Yes, I have a one-track mind.

Last year when the leaves began to fall and the skies became overcast and the temperatures dropped, my roommate told me that she started thinking, "now things are getting back to normal." In other words, when she thought of Ann Arbor she thought of winter. Summer was an anomaly and felt just a little bit unreal.

To me, the idea of living somewhere were anything other than winter was abnormal was a horribly depressing thought. But this summer, fortunately, has felt just as real to me as the winter. In fact right now winter seems like a curious, distant dream. I remember it, and I remember that I didn't really like it, and I know it will come again all too soon, but I can't quite comprehend all this at the moment, and I certainly don't think of winter as normal.

In the wintertime I tend to remember how happy the summer makes me and how much I love the sunshine and the warm weather. Occasionally I will think that it's just a case of selective memory. We tend to remember the good things about the past more than we remember the bad things, and I wonder if I'll get to summer and realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be after all. Then I get to summer and realize that, no, I was right, I really do love this season. The thought of summer makes me just as unbelievably happy in July as it does in January.

Actually, it's not just the weather (although that's a large part of it). The truth is, a disporportionate number of my best memories happened during the summertime. This shouldn't be too surprising because all I've ever known is school, which means that summer has always been a break from the normal for me. It's when I can relax and distance myself from some of the things that cause me the most stress. Summer is when I read the books I want to read, travel to new and familiar locales, visit old friends, make new friends because I have more social energy (and time), hike mountains, discover new running routes because I'm running outdoors...Good things just happen at this time of year.

If this year is anything to go by, Ann Arbor in August is actually quite nice. In California and Utah, August is among the hottest months. That's when, if you're living without air conditioning (and I have pretty much lived my entire life without air conditioning) you begin to think that fall might not be so bad. But here, although the humidity made a few weeks more miserable than any I ever experienced in Utah or California, it was just for a few weeks. Now it's cooled down and dried up just enough that I love summer again. And unlike California and Utah, and even Virginia, it is still very green here in August. That's something Ann Arbor has going for it. The Huron River runs right through town and the banks of the river are still deep and green and wooded, and even in the residential neighborhoods and around campus it still looks like early summer. It's rather pretty, I realized while I was out running this morning, and I'd do well to enjoy it while it lasts rather than to think about how soon it will be gone.