouTube said there were copyright issues). This song, in turn, refers to at least one song from the Sixties: "Will I See You In September". This song was recorded by several artists, and refers to teen romance, angst and all of that gooey stuff.

What initially got me on this line of thought was the calendar. As I write this, it is 30 September 2013. It was forty-five degrees Fahrenheit when I got up this morning, which made me think of The Mamas' & The Papas' "California Dreaming". I got the newspaper from the sidewalk, and noticed that the remaining foliage was rapid turning colors or already brown. I went back inside and enjoyed a hot cup of tea with some yogurt as I read some email. Jennifer was up and had opened the back door, and Tinka was begging to go outside. Tinka is our rather skittish calico cat, and of the four humans in our home, I rank #3 on her favorites list; if our daughter were still living with us, I would be #4. Tinka was standing by the door with a look of longing in her eyes. I grabbed my mug and walked over to her, opening the door. She must have really wanted to go outside, because she dashed out and began to chew on some grass. Schwarz came out after her and found a spot in the sun.

Everything was perfect about that moment. The cats were enjoying Nature, the air was crisp and clean and the sun was at the perfect angle to make the morning dew sparkly. Today is the perfect denouement for a Chicago summer.  

That's all for today- no data to take away from the moment. However, the blog is incomplete without the tagline, so until next time, ...

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.