Graduation! :D

Graduation parties. They're lots of fun, and I never realized quite how many people feel the need to give you presents when you hold one.

Lovely summer evenings when there's nothing more enjoyable to do than sit out on the deck and read, and then eat dinner with your family.

I assign the fresh deep green that first appears late spring, often after a rain. Oh, and also every other beautiful green...

Also the quiet summer twilights, when everything is starting to cool down, and the whole world is a soft blue.

It takes dirt roads to get there. The air has been heavy for days; you're beginning to think it's raining when it's not: your eyes play tricks, moving the opaque moisture in the air into imaginary sheets of slate and silver. It doesn't rain, it just is, and the pressure is intense. The corner of your eye catches ghost motions. Everything is green and shadow.

A high deck, looking out over fields and forests, ending in mountains that jag into the horizon. The sky above you was blue ten minutes ago; you see the last of the clearness fading away toward the mountains. Darkness envelopes you, and lightening flickers absently behind you. Thunder echoes faintly through the countours of the land. Ten year old boys throw balls in the grass below you. An old dog, wet from a recent frolic in the creek, naps on the hot wood. You watch the blue sky recede. You feel the energy in the air.

Without warning, the sky opens; you remember your book, your electronics; you remember that you forgot a change of clothes. You regretfully retreat indoors.

You stand, in a darkened room, in an open door, watching the sky fall, listening to a redwing blackbird berate the wind from the safety of an overhang.

Fresh coffee, the first you've had in a week, made just for you, is pressed into your hand. As you watch the violent storm break calmly from the dry indoors, you smell steam and feel the faint warm glow inside your chest that comes from your favorite indulgence.

Summer storms. I adore summer storms.

Doctors. They do an inspiring job...

Home-grown raspberries. I love that they grow so fast, you end up picking tons every day or two.

Fireflies. They're beautiful on summer evenings

The temperature soars to 96 humid degrees. The sun is roasting. It rained for just long enough to saturate the air and fill it with the smell of steam on pavement. The early afternoon has been spent laying on the floor under a lazily spinning ceiling fan watching Optimus Prime die surrounded by his beloved Autobots after battling Megatron and the Decepticons for one last heart-wrenching time... This is about to sound like an advertisement.

Dunkin Donuts. Because they're air conditioned, they have really good coffee that's just as good iced, and they're across the road from a gas station that's only charging $3.02 per gallon. Hecks yes for cheap[er] gas and cold coffee. :)

lying in my garden, listening to Neil Young on my ipod, watching the clouds go by

Finding a used book store you've never been in. Realizing it's your dream store, at the end of a long driveway surrounded by untended rose and lily beds, with flourishing peonies and weeds, with cats wandering through the towering shelves of books that reach far over your head. Three stories in a renovated barn, with labyrinthine aisles and steep staircases with rickety railings. The smell of must and books that haven't been opened during your lifetime, being sold for a dollar a piece.

Spontaneous sushi lunch outings.

A Superman t-shirt that cost less than a gallon of gas.

Cooler weather than yesterday. :cool:

Oi, missus! That's my house, not a bookshop! :D

I assign to The Shire when they put Lord of the Rings references into Doctor Who. :eek: They have truly surpassed themselves with this last series and that just added a cherry on top of the cake....

Lemonade on hot days.

Fireworks after a baseball game. Even if the game was phenomenally bad (my team lost 16-7, after making 9 errors!), it's lovely to sit in the outfield on an old sheet and watch explosions set to music. :cool:

6 straight hours of cheerleading. It's nice to feel that you're doing something constructive (and actually exercising properly!) and so when you manage to get through almost all the routine and succeed in getting two stunts up within that it does leave you with a feeling of great satisfaction.

Captain Jack being the Face of Boe.

Mmmm, just Captain Jack (not of the Sparrow variety, though he is welcome too ;) ). And a succession of visually appealing Timelords...

Errrr....

:Merisu:

Being at home.

I assign going to a movie with a sibling - when the movie is actually good.

Our timing was just right, we gasped and breathed "Oh, cool!" at the same moments, laughed at the horrible dialogue together, sighed at the lame dialogue together, looked away and didn't laugh at the inappropriate dialogue together, and made up our own sequel happenings while we were walking out of the theater.

