84 Degrees and Subtracting

Oh my goodness, how could you have any more of a beautiful day than yesterday? It was 84 degrees and sunny out up here. Summer is truly arriving in wonderful fashion……or is it? Thursday’s forecast for St. Cloud says 33 degrees and a 60% chance of snow. Only in Minnesota can our weather fluctuate that much. In the course of 3 days there would be a 51 degree swing in temperature! I am thoroughly amazed at how the weather works in our world. Any meteorologist that can predict the weather perfectly must be the second coming of Jesus, because I know that no one else can tell what the heck is going on with the weather most of the time.

Since it was so nice, there was no way you were going to keep me indoors for very long. After work and class, I picked up a couple of books, grabbed a chair, dragged it outside, and planted myself down for a while to bask in the sun and get a load of reading done. I am currently in the process of reading Albert Camus’s The Plague and The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions by Peter Suber.

I have developed a lot of respect for Camus after reading The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. His writing is very unique in that it all seems so bleak, yet I don’t want to put it down. Not having read many existential works, I wonder if all the writings in that vein are as despairing as Camus’s works. The Stranger presented a view on life where lucidity and quantity were the only things that mattered. Aspiration, ambition, and self-improvement all seemed to be unimportant notions. Live the life you’re given as long as you can and live it with your eyes wide open. This is the best life. I found this hard to swallow, but the way Camus writes makes it seem like that is the only way. So far The Plague is a very downtrodden novel as well, and I am very interested to finish it (only about 1/3 left to go).

Anyhow, after I had indulged my nerdy reading fetish for the day, I took a quick little nap before going for a run. How could you possibly not want to just up and run all over when it is so nice out? I put in a few miles and did some lifting. Afterwards I felt so refreshed, yet I wasn’t actually tired. There’s just something about spring that invigorates the soul and keeps you from getting tired. Whereas winter is such a lazy time of the year, spring means movement, growth, and energy. Still having tons of energy, I played some sand volleyball. After seeing some of the people there at the courts, I realized that for as much time as I’ve spent in the sun, I’m still horribly pasty and white. I don’t know, but maybe the countless years of growing up on the farm have hardened my skin to the sun, which is a good thing, but I would also like to be like everyone else sometimes where it would only take a day in the sun to get tan. I guess I’d rather have conditioned skin than skin that burned easily, though, so I’ll quit complaining.