Top 10 Things of the Summer: #10 Sam & Meg

I started this blog in early June, but haven't written on it, mostly because I've struggled with deciding how to start writing. I've been under the impression that my first post had to be some kind of monumental definition of Self, something that really summed up who I am, that would draw countless hits to my site, get my blog featured in EW's PopWatch, and maybe even provoke a few tears.

I've given up on that post.

Instead, I'm going to actually get started on this dang thing with a Letterman-style Top 10 List of the best things about my summer. Lame, perhaps, but substantial compared to a blank page.

So...My #10 Thing of the Summer: Hanging out with Family Friends, Sam & Meg


Now, this might seem like an unlikely blockbuster summer event, but I hadn't seen Sam (my dad's best friend from his teens, and the brother of the guy I was named after) and his partner, Meg, for three years since my family visited them in San Francisco in summer of 2005. They are the most esoteric people in many ways, always becoming comsumed, sometimes passionately, in the smallest pursuits. This summer, they were really into figuring out the best way to make sun-tea, watching every single episode of The Twilight Zone, coming up with one-syllable nick-names for public figures (Barack Obama was BOb), and using their fingers to predict the time of sunset to the minute. (You can do this by facing the sun, making a fist, extending your arm toward the sun, and counting the number of fingers between the bottom of the sun and the horizon. 20 minutes per finger. It really works!) These interests seem insignificant unless you hear Sam and Meg talk about them with all the passion of a zealot. I, for one, find myself infected by their enthusiasm, and I end up becoming just as consumed by these gems of curiosity as Sam & Meg.