Summertime!

It amazes me how somehow every Memorial Day weekend summer suddenly hits you in the face. Last week I was wearing a jacket to work and sleeping with the windows open. Now I'm provisioning out the AC in my apartment like water in a drought -- 74 while I'm there, 70 while I sleep and 76 for Noli during the day. It's one thing to turn on the AC when it gets a little warm but at night I can just open the windows, but those days are over. And it's about to get expensive.

Regardless, I can't say I have any real complaints about summer. When I'm feeling overheated, I just remind myself of the first winter I spent in DC...

Temps plummeted in October and my car died, so I had to buy a new one almost immediately after moving here, effectively blowing through all my savings and my first paycheck. I couldn't afford Uggs so I wore tennis shoes to work every day (tennis shoes aren't warm at all, I found out), and my seven-minute walk to and from the Metro brought me to tears as the bitter cold wind sliced through me. And worst, no snow. It was so unfair.

Summertime, on the other hand, promises outdoor activities, barbecues, rooftop parties, lots of free events and plenty of weekend trips to the beach, the lake, the mountains and your friends' places in surrounding states. As I drove through the city with Noli yesterday, I couldn't help but roll down the windows and invite the 98-degree heat into the car. Noli and I happily welcomed summer, no matter how humid it was, and with full knowledge that it's going to get way worse.

This is what bliss looks like.

To celebrate the happiest time of the year, here's my summer playlist. Even in my windowless office, it puts me in a terrific mood. (If you have any songs to add, let me know!)

*Editors Note: Some of these songs do not have direct correlations to summer but rather make me think of summer because of when I first heard them. My musical awakening happened in 1994 when I was 13 and spent an unhealthy amount of time at the family lake house with my way cooler cousins and lake friends. Before that I listened exclusively to oldies with my mother, except for a few encounters with pop music at summer camp and on my neighborhood friend Jenny's Pocket Rocker.