And the SFX in Transformers too. Wow. Cool. Mind-blazingly cool, I mean it.

Hmmm...your find sounds much more picturesque, but I just found a regular storefront edition not 5 miles from my house (but it does have cats -- I suppose necessary to keep the rodents from nibbling the treasures), operated by a feisty old lady who I believe has memorized each of the thousands of books crammed to the rafters. I found a folio copy of Duc de Berry's Les Tres Rich Heures in excellent condition (I'm a 14th century fanatique), a four-volume set of Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, an early English translation edition of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and various and sundry hardbound novels to replace tattered paperbacks (Huxley, Dee Brown, Orwell, T.H. White).

I came home excitedly with my finds, only to have my significant other roll her eyes and walk away mumbling something about my books spilling out of the study and encroaching on her living room space, the spare bedroom, the dining room and the first floor bathroom. She's so easily irritated.

the catbird seat
 

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64.../cat.book1.jpg

PS. Sorry for the size. I have tried to make this smaller, but somehow that ain't happening here.

Hmmm...it would seem this philosophical feline is deeply engrossed in his catechism.

I assign the covers on the Danish versions of Harry Potter, I really like them and I do so even more after seeing the American and English ones.

I assign summer holiday.

PS. Rune, how do you like the Finnish ones? They're quite... original and I can't say if I like them or not.

ale,
bag-end,
the green dragon,
hobbit holes,
trees,
peace,
and you can't forget Hobbits!

A long, leisurely Sunday breakfast shared with a good friend at the local diner.

Pancakes, eggs, sausage, crispy bacon, hashbrowns, biscuits covered in gravy, and bottomless cups of coffee with cream and sugar to wash it all down. Pleasant company, good conversation.....

Life is good, eh?

:)

I second long breakfasts and the company of friends but (and I know it means something different that side of the pond) but biscuits covered in gravy still sounds incredibly revolting ..... at best it is something you might give a dog... but hten I'd quite happily eat Toad-in-the-hole

Sleep. :) Really, you cannot fully appreciate something you're used to until you stop getting enough of it.

Rain. We so need it.

Coming home from a two week vacation. Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful vacation, but home, ah, well it's home.

Having one eye that is perfectly fine. Preferably two.

Unsolicited backrubs. :)

If you were around, I'd give you one, but I have to disagree on it anyway. I find them painfull. They do releive headaches though:rolleyes:.

I second sleep!

I also nominate good, fluffy, home-made biscuits with lots of butter and home-made peach-butter.

I recommend the Raiders of the Lost Ark approach. "Well, goddamnit Indy, where doesn't it hurt??"

:)
I'll have to second that, except with hip joints and legs.

~ Ka

I assign suspended classes. I know we'll suffer later because we have to make up for what we missed, but it's fun at the time all the same.

I assign Freedom.

*waves small green, white, orange and blue flag*

i assign parties to the shire.
lots of good food, meeting in the morning for breakfast, having lunch and tea together at the same day
beer and cider
dancing a lot
all the people work in crafts and make fun of people who read to much
strawberries
a very very blue sky
rain outside a cup of tea inside
fiddles

uhm... and actually i assign chavs to the shire. i just imagine some of the hobbits to be like chavs. i have always thought pippin would have been a chav if he was born today.

Going shopping and finding exactly what you're looking for in the first shop you go in. Makes things so much easier.

Plus spending the day with friends, especially when you haven't seen them in a while.

Finally, the Simpsons Movie, 'cause I have now seen it 3 times and it made me laugh as much on the third viewing as it did on the first. Spider pig is gold. :D

The first cool days at the end of summer.

You aren't in Britain then? ;)

I assign cold, wet summers. Not only has it been much more comfortable than I expected/feared, but the Honeysuckle is covered in flowers because the constant rain has beaten the greenfly into submission. And Honeysuckle belongs in The Shire because it smells soooo good! Kind of like a mixture of warm cowsheds and sugar. ;)

Ducklings. They are so adorable. (Don't tell me it's the wrong time for this, it's my ducks fault, not mine.)

Spontaneous late-night outdoor singing. Being able to sit on pleasantly warm pavement and listen to someone sing and play songs they've written is lovely.

The University of Copenhagen

(I got in. . .I don't know how)