Summer Lovin Guest Blog by Mike Taylor

I hesitated to ask my husband Mike to guest blog for me since it's not really his thing and he's so busy at work I didn't want to give him another thing he has to do but he jumped in and put together this fun Summer Lovin' blog! Enjoy!

I’m not really one for blogging outside of the occasional good old fashioned rant. In fact I have started and stopped several blogs before anyone even knew they were out there. So when my wife of nearly seven years who has been blogging successfully for the past two years steady asked me to put together my thoughts for an entry into her summer lovin’ series I really couldn’t say no.

The topic at hand, I have to say, does not come naturally to me. I don’t love summer. I’m a native Floridian, and for the first 25 years of my life I thought summer was a 325 day event proving that hell really could exist on Earth. For those who live here, or visit often, you know what I mean. Still, surely there at least 5 things to be happy about.

So here we go… countdown style.

Number 5: People stop trying to get you to do stuff outside for no good reason.

This is a big win for a homebody like me. I’m not a fan of the outdoors in Florida. Big guys don’t do well in the heat and humidity. During the summer, when the sun reaches weapons-grade heat and the storms start rolling in, everyone seems to get on my page about finding indoor alternatives to meandering around theme parks, playing sports, and taking day trips that would be perfectly pleasant in any other climate beyond tropical.

It’s not that I dislike doing any of those things I just don’t like to sweat my butt off before the activity even begins.

Number 4: Movies, movies, movies.

Make no mistake I enjoy me a good movie. Heck, even more than a good movie, I enjoy a good ‘bad’ movie. Summer seems to bring the biggest crop of my kind of movies. The further from reality the movie is the better.

Don’t give me a legal drama. If I want to see that I would hang out at the courthouse.

Romantic comedies, well, they better be darn funny.

Give me that big-budget, aliens, magic, monsters, and super-powers flick every time in a nice dark, cold theater full of like-minded geeky people sucking down $10 sodas and $20 candy. That’s a darn good time.

Most summers we find ourselves seeing at least one movie a week between May and August.

Number 3: A little something I like to call the ‘teleanticipatory condition’.

Summer comes and all of your favorite TV shows wind to their season finales. Soon after they are replaced by teen dramas and second rate reality shows that even the networks admit were not good enough for the regular season. I’m not a 14 year old girl. I don’t care about Making or Breaking the Secret Life of the Pretty American Teenage Liar. I’m not saying there is nothing on, but True Blood and Rescue Me hardly fill out a viewing schedule for a TV lover like me.

Basically, summer TV is lacking, so we look ahead to the fall, TV’s promised land.

Will the shows I love continue to develop as I feel they should? Will the show that let me down last year make the best of avoiding cancellation and redeem itself? Will one of the many new shows I’ve been reading about be my next fixation? Will the new cartoons keep my inner child happy?

It’s the teleanticipatory condition.

Number 2: When it rains, it pours.

One of the great things about Florida is the weather. I don’t mean the cloudless skies, highs in the 70s kind of weather in the brochures. I’m talking about the real Florida weather.

Simply put, typical Florida weather consists of daily thunderstorms yielding lightning strikes in the hundreds or better, inches of horizontal rain causing a white-out of your neighbor’s house while your house stays dry as a bone, wind gusting and blowing through every tree like a wall of force, and the whole phenomena is come and gone in about 30 minutes.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved looking out my window and watching these intense displays of precipitation. Only now I don’t feel so inclined to run outside afterwards and sit in the mud. Too much laundry.

Number 1: B-B-Q!

Okay, I know this one seems like it runs totally against #5 above, but I don’t care. I love to Barbeque. The hot coals crackling, the plume of fire heating the metal surfaces, the smell of smoke and lighter fluid mingling with dry rub and basting sauces. Ah, that’s the stuff.

I think, despite the modernization of contemporary grilling, there is something very primal and ultimately satisfying about using a simple fire to cook your food. It seems somehow pure, like it is the way we were meant to prepare food.

I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t like to eat animals. More power to you. It just means more chicken thighs, burgers, ribs, steaks, chops, and hot dogs for me!