If you haven’t noticed, we’re already wrapping up the first week of September, heralding the ber months: September, October, November, and December. And maybe, just maybe, high temps will be trailing out the door with August. Two weeks from today is the autumnal equinox, and you can bet your sweet bippy, things will be cooling down a bit, even if you don’t even know what a bippy is.

I guess I’m showing my age again, by using a turn of phrase that Millennials and Z-Gens have to look up on the internet for the meaning. Personally, it doesn’t seem so long ago that people hip to the jive were tossing out phrases like, “can you dig it?” or “sock it to me” or “catch you on the flip side.” Frankly, I can’t remember socking anything to anybody, asking someone to dig a hole, or showing anyone my flip side. Even when I tried being a hippie for a while.

You’ve probably heard that old drug culture joke that if you remember the sixties you weren’t there, but as Lou Reed admits in the Velvet Underground song Sweet Jane, “some people like to go out dancing, and other people (like us), they gotta’ work,” I was the latter. I confess to being a sorry excuse for a hippie, but at least I remember. My son told me one time that I’m his living history book for the 1960s.

We’re in that season again when multiple activities and events are going on at the same time. That can be frustrating when you want to attend every local event that happens at the same time. It’s one of those annoyances that ain’t so bad, and pardon my vernacular. When you think about it, we live day-to-day with all sorts of annoyances.

You know, like when you finally make ends meet and they move the ends.

But I was thinking, some annoyances are not of our choosing. Like from certain people, some from television, and some from just…the world. On the other hand, some come as the result of the choices we make. Like me going on the internet and expecting to see that I’ve won $800 million after investing a whole $2. Dang.

Or going to the internet to find something quickly, but it’s running interminably slow. Like

molasses. One of those annoyances that was unknown just a couple of decades ago.

The other day it was unbearably slow and there I was just fumbling around and frustrated. But then I said to myself, “Wait, this is just the internet.” It’s not real life.

There’s nothing you can do about it, like putting money into a vending machine and that Payday gets hung up and never drops down. But the internet is a different sort of animal, one could say like Emmanuel the Emu.

You could be working at your computer, writing or working on something, and after about 20 or 30 minutes say to yourself, “I’ll take a break for a minute and see what’s going on in the world.”

Check your email. Nothing except new junk mail.

Check your favorite news site, scan a few articles.

Check your bank account. Same as yesterday.

Check the weather forecast. Same as yesterday.

Check your email again.

Then you check in with your favorite addiction, Facebook. You’ve reached the point of no return. You won’t be getting anything done for the rest of the morning.

Oh my, the love/hate relationship we have with Facebook. This is where your friends – and friends of friends, and maybe even friends of friends of friends – post all those things they want to share, and boy-oh-boy, there’s a lot to look at…cats, dogs, kids, and even other peoples’ food. These days I half expect a server in a restaurant to come over and say something like, “Is everything OK? You haven’t photographed your food yet.”

Back to reality. I’m looking at the calendar and we’ve got tons of stuff returning in September and October when you have to plan your weekends almost down to the hour.

This Saturday hordes of pie-loving folks will converge on Pie Town for its annual Pie Festival, but wait there’s more.

Socorrofest is after that, and a week after that is San Miguel’s Fiestas, and the Saturday after that is Oktoberfest. Following that is the Great New Mexico Chile Taste-Off. The Saturday after that is the Trinity Site Open House and the 49ers Parade. On the same day, but mercifully, you’ll have time to squeeze in both.

In the meantime, I’m going back online and watch Emmanuel the Emu photobomb the farmer.

Oh, one more thing. Grandparents Day is this Sunday. I’ve only been at this grandparenting game for a few years but long enough to realize that my dad jokes are now granddad jokes.

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain