Scenes from a summer

Hello, can someone please explain to me how it got to be practically mid-July already? Is this a getting-older thing, with the time passing so quickly? I'd be annoyed, but summer is my least-favorite season so I guess I'll let it pass. This time.

Here are some random things that have been happening around here:

• Our July 3rd Fourth of July party was a success! Even though it was 105 degrees outside when I was inside chopping vegetables before the party, and the dog barfed on one of the few clean patches of carpet left in the living room about an hour before our guests were due to arrive (OF COURSE HE DID). The photo above of our backyard with the volleyball net and the gazebo tarp thingie over the patio was taken this morning; obviously the recovery stage is taking a while.
• I'm all caught up on Breaking Bad and am totally ready for the premier of Season 4 later this month, so you may all collectively exhale and move on with your lives. Except that now I'm trying to get caught up with Dexter. So maybe hold off for another couple of weeks.
• Husband P has had a work colleague in town from India this week, and last night we took him to a baseball game. And I discovered that baseball is about 100,000 times less complicated than cricket, rules-wise. So it's probably a good thing I live in the U.S. of A. because I fear I'd be an extremely confused sports fan if I lived elsewhere (see also: hockey, I totally don't get it).
• In related news: I am so ready for football season. SO. READY. Mostly because football season is in the fall, which is my FAVORITE season, even though we don't really get much of a fall here in central Texas, weather-wise.
• We ate a lot of crappy junk food in the week leading up to our party (because there was no room to store leftovers in the fridge with all the party food in there) and a lot of leftovers in the week after our party (because HOLY CATS did I ever make way too much food) but now everything has been either frozen or pitched and I am cooking again and this pleases me.
• I think my reading mojo is returning, too. On the to-be-read stack right now: Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Robin Mather's The Feast Nearby.
• Both in Kindle form. More about that later.