Oh, summer. How I have missed you.
Summer vacation for us is usually a whirlwind of travel and activity, but this year we're taking it easy: a fun little jaunt last week to say goodbye to some friends who are moving far away, and a French-language course in Montreal just before we return to school. Between that, six solid weeks of NO PLANS.
This week I cooked up a storm -- cherry recipes at the forefront, as I had picked 15+ pounds of them last weekend, but I also made dinner every night. Vegan dinner from scratch. Uh-huh.
I took advantage of two cool mornings and spent many contented hours weeding, though there are plenty more where those came from.
When two friends called on different days, needing rides from the train, I was able to drop everything, share a meal and catch up with them.
Finally, as a summer gift to myself, I spent 99 cents on a New York Times subscription so I could enjoy reading at my leisure. And on the first day of enjoying it, I ran into what might be the best news story of all time:
It’s hard to talk about Yo. The app is so simple (it lets users send the word “Yo” to each other) that even to mock it feels like taking it too seriously — come on guys, it’s just Yo! Luckily, hackers have made things easier on all of us by making Yo do some new tricks.
Pre-hack, critics had to evaluate Yo on its merits, which was somewhat difficult, since it has so few of them (and so few demerits, for that matter). Nonetheless, some rose to the challenge. At Yahoo, Alyssa Bereznak said the app’s one message “might be succinct, but then so is throwing a brick through the window.”
An app that exists solely so you can "Yo" your friends. Man, if only we could expand it to include other words as well . . . and pictograms . . . and photos . . . and maybe even a feature that would let one user talk to another user! That would really be something.
What a gift: time to enjoy life's exquisite ironies. I wish you the same!
