Is it May?

I'm having a very hard time believing it's May 1st. And not just because it's incredibly gray and rainy outside. I just don't know how we're suddenly 4 months into the year, and halfway through the spring. I think it's a large part due to the fact that it hasn't felt like spring much. What's new, right? This year I'm telling myself to stop waiting for the warm weather and go with a more zen-like approach to the whole thing. Because last year, in July and August, as day after day passed without one iota of summeriness, my depression turned to an intense anger and frustration at this lousy, mountainless, summerless country, and it was the second year in a row where I was waiting for a summer that never came, so I've realized I just can't do that anymore, it's too much for the nerves. I still hate it, mind, I still cannot believe I found a place to live with worse weather than Oregon without having moved to, say, Siberia, because in Oregon, despite the sometimes seemingly endless rain and gray, and despite summer sometimes not starting til mid-July (my last few years in the US it always seemed to rain on the 4th of July), at least summer did come, eventually, and in full weeks-of-heat force. I think I've only had "weeks of heat" here if you combine the warm weather from the 5 summers I've spent here. Ok, ok, 2003 was warm. But I'm starting to see it as a fluke. Even an older cousin of mine, who spent a few post-college months in the Netherlands sometime in the 80s calls that summer "the summer that never was." He wisely ended up in Spain.

But ok, my office window may be currently blurred with rain, but starting tomorrow warm weather is meant to finally creep in and we should get to remember what it's like to walk around in t-shirts. Either tomorrow or Wednesday I'll be digging out the old bike to ride to work. I still have my doubts though, after they predicted 20 degree weather about a week ago and it failed to show up, and I'm still feeling that sting, so I'll believe it when I see it.

Another thing I can't believe is that O and I will be going to see Belle & Sebastian only a week from now. How these things creep up. Before that though is Andrew Bird this Saturday upstairs in Paradiso. Our Insane Pile of Concerts - May 2006 will finally be underway.