A Very Green Day.

For a good couple hours on Thursday, I felt pretty damn Irish.

Shortly after changing from my work shirt into my lime green Guinness tee, I parked again a little ways down the road, only to open my door and find a lucky penny waiting for me on the ground. It gets better, though. When I made my way down the hill to the shoreline, I walked along the railroad track a little ways and came across a nifty little staircase leading down to a small pebbly cove. There I found a couple unopened bottles of Sierra Nevada IPA, cool and glistening from the rain. I took one and popped it open, leaving the other for the next wanderer, or myself if it remains undiscovered until my next visit. As if finding free beer on a secluded beach wasn't enough, I could have also counted my lucky charms that it was a lovely, damp, cool, altogether grey, drizzly, Irish-feeling day.

You see, I find it really comfortable up here between fall and spring, for all the damp, grey, dreary weather that regularly persists throughout that duration delights me. It must run through my Irish blood, really. Not only is the dampness on my skin and the chilly Pacific breeze refreshing beyond compare, the atmosphere it creates could never become tiresome. Everything felt very peaceful; I could hear little but the call of nearby seagulls over rustling of rust-colored leaves as they shook off large water droplets, hitting their already fallen brethren scattered upon the ground. And of course, nobody else was anywhere remotely around to ruin the magic. Apparently, the blissful grey skies keep the vast majority of mundanes inside, which could be at least half the reason I favor such days.

I just think of summertime up here in the PNW as an obnoxious, overly extroverted older brother coming up to stay with you for a three month visit. Whether you want him around or not, he rarely goes away and leaves you alone. Most of the time, he's up in your face, taunting you, staring you down, challenging your patience and tolerance, and very little is able to stand in his way. He leaves me feeling easily frustrated, drained, and overheated, because it seems he's simply determined to beat up on me all day long. And he doesn't even go to bed until 9:00! As if all that wasn't bad enough, he is, for whatever inexplicable reason, also very popular, and attracts hordes of admirers... worshipers, even! They come from near and far, and are out and about in droves whenever he's around, taking over the outdoors, tying up traffic, dimishing whatever acceptable level of peace, quiet, and sense of solitude that should exist in a wooded park or sandy pocket of beach. Ugh. In case it isn't already obvious, this analogy is referring to the summer sun.

I think I've effectively made my point on this subject in so many entries (enough to beat [off] a dead horse, but the venting has helped). I hope to not have to do it again until next June. I'd feel even luckier than I already do.

O ye fellow Children of the Shade, rejoice, for Autumn is mercifully nearly upon us.