The end of summer... and, yes, I know it's still July

The late summer cicadas are in the trees now, their pulsating whine in the early evening drowning out the airplanes coming into O'Hare (no mean trick in and of itself). They seem to have started particularly early this year, probably because its been warmer than usual. Certainly it's been lots warmer than last summer, which was one of the coolest on record in Chicago.

But the cicadas are not the only harbinger of approaching autumn.

You know how the "bees" (really they're yellow jackets but we're City folk and not supposed to know the difference) get more aggressive as the first frost draws near?

Well, they haven't started yet. Not really.

But Youngest Son's baseball season is almost over and the fiction of football "camps" is shortly to be discarded in favor of good old-fashioned practices. My wife has been working non-stop on school-related stuff all week. She even went into school a couple times looking for things. I even went with her once.

The school year is almost upon us. Youngest Son will start classes two weeks from Monday. Long Suffering Spouse may have seminars week after next. She'll be in her classroom more and more now. Younger Daughter will hold out until nearly the end of August -- but not all of the yellow jackets get aggressive at the same time, do they?

Summer's almost over and I could have sworn it was just the 4th of July.