It’s not even summertime yet!

How is it that it seems as if summer’s half over — yet, according to the calendar, it has not actually even begun?

: )

Today I was thinking of Wimbledon, which will begin next week. My favorite event of the summer. I went there in 1999, and I have photos a-plenty, but right now the living room is dark, and I am not certain I have said photos on a CD, and there is zero chance of me scanning anything right now, so ... take my word on this: Wimbledon was/is awesome.

My friends are going again this summer. They, too, went in ’99 and actually did the queue thing, in which people line up and stay overnight to try to have a chance at getting tickets. And they did get tickets — front row of Centre Court, the most excellent tennis court in the world! And they switched tickets with us for a while, so we all got to see Pete Sampras (who only won, like, 7 Wimbledon championships) and Venus Williams (who has won 1 or 2 herself) play on that very court.

The Lovely and I got our tickets a different way: Over the Internet. And lemme tell ya, it was a little scary ’cause I didn’t go through a ticket broker; I actually found someone — through a Google search, no less! — who had Debenture tickets for Court 1. (Debentures are the only ones, supposedly, that can be transferred ... whatever that means.) So this guy and I e-mailed each other back and forth, and I gave him my credit card number for 4 tickets (2 each for the first Monday and Tuesday), and he told me he would have them delivered to the Henley House Hotel, where we were staying, on the day we arrived.

Naturally, I had a lot of anxious moments between the time I paid for the tickets and when we got there. Plus there was the whole turmoil of the trip over there: Spraining my ankle on the Metra train into Chicago, and then spending 8-plus hours on a flight with absolutely no way to elevate my leg ... and then, when we finally made it to London, we were so exhausted we could not even think ... but: The tickets were there, as promised.

: )

Ahhh: “Back on the Chain Gang” is playing during the closing credits of this week’s Six Feet Under — yes, yet another show I have “discovered,” only to realize it is now in its final season.

Grrrr!

: (

And now, something that made me smile this evening, so I simply had to go back and shoot it:





My first sunflower of the summer!

: )