Big Mistake. Really big mistake. Today, as I write this, is July 7. I realize it may not be July 7 where you are or when you read this, but I can live with that. Here and now it is definitely the Monday after our long weekend long birthday celebration for America and the Back to School sales have already started.

Franklin County, Vermont, celebrates the Fourth of July twice: once on the Fourth of July and once on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July when thousands of residents and guests crowd in to St. Albans Bay for a day of family stuff, music, and fireworks. I got my Summer Sounds concert band, Rumble Doll, set up, got my mug on teevee, and, of course, spent some quality time in the lake. My new sandals seem to have stood up to total immersion.

Tom Oliver did a great job with the fireworks; this may have been his best yet with some new “spiders” that dropped their legs all the way to the water and a finale that included high and low skybursts with Roman candles.

And it took only an hour for enough cars to clear out that I could drive home.

Summer.

The entire summer is ahead of us.

I don’t know about the rest of the world but I don’t want to be in a classroom in July.

We read the Burlington Free Press on Sundays here in Vermont because it is the only Sunday paper sold here that has a TV section and a reasonable number of advertising inserts for the stores we patronize.

I like the sales, see…

The sales often confuse me, though. I have to wonder why stores expect to sell Summer clothing in February, Winter clothing in June, and school supplies this week.

Staples® has “one cent deals” through Wednesday as part of the Back to School ’08 national promotion. I’m reading their advertising flier now. Dixon® #2 yellow pencils for a penny. I like #2 pencils and Dixon® makes pretty good ones but does anyone actually use wooden pencils anymore? There are two-pocket paper folders for a penny, too. I like two-pocket folders but I don’t use them much for reports because I prefer a report that reads like a book, so I use staples or a folder that grabs the edges.

Back to school? It is weeks, count ’em, long weeks before school starts.

The mistake? Timing is everything. The stores obviously should have held the sales in June when people were still actually thinking about school, not now when I want to sit on the beach. That was easy®.