10 days of Pure Summer

The essence of Summer.

E and I took our niece to his homestate to spend 10 days at their lake house with his family and some good family friends.  It was heavenly.  10 days of swimming and boating and reading and fireworks and good food and lazy conversations.  I'm fully into the first month of my sabbatical, so I only had to work a total of 6 hours or so during the whole trip (although I did leave a big chunk for the flight back).  I don't know when I've been this relaxed.

I managed to fit in 4 runs of 3ish miles each.  But it was at elevation and in the heat and humidity, so despite the low mileage, I felt like I was doing well.

We put the rental of our home on pause during the visit, which was a welcome change and definitely contributed to the sense of relaxation and vacation. 

Turns out, renting your home is very educational.  Tons of email correspondence.  Only about 50% of the people who arrange to visit actually show up.  When people say they will get back to you in X days, it is best to assume they won't.  Groups of roommates who are young and just graduating from college have almost too many variables to manage to make renting a house as a group actually work (someone will back out, a couple will break up, someone won't be okay with one of the terms of the lease). 

One of the bigger surprises to me is that the fact that we plan to come back in a year is actually a big deterrent to potential renters.  Many people are just uncomfortable with the idea that they won't be able to try to negotiate to stay and not move at the end of the year.  I find this very interesting, of course, because legally, if your lease is one year and then it goes month-to-month, then *of course* your landlord could put you on notice at the end of the year and you'd have to move.  We're just being very up front with our intentions.  A commercial landlord or property management company would just be silent, but the risks are the same.

But my view is not the common one.  Many people feel much better at the idea that their lease *could* (theoretically) be extended.  I cannot understand where this comfort comes from, since it seems completely unreliable, but, if I had a dollar for every time I viewed the world differently than the majority, I'd never need to work.

This coming week is going to be long and full of driving my niece back home and getting back to the bay, as well as much packing, storage, getting the lease signed, and figuring out exactly what we're taking on our road trip vs. shipping to family for staging for later portions of the trip.

If there's one thing the last 10 days taught me it's that this sabbatical year is going to go by *very* fast.  10 days of Pure Summer just flew by.  I'm hopeful we can slow down our experiences a bit over the rest of the year, to savor them even more.  But, if the tradeoff for such a joyous existence is that time flies, I'll still take it.