Yep. It's summer.

I'm in Iowa right now, visiting my mother. I grew up in this town and have visited here, off and on, for decades. There have been subtle changes but nothing major since I was a child.

The biggest change (to me) is the municipal swimming pool. Gone is the long rectangular structure, shaped like a truncated "L". The short bar was the diving end, the long bar was for swimmers. At the one end it was 8' deep, at the other it was 3'. In the diving part it was 12'.

Now there's 3 squarish pools. There's a kiddy pool, I think. Lots of young-uns and parents. And there's a pool with folks jumping around. And there's a diving area: diving boards and slides. I know that lap swims are allowed at certain times of the day (off-peak times), but for the life of me I can't figure out where a person could swim a decent lap.

Swimming has been on my mind lately. I grew up learning how to swim and I love doing it. I go to the pool at my local gym at least once a week to do laps. But it's been a long, long time since I just romped in a pool. You can't romp in hotel pools: they're too small. And you can't romp in the gym pool: it's too shallow. And it looks like I can't really romp in the municipal pool (it's too crowded! The temps are in the 90s here and high humidity, which means the pool is jammed).

Yep. It's summer. I'm thinking about how great a nice, long dip in the pool would feel...

Sigh. Back to the air conditioning.