10. New kitchen. Strictly speaking, our contractor wrapped up work on the major remodeling of our kitchen in late spring. But insofar as summer was the first full season that we really got to enjoy the fruits of his labors, this definitely belongs on this list. I would describe all the improvements, but what's the point, really? Suffice it to say that the most used room in our house is infinitely more usable & thus infinitely more cool.

9. Slow binge watching TV: Malcolm in the Middle, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bojack Horseman. The Beloved Spousal Unit and I watched a bit more TV than in past years, and having cut the cable a few years back, this chiefly consisted of shows found online (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon) and through SlingTv. It helped a lot that we no longer had to take them in though the minuscule screen of my MacBook but rather through the 27 inch 5K retina iMac we got last spring. Of the three above, Curb Your Enthusiasm stood out as most cool, particularly for those of us who missed the creator's other series, a little show called Seinfeld.

[Runners-up: The Office, Arrested Development]

8. JH's Good Movies. Early in the summer I realized I had achieved a sufficient level of boredom that it was time I actually rethink shutting down my blog, My Parkinson's Diary, for the summer. Well, fortunately cooler heads prevailed and rather than writing actual entries in the blog I decided to share titles and teaching rationales for a list of movies that I had compiled from those that I had used to good effect during my teaching career. This was cool because nothing takes me down memory lane in a good way like looking back on watching Pee Wee's Big Adventure every spring with some juniors just itching to get outta school.

7. Coffee, Dinner and Drinks with Matt, Stephanie, Natalie & Evan. I met up with these former students separately and together for various forms of companionability. Whether having coffee at Starbucks, spending an evening at home with our kids or heading out for dinner and drinks, all of these occasions had one very cool thing in common: a powerful current of love that has been ongoing since we shared a classroom as teacher and students.

6. Interlochen. I reckon this was the 60th summer since I first camped at Interlochen, and this was the third since we started snagging a cabin for Mom and Dad while letting the boys stay in their tent, aka the man cave, across the way. Despite that single concession to comfort spurred by the Parkinson's that has left me too unsteady on my feet to be able to move around safely in a tent, pretty much everything else has remain unchanged of our routine "up north," the most ironic name ever for a piece of geography that feels as close to heaven on earth as I'm likely to find, and thus about the coolest place I live all year long.

5. Zelda! We got a new puppy this summer, picked her up at the pound in Ann Arbor and brought her home where she fit right in. Zelda's a Labrador-Spaniel mix, black from the tips of her nose & tail, and has come along very nicely in terms of potty training, thank you very much. She's Charlie's dog, really, and I gotta say it warms my heart to see the way he's stepped up to look after her. She's a great dog with a great master, and those are just two reasons why it's cool that she's joined the family.

4. #StupidShitCharlieSays. Speaking of Charles Preston Hanley, I came up with this hashtag to describe the nonstop verbal trolling he inflicted on the fam during our vacation. I ain't gonna lie about it; there was very little cool about it; at the same time, I wouldn't want to forget this very special stage in his development, and so there it is.

3. Coffee w JEH. For reasons too complicated to explain here, I ended up going to Ann Arbor for coffee with Jack at least once a week this past summer. All I can say is that if you have a similar kid, you should be so lucky as to be able to spend time getting to know them the way I got to know Jack this summer. Because Jack is one cool kid indeed.

2. Summer w WPH. Walter, my first born, came