The happiest day of the year

According to a Welsh psychologist who derived a formula for its calculation, today is the happiest day of the year. In case you ever wanted to do some number crunching on your own:

O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He

Where O = being outdoors and outdoor activity,
N = nature,
S = social interaction,
Cpm = childhood summers and positive memories,
T = temperature,
He = holidays and looking forward to time off.

I love Toronto in the summer. There’s so much to do! Summer festivals, blading and people-watching down by the Beaches, sitting out on the patio, backyard BBQs and browsing the weekend artisans’ market at the Distillery District…This weekend alone marks the beginning of the Toronto Jazz Festival, the Dragon Boat races at Centre Island, and the culmination of Pride Week.

Then there’s the stuff to do outside of the city: the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, wine-tasting in Niagara, cottaging and camping (not that I have ever engaged in the latter, since I’m a city girl and I must have my creature comforts—staying at a cottage is the closest I’ve ever come to roughing it.)

The best thing I like about summer though is that I get to wear all my pretty girly-girl skirts!—and I have many. I probably have enough summer skirts (not including dresses) that I could go about a month without repeating. That being the case, I’m trying to cut back on the purchase of said skirts, which appears to be working pretty well since I haven’t bought a new summer skirt this year.

BUT! (And there’s always a but.) It seems like I’ve just taken the funds that I would have spent on skirts and re-directed them towards other things. I’ve never really considered myself a shoe girl, but in the last 3 months alone, I’ve bought 8 pairs of shoes, soon to be 9 pairs because I need to find one to go with this gold and cream silk brocade dress I bought to wear to a friend’s wedding…it has a full-ish pleated skirt with pockets. Very Oscar de la Renta!

So, with all that’s going on this weekend, what am I going to do with myself? Tomorrow, I think I will shop in the morning, and perhaps take in some jazz later on in the day and Sunday I plan on catching some rays while out at the parade with the boys. It should be much fun!