LOOOONG time, no update. My apologies. Between the Film Festival and the World Cup, I’ve been so distracted that June has been pretty much a write off.

I’d love to regale you with tales of the fascinating goings-on that kept me from the keyboard, but there really weren’t any.

The Film Festival was about a 6 out of 10. Loved who I worked with (especially the venue managers at Pacific Place – Hi guys!), but had some difficulty with the new volunteer coordinator and the ‘new and improved’ voucher system. I’ve been steadily cutting back on my volunteer hours the last few years, and I think next year’s going to be lighter yet. And I won’t be doing the Secret Festival again. The concept is brilliant, but the content was disappointing. The release I signed prevents me from being more specific, but it was one big "… eeh."

I did see one OUTSTANDING film I’ll recommend to anyone between the ages of 27 and 40 – ’24 Hour Party People’, about the Madchester scene of the ‘80’s. How they managed to make a comedy out of the Factory Records saga is beyond me, but they did it. If you’re not going to see the film, at least buy the soundtrack. You owe it to your music collection.

The World… Cup… was… INSANE! (/Shatner) If you would have told me that the US would have made it as far as they did, and that France and Argentina would be going home early, I would have laughed myself silly. Excellent football, with the added joy of far eastern time zones making for some bizarre match hours. (I still can’t believe I woke up at 0430 to watch USA-Germany.)

Work is hardly worth mentioning. I got through June, which is our ‘month from hell’, so that’s a plus. Outside of that, it’s an 8-hour slog and I’ve become an expert in clock-watching. Motivation? HA! Where?

So, that takes us to a pretty standard July. High summer looms, and I am NOT looking forward to it. I feel that once you hit adulthood (or young adulthood, where summer jobs are requisite) and summer is no longer a ‘break’, summer has very little appeal. All it means for me now is being hot, which I do NOT dig. A hot me is a miserable me. When it’s too hot to sleep, I get both miserable AND crabby, since I’m also sleep deprived. Not a good combination.

Yeah, I can hear you – ‘WHINER! Hot in Seattle is NOTHING – it’s 300 degrees in the SHADE with 90% humidity here!’ Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t care. I don’t like heat. The fact that you have it worse does nothing to help me, so just save it. Because it’s all about ME and I am primarily a selfish tart. (ME, dammit, ME!)

Summer is the best time to travel, usually. Just not if you’re me. I had plans to hit Vegas with a college buddy and her spouse, but they crashed and burned. I’m about an inch away from giving up on travelling for my holidays, because I hate to go alone and I can rarely get travel plans to work with other people. Either they don’t have the money or they don’t have the time. I blame summer.

OK, I’ll confess. There are things I like about summer. Two things, actually.

The first thing I like is the smell of hot asphalt, specifically hot asphalt just after a good, sudden summer rain. After rain, the smell of hot asphalt smells like… childhood. Like that ‘time off’ part of summer that I liked when I was a kid.

The second thing I like is the salt-water sandal (SWS). Not just the sandals themselves (which are quite cute, even on big-people feet – and not just big-people feet, but my Barney Rubble-type big-people feet), but the sound they make on the pavement when you’re running. The sound of the SWS isn’t the hollow flop sound of the zori/thong/flip flop. Oh, no. The SWS makes a sharp, barking, slapping sound. The sound of summer. The sound of a herd of kids wearing SWS and running full-tilt trying to catch Joe.

Oh, good heavens, Joe. I guess that’d be three things I like about summer, because I had forgotten about Joe. (Two – no, THREE! I sound like Monty Python. "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!") Joe is the name of the local ice cream truck company. I’m not kidding. Each truck has ‘Joe’ on it. The company might have some other formal name, but it’s … well, Joe. And who did that make the ice cream truck drivers? Take a guess. (I figure the girls would be ‘Jo’.) You’d hear the sweet pingle pongle of the ice cream truck’s Scott Joplin siren call and run like hell for the house to shake down your parents for loose change, then sprint for the corner Joe usually stopped at. There was a science to timing your run – somehow, the reptilian brain of the average kid could hear the way "The Entertainer" was echoing off the neighborhood houses and know how much time they’d have. (My ninth grade science teacher had almost nothing to teach us about the Doppler effect – we were already experts, thanks to Joe.) I was a lime girl, mostly. I'd occasionally break that up with a Bomb Pop or a Strawberry Shortcake crunchy thing. Sometimes, I'd break the 'twin pop' in half and share it with my dog. Sweet, syrupy, sticky fun. I don’t live in a neighborhood with many kids, so Joe’s song is rarely heard these days, but I’m surprised at the adrenaline rush it still provokes. Joe requires more than just spare change these days, but he’s nice enough to offer easy financing and reasonable interest rates. Nice guy, that Joe.