One fun thing about this move is that I haven’t needed to do my annual “I hate summer” post. Summer here is quite different from back in Texas. It’s still somewhat hot, but it’s more like May or September (or even October) weather in Texas — and this is apparently a bad heat wave.

I will admit, on the days when it’s really muggy, it does feel kind of nasty. I wouldn’t want to be outside in it for long. But I’m still having breakfast and lunch outside on the porch most days. I just come inside for the afternoon when there’s more direct sun on my porch. Most mornings, I at least start with a sweater on. Up until about a week and a half ago, I was still wearing sweatshirts most days. I did have to turn my air conditioning on last weekend, but more for the humidity than the heat. Even without the AC, it’s never gotten as warm inside as I used to set my thermostat in Texas.

And that means I’m actually getting a real summer. When I lived in Texas, it felt like we missed out on summer because it was too hot to go outside and do summer things. I thought of the typical summer activities as fall activities. Here, you could actually go camping (since it gets cool at night even when the day is hot), have picnics, go to outdoor concerts and festivals. Every Monday night, I go to a community band concert in the park, and they’ll start doing weekly jazz and bluegrass concerts in the park next month. I generally need to put on a sweater toward the end of the band concerts as the sun starts going down. It’s quite pleasant sitting outside in the park, watching the fireflies come out and listening to music. In Texas, it would still be in the upper 90s and you wouldn’t want to sit outside.

I’ll be able to go to the July 4th festival without worrying about having to be outside in 100-degree temperatures. I may not stay there all day, but I live a block or so from the park, so I can come and go throughout the day, and I may as well go to the fireworks, even if they are later at night than I usually stay up, since they’ll be close enough to keep me awake, anyway.

I probably won’t be hitting the swimming pool, as I’m a weenie and used to only go swimming when it was over 100 because I don’t like being in cold water and I don’t like being in the city pool with all the kids screaming and splashing (one good thing about my old place was that we had a community pool that almost no one used, so I usually had it to myself, especially since I liked to go swimming when it was really hot). But I can hang out in the park, especially in the shade, which is abundant, as the park is full of huge old trees.

Fall is still my favorite season, and I’m looking forward to that, but I imagine it will feel like an extended fall to me, since summer here is so much like early fall in Texas, and then I’ll be going to Texas for Thanksgiving, so I’ll be there just in time for real fall to finally show up there. For now, though, I’m making lists of “summer” things I haven’t had a chance to do in a very long time. What do you think of as summer activities?