Friday, June 22, 2001

Welcome to summer

[email composed 22 June 2001]

Whether you realized it or not, today (or by the time most of you read this, yesterday) was the longest amount of daylight the northern hemisphere would see all year, a.k.a. the Summer Solstice. If you didn't take advantage of it, don't worry: tomorrow will have only slightly less daylight--you probably won't notice.

And if you enjoy the night, remember that this means that the sun will be setting a teeny bit earlier every day from now until December.

Tomorrow (or today as most of you read this) I am off to Vancouver, British Columbia, to compete with my dragon boating team, the Killer Guppies, in a large tournament. This is our first "international" competition, and it should be interesting to see how the team responds to the environment. If we win a medal, great, and if we don't, well, I'll just enjoy being away from the office for a few days. (Dragon boating is a paddling sport, just for the record. Amazingly, I've been doing this for over a year now. Eh, it forces me to exercise regularly, if nothing else. And the people on the team are pretty cool, too.)

I'll let you know how well we did (and how good a time we had at the party after the races) when I return next week. If I can remember.