The Last Gasp Of Summer

It's really disconcerting how quickly this year has vanished. A combination of extreme weather — record-setting amounts of rain and relentless heat and humidity — put a damper in a lot of my plans. I'm fortunate that I still got to spend a lot of time with my friends, but a lot of goals did go unfulfilled.

The days are much shorter now. I always hate this time of year, when I'm driving up to the lake and I know I have maybe an hour of daylight before the sun retreats behind the horizon. Those days when the sun doesn't set until 9:30pm never seem sufficient — by the time you can really appreciate it, it's already diminishing.

I've got another 2 weeks to spend at the lake, and then everything gets closed up. A couple of weeks after that, the Daylight Savings time change takes effect and the weather will invariably get worse as winter rolls in. This has been one of those years marked with massive changes throughout my life — both good and bad — so the change of seasons is hitting a little harder than usual.

PUBLISHED: 2026-09-27