It's almost nearly about to be almost nearly Summer

It's the twentieth of August. This means that it's nearly almost nearly the season before summer. It's never been 2012 and this close to summer. Isn't that exciting? In just ten days it will be spring and thus the beginning of almost almost summer. Everyday it will almost get hot. Swimming pools will almost be used. People will be almost ready to get ready to go on holiday. People will almost start thinking about all the parties that are about to happen. As the season drags on and we get even closer to almost summer, it will almost be exam time. The moment they hit we'll all be thinking about how they're almost over and that it's almost time to almost start planning what we're about to do now that it's nearly summer. Then, after all the almosts and nearlys and about tos, it will suddenly be actual summer. We'll realise we've been sitting in the scorching heat for a week, thinking about how it's almost summer. Kind of like a frog in a microwave.

The best part of almost nearly summer is that winter is almost over; the cold nearly almost over. As the temperatures rise we'll realize that we're starting to put on less clothes in the morning. It's a great time of year.

Except if you're a guitarist in which case you have to deal with your instrument getting fucking scoliosis as the weather changes and having to get an allen key to adjust the useless fucking truss rod in the neck of your warped piece of shit just so you can play the higher notes and then accidentally breaking it. So you take the stupid thing to the guitar shop and they charge you god knows how much for it. I don't even want to find out. I usually just twist the fucker as cautiously as possible before restringing the whole thing. The only problem is that my acoustic's strings are held in with pegs that I used to try for hours to take out with my bare hands before I realised I had a little tool for that which could've saved me a lot of time as well the skin on the tips of my fingers. Even after all that the actual task of restringing a guitar is a pain in the backside because the high E string snaps so easily it's an absolute miracle if you can attach one at all.

But after all that is out of the way, summer the is perfect time to sit down with a cold beer and a slice of lime wedged in the neck, basking in Australia's dry climate and refusing to the take its beauty for granted. In a few years we'll probably be living underground to protect ourselves from what I imagine will be similar to the surface of Venus - science seems to insist we're fucked. But that's okay because being utterly vulnerable is part of life.

So before global warming or ozone depletion or solar winds or whatever kills us according to science/the Bible/scientology/the Discovery Channel/Youtube/the homeless guy on the train takes the fun out of warm weather, make sure you enjoy Summer, and this exact moment. Nothing is as precious or brief as this almost nearly Summer/almost no longer Winter joy.