School starts…

…and parents everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.

Children herd along the streets or wait on street corners for the ubiquitous yellow school bus to pull up, their backpacks full of newly labelled stuff that will almost certainly end up in ‘Lost and Found’ in week 3, their shoes shiny (actually, read that as their sneakers buffed) and their hair brushed (actually, not my son’s, but then we would have been late for school if I had done that).

A joy to behold….

And so I hit the gym, as do a plethora of other smiling mums/moms, all keen to regain their routines and tick off their to do lists (and, probably, enjoy a bit of peace and quiet in the sun).

I hear ya!

Ah, school days 😉

Yosemite

The park is burning hot, and I’m hoping we don’t have to strike it off of our bucket list.

It’s being reported as the nation’s largest active forest fire and is burning on through at the edge of Yosemite National Park.

(Photo: Jae C. Hong, AP)

This is what it should look like.

Apparently the fire is the size of Chicago. Wowsers.

Looking ahead to winter…

So, whilst the summer hasn’t even closed out on us yet, and by all accounts September is still beautiful here, with the Fall following on as a magical time, the predictions for a North American winter look grim.

The Farmers’ Almanac is using words like ‘piercing cold,’ ‘bitterly cold’ and ‘biting cold’ to describe the upcoming winter. And if its predictions are right, the first outdoor Super Bowl in years will be a messy ‘Storm Bowl.’

The NFL title hasn’t been decided in a snow storm since 1948, before the Super Bowl.

So that’s something to look forward to, then.