Summer Work

Summer. Work. I’ve never quite outgrown childhood’s summer vacation mentality, and it’s even harder now that I have kids of my own who get 10 weeks off. It’s a challenge to coordinate their freedom with my work, but I like to think I manage it with the grace and style pictured here.

Um, anyway, I have had a few things published so far this summer. Read on to see what you’ve missed.

One of my freelance goals this year was to expand the range of publications I work with, and I now I can report that goal is one of the things that gave way to berry picking this summer. Fortunately, I continue to write about law topics on a regular basis.

AvvoStories

If you’re afraid of flying, I’ve got a few new scenarios to add to your nightmares.

If you want to debunk a myth of American summertime traditions, read this about opening fire hydrants. Need more summer vacation spoilers? Free time during summer vacation is endangered, too.

Hateful free speech is a hot topic these days, too, but it seems to be more firmly protected when it’s coming from white male speakers.

Washington state has a new DUI law for electronics that will change the way people drive – hopefully for the better.

And it’s hard to think about the future in the middle of divorce, but co-parents need to plan for college, too.  Speaking of parenting…

ParentMap

Kids don’t have to grow up before they can make a difference. I collected an all-ages list of books and movies whose protagonists stand up for what they believe in.  And since it’s easy to forget what we’re fighting for when the whole world seems ugly, I visited the whimsical, symmetrical world of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors at Seattle Art Museum. The exhibit closes September 7, so if you’re anywhere near Seattle, get to SAM before school starts.

Blog

Here on the blog, my top three posts in June and July were:

June

Preamble

Rethinking the Blue Lagoon

Butchart Gardens

July

Seattle Opera Confronts the Ugly Side of Madame Butterfly

A Bookish Saga

Drummer

Over the two month period, most visitors were from the US and Canada, with UK and Australia also showing up. Despite an increase in Iceland-themed posts, Icelanders don’t seem to be reading this blog much anymore. Maybe they’ve become so inundated with tourists in the years since I started blogging that they no longer care what foreigners are saying about their island.

Search terms are not as entertaining as they used to be, but in June people ended up here with:

• gemma alexander skalmöld
• gemma d first interview

(they were probably looking for this)

and in July:

• eistnaflug pack tent

• blessed is the lamb of god

I hope that one of my many posts on Eistnaflug proved helpful (yes, you should have packed a tent) and that the second search result didn’t prove too much of a shock to the searcher.