My favorite day of the year

Ah, here it is, my favorite day of the year, the first day of summer. It is the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. OK, actually the total ammount of daylight may be longer tomorrow by a second or two, but hey, let's not quibble. I just love the days when the light lingers, putting off nightfall as long as possible.

That is indeed one benefit to moving closer to the Arctic Circle, it makes for longer days. Here at the 45th Parallel, sunset tonight will be at 9:02 p.m.

Now, I've done my share of lamenting the weather since I left my beloved desert for my former home state of Oregon, but one thing I will not complain about is the length of the summer days here. There will be more than 15.5 hours of daylight today. Now that's my kind of day, especially when there is light in the evening hours. Light at 5:30 a.m. doesn't really do much for me. But when my alarm clock goes off at 6:30 a.m. and the sun is already up, that is a benefit to dragging my ass out of bed.

Now come winter, when it's still dark when the alarm goes off, and when it's already dark by the time I get home from work, I'll be one grumpy, grouchy bastard (not to mention wet, because it rains all the fucking time in the winter here).

And we have finally had some decent weather yesterday and today. The mercury may have actually reached 80 today, and it's still 77 degrees. Got to like that, while my amigos in Palm Springs are still sweltering at about 108-degress at this hour. Poor bastards.

Oh, and the sun will be setting an hour earlier in Palm Springs too. Well, more than that actually, because the mountains will blot out the sun long before it sinks below the sea off the Southern Oregon Coast. But they'll be glad to get some relief from the sun by then anyway, while us Oregonians are still basking in the mild glow of the sun way up north here.

So, there are some benefits to these northern latitudes. It just took some sunshine and the first official day of summer to remind me what some of them were.

Well, I'm off to meet a lawyer/judge friend for dinner. He's in town playing National Guard JAG officer for the week or something, so I'm going to try to corrupt him with food and beverages.

Summer Solstice
Weather
Sunshine