2026 Life Logs, Day 164: A Taste of Summer
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2026
Weather: Sunny and Hot; High Temp 86, Low 63 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
It is not yet officially summer, but it sure felt like it today. The first official day of summer is next Sunday, June 21, but we are close enough to call this summer.
I dealt with my flat tire early on this morning. Jed came over first thing to help me get the spare tire on (Thank you, Jed!), and then I drove the car to Sullivan Tire. As I suspected, I need a new tire and it had to be ordered. Hopefully, late on Monday afternoon that issue will be settled. Then I did some canvassing for 23-year-old Jack Richardson who is running to be a State Representative. This was my first foray into the door-to-door canvassing world here in Falmouth, and it went well. But I did learn that I need to take a hat, sunglasses, and water with me on hot days like today. Then I went to the Falmouth Green for our weekly standout for democracy. Because I got into an interesting conversation with a woman who was in the class I just finished yesterday, I didn’t get home until almost 2 pm. That gave me enough time to eat a late brunch, as there was no time for breakfast this morning, before I headed to Main Street to Arts Alive to hear the Falmouth High School jazz band play under the big tent on the library lawn. This was the first time they have played without the graduating seniors, so they invited some guest musicians. The jazz band director and Ollie’s saxophone teacher plus a seventh grader, joined the saxophone section and another older man filled in as the third trumpet player. And as they have been all this year, they were fantastic! There will be more eighth graders moving to the high school that will join next fall, eliminating the need for the extra adults. But every year a few middle school musicians perform with the high school. It was so much fun to hear them play this afternoon, Ollie on tenor saxophone and Jonah on trombone.
When I got home from Arts Alive, I spent the next hour and a half on the phone with Xfinity. When I got home, I turned on the television to see when the Morocco versus Brazil World Cup soccer game was on, and that is how I discovered I had no cable. Then I checked and saw that I had no internet. It took a bit to negotiate the online ‘live’ chat blockade before I got a real person on the phone. By that time the soccer game was underway, and it was almost over by the time I finished on the phone with the technician. I do have both cable and internet tonight, but there were issues with the cable that the technician could not resolve. He managed to get someone to come here tomorrow afternoon to check things out.
Tonight I went over to the Goldstones to give Heather a farewell hug. She leaves in the morning for two weeks in Alaska. Tomorrow, she flies to Minnesota and then on to Fairbanks, Alaska, and then has to drive 365 miles, on a dirt and gravel road, further north to the Toolik Field Station which will be her base for the next two weeks. From the field station to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean it is another 133 miles, which on a dirt and gravel road takes another three hours. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get to go that far afield. But she will be taking day trips out from the station. This is an opportunity that comes from a grant that was applied for five years ago and finally came through this winter. I wish her safe travels and interesting adventures in the land of the Midnight Sun. The sun never sets there in June. In fact, the sun remains above the horizon for almost 70 days from late May to late July.
