Ah, yes… the last day of summer. Technically, it’s still summer throughout August here in the northern hemisphere, but for all practical purposes, my summer is over tomorrow: It’s back to work, back to getting up at six in the morning and back to the predictable, ordinary everyday life most of us live. I’ve been away from work for five weeks consecutive weeks now, and this year, just like every year, I wouldn’t mind having just one more week of vacation. Or perhaps two.

That’s why I’m planing - yet again - to win the lottery this Wednesday. The current jackpot is 158 million NOK (~20 million Euro, ~27 million USD), meaning that I could easily take an infinite summer vacation. I would most likely go mad of boredom, though. During my three months work hiatus back in 2009, I realized that I can only entertain myself for so long before I start to talk to myself just to hear a voice and get the feeling of taking part in some kind of social interaction. To be honest, it wasn’t really that bad, but you get the idea. Lesson learned: If When I win the jackpot, I will at least get a part time job so I manage to get out of the house regularly.

So. How did I spend these five weeks? Well, there was the trip to Japan, which lasted for two weeks. Before we left, there was a week of preparing for the trip, a few social get-togethers and a wedding party. I rocked the dance floor, and Anniken laughed at me. Business as usual, in other words. I also rode quite a few kilometers on my bike during the first week of July, but I got a front tire puncture and the rear rim was in such bad shape, I didn’t dare to ride too far. It’s all fixed now, though, and the green bike is once again ready to bring me to and from work.

The two weeks since we returned from the Land of the Rising Sun, I’ve basically spent on the terrace, where I’ve been taking photos of my computer, the view, people drinking beer, thunderstorm clouds and Hans Olav enjoy a meal. For you, it might seem like a complete waste of time to just sit there on the terrace, but for me, it’s the good life. The sound of the river flowing by, a cold beverage in my hand and not a worry in the world. If you ever have the chance to get a place with a terrace of some kind, do it. When the weather is bad, you’ll be annoyed you can’t use it, when the weather is good you’ll wonder why you didn’t get a terrace until now.

There’s a problem with having a terrace to chillax (yes, I said it, and there’s nothing you can do about it) on, though. I had grand plans for this summer and a lot of stuff I wanted to do. But most of it fell through because I was too busy sitting around doing nothing:

• Work out. It started out quite well, but after I realized the bike was in desperate need of repairs, nothing happened. No bike rides, no jogging, no going to the gym. I haven’t gain or lost any weight though, which I guess is sort of interesting.
• Re-write my WordPress plugin, wp-days-ago. The current version is a bit buggy, and has turned out to be a classic feature creep that’s a pain to configure if you’re not familiar with PHP. I’ve got an unfinished version that actually does the calculations correctly running on this site, but it’s not yet ready for public release.
• Read some books. Didn’t happen, I think I might have managed ten or fifteen pages of Born to Run and that was it.

And that’s it for this summer. Not as productive as I’ve hoped, but still all I could hope for. Think about that for a second. The forecast at work in the coming months is that it’s going to be challenging, so don’t expect too much to happen on this site until next year. Unless I bring home that jackpot, of course.