How to tell when it's summer

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Columnist

Summer in Honolulu is:

• Praying for the trade winds to return.

• Searching for a parking space at Ala Moana Beach Park.

• Cutting the grass every week.

• Wishing you took the A/C package with your new car — or 'Ewa home — when you had the chance.

• Shave ice.

• Perfecting your chicken marinade: soy sauce, lemons and lots of hot pepper.

• Asking people if it's hot enough for them.

• Wishing the college baseball season didn't end in May.

• Remembering the coldest Bud in town at the Columbia Inn.

• Wishing you hadn't flunked math class in the seventh grade.

• Iced tea, lemonade and Diet Cokes by the case.

• Chilled mountain apples.

• Going to matinee movies, no matter how bad they are.

• Root beer Slurpees and Coke Icees.

• Ice cream by the quart.

• Looking forward to the first UH football game in the fall.

• Too many kids at the mall.

• August moon.

• Fresh Waimanalo corn.

• The Perseid meteor shower.

• Taking the kids to Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park and wishing you could afford Disneyland instead.

• Beer and bratwurst on the barbecue.

• Planning next year's vacation as soon as this one is over.

• The best-tasting local pineapples.

• SPF 30.

• Hoping the brush fires stay high on the hill.

• "Humdinger, eh?"

• The annual browning of Diamond Head slopes.

• If you're going to boycott TV, now's the time to do it.

• Hot as a pistol but cool inside.

• Birthday Bash at the Shell.

• Reading trashy books without guilt. Try the new "Motley Crue" biography.

• Bodyboarding off Waikiki; snorkeling at Three Tables.

• Night-blooming cereus.

• Only five more months till Christmas.

Mike Leidemann's columns appear Thursdays and Saturdays in the Advertiser. He can be reached at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com