Summer starts here.

It's abut 80 degrees here in Cleveland, Ohio. Perfect weather. Sunny and hot with not a whole lot of humidity. In my eyes, it's officially summertime. May is one of my favorite months of the year: anniversary with Josh is coming up, Memorial Day is approaching, and the weather is heating up fast. Unlike last year, I'm home in Ohio as opposed to being exiled in my-parents'-house-but-not-really-my-home in Michigan. I see Josh every day, not every two weeks. All my friends are around me in the city I fell in love with 11 years ago. The air is thick with possibilities for the summer that won't suck. Cedar Point. Headlands Beach. Tennis. Running. Anything in Downtown Cleveland (including the brand new Horseshoe Casino!). Josh's brother's baseball games, like the summer we first started dating. Maybe I'll finally golf my first real game. Maybe I'll go back to the radio station and DJ a guest shift. But one thing's for sure: this summer won't be like the last.

And so far, it's promising. Josh and I spontaneously went to Dave & Buster's last night. He hit not one, but TWO jackpots (which is a more common occurrence than should be possible). The most impressive thing I did was win 200 tickets by the sheer power of friction:

I mean, that was close.

Josh now has enough tickets on his PowerCard to buy an electric guitar from the prize shop. Not sure whether I should be proud of how much he earned or peeved at how much money he spent to get 16,000 tickets.

Today we took it easy and spent the whole day together. Since he works most Saturdays, it's the only day of the week we can do this. So, naturally, he installed a dartboard (which we found at Marc's for $12):

And I made my family's top-secret spaghetti sauce. This was only my second time making it, and I think I nailed it!

(although I got a little help from some fancy Merlot.)







I finally got some use out of my tennis dress as Josh and I hit the cracked-up courts at the town park. It looks like it got hit with an earthquake, and every time the ball flew down the center crack, it flew back in my face. Next time we'll go back to the desolate but smooth college grounds.


Exciting? Not incredibly. But for what I know as the first official weekend of summer, it's a good start. Next week is a multitude of rib cookoffs, Memorial Day, and our anniversary- which translates to gorging on delicious barbeque, kayaking, spending too much money at the new casino, and settling in the summer that won't suck. It starts here.