The office is now on "summer hours."  I tell the crew, "If you feel like a popsicle, have a popsicle."  Or a Fresca.  Or some melon.

I don't have a summer trip lined up.  No plane tickets.  No car reservations.  If I travel it will be in the fall.  That's when the smart money hits the road. 

What I do have are these:



New sneakers.  It's been awhile.  I've been kicking around town in running shoes, but I've never liked that look -- too middle-aged, too Larry David. 

These Nike court shoes rock.  They're vibrant.  Not everybody has the strong personality necessary to pull off  orange-trimmed footwear.  But they look good on me. 

They pair well with denim:



If I'm headed to P.F. Chang's - or a gated community - I can mate these shoes with some khakis:



I discovered these shoes at Marshall's.  The merchandise there is usually out-of-season, or discontinued, or factory seconds.  But once in a while you get lucky and find something top-shelf.  This was one of those times and I take it as a good omen for the summer ahead. 

Epiphany - This was the only pair of shoes like this at Marshall's.  They're a size 13.  Not everybody is a size 13.  I'm not even a size 13 and that almost kept me away.  Then I realized that this is going to be the summer of expanding possibilities, expanding consciousness, possibly even expanding feet.  These shoes will be my reminders, for the next three months, that what I was in the past does not dictate what I will be in the future.  The old Nike motto "Just Do It" is played out.  It did the job, got people off the couch, created a cosmic inertia.  But now that kinetic energy needs to be channeled to a higher purpose.  The mantra for this epochal summer of 2008, "Just Do It Bigger and Better."