The End of the Rainiest Summer of Life.

This summer was by no means a write-off, it did have its perks.

I had a job for start, unlike many other people my age this year, thanks to our ass-dragging economy.

I had fun too.

Camping at Point Farms Prov. Park with my girlfriend, going to a camp I worked at for years to hang with some of my best chums, a couple days at the beach that came complete with a sweet sunburn that included a sunscreen-induced tan line hand print on my shoulder, and of course, many more beers and glasses of Scotch than Health Canada would ever approve of were consumed.

However, since my childhood, summers were spent mostly in Muskoka when I was really young, and more recently, from the age of about 11 until last summer, mostly on the shores of Lake Huron.

This summer, I spent that precious, quickly-fleeting beach time in an office on the 20th floor in downtown Toronto.

Now, I'm not looking for sympathy, we can't laze on the beach all summer, every summer, and I consider myself lucky for spending more time by the lake in my life than the average person.

It does seem though, that with the first day of school being tomorrow that nobody in Ontario really had a full summer to enjoy this year.

It hardly felt like it ever topped 20 degrees until the end of June, and even when it finally did, the whole month of July, the best month to drink ice cold beer in the sun, it rained every day and made everybody think it was March again, and nobody wanted to get out of bed.

Finally, August brought some sunshine, a thing Canadians cherish more than the Sahara Desert cherishes rain, because summer is ALWAYS way to short around here, and everybody got their boats to the lake, too late in the season and took the family camping when the ground was finally dry for the first time in two months.

It may seem like I'm whining, especially to those working stiffs that have spent every summer for the past 35 years locked away in a cubicle five or six days a week, and living on a steady diet of Tim Hortons and Player's King Size, however, I choose not to be one of those, yet at least, and I feel ripped off this year.

Ripped off that I didn't see a lake on more than 3 occasions. (Except Lake Ontario which would be better described as a chemical dump.)

Ripped off that I didn't get much of a tan this year for the first time in 6 or 7 summers.

Ripped off that I did menial labour in a plain white room with no paintings or pictures on the walls and was the only male in the office which comes with self-explanatory problems and annoyances.

I am not feeling sorry for myself. All of what I say is fact here.

I just wish we could drown the weather people on TV for being right in what they say for once, and start back in May again so I could at least have a decent tan.