Evening is falling. Outside, shadows have gathered under the luxuriously leafy trees that were little more than austere skeletons a few weeks ago. The air inside is warm and heavy. The cat peers suspiciously at the whirring fan and refuses to place herself in the way of its unnatural breeze.

We finished a few editorial revisions on Eight For Eternity today. There may be more, but it's another step in the right direction. The furnace was still going when we started composing the final chapters. Then there was the legal editing work I needed to get ahead on, in order to have time to meet my deadline for the law encyclopedia article, so that I could manage to get to the revisions, so that I could return to the article in good time. Mary had her own work. Meanwhile early spring has turned into summer.

I'm rather disinclined to labor on. It's an almost instinctual feeling, left over from my schooldays where the first summer-like heat heralded the last lethargic days of classrooms and the subsequent endless weeks of backyard freedom. I am ready to emerge from my dim, narrow burrow into the sunlight.

How many of our reactions to the world are governed by experiences in our past, out-of-date and irelevant though they may be? I'm no longer set free for the summer. No longer is there any routine from which I need to be set free.

Still, maybe I should take a day off in memory of summers past.