1.      What was your best summer vacation like?

 Hands down the best summer vacation I ever had was my honeymoon the week of June 20, 1999. I was madly in love (and still am), I was cruising the Caribbean and seeing some of the most gorgeous places I had ever seen. What could be more perfect? My husband says he wouldn’t count that as summer vacation because it was our honeymoon, but hey, it was in the summer, I was in paradise and I was on my own for the first time with him. To me, it counts!

 2.      What was your worst vacation like?

 I don’t think I had a worst summer vacation – maybe there were some not-so-good ones when I got sick visiting my grandmother, but she always took good care of me, so they weren’t so terrible.

 3.      What food or drink reminds you of a particular summer?

 One of my favorite beach memories is of the first trip I took with my (then future) in-laws. Bill’s aunt and uncle were there too and one night after being on the beach most of the day, we decided to stay in for dinner. The problem was, none of us wanted the same thing. We ended up with a smorgasbord that included crab cakes, pizza, possibly chicken (I can’t remember that) and the piece de resistance, spaghetti in a bucket. There used to be a restaurant in Springfield called Pasta In The Bucket and every time I heard their commercials it would make me laugh to think of all that foolishness in Ocean City, Maryland.

 4.      What summer only activity do you now look most forward to every year?

 The summer-only activity I look forward to more every summer is golf with my husband. I used to dread golf because I feared looking like an idiot and embarrassing Bill because I wasn’t very good at it. I took one lesson where the instructor changed my swing and I’ve been steadily improving since then. It’s a summer-only ritual for us because football starts in August and I don’t play by myself. The winters here are too cold to play, so our season really lasts from May to the end of July.

 5.      What summer movie or summer reading are you looking forward to this year?

 I don’t really have any summer movies I care to see this year, except maybe Super 8 (because Spielberg has never done a bad alien movie!). The book I’d really like to get down to brass tacks on reading this summer is The Boundaries of Her Body, a case law examination of women’s rights law.