The Next to Longest Day

It's a pity that I will miss my one shot at experiencing the longest day in the UK due to travels, but at least I am here for the next to longest day. The summer solstice is tomorrow. As our days have been getting longer it has been a real treat to have light for so long. The official sunrise today was 4:44am with a sunset of 9:20pm, but it really gets light about 3:30 and doesn't get completely dark until about 10:30. And we even have clear skies this evening, so I can take advantage of the extra brightness. As I type this at 9:00pm I don't even have my lights turned on - ahhhhh, the energy bill savings!!

I kind of feel like I should read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to commemorate the event, but Shakespeare has never been my favorite and it would probably go the way of my attempts to read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at Christmas time - I checked it out from the library three times and never got past the second chapter. So, although I am a literary-horizon-broadening failure, I can still claim that I have almost experienced the midsummer's night.

The irony of today is that on the next to longest day, it never made it above 65. Please remind me the next time that I decide to go adventure-seeking to choose somewhere warm.

Happy Summer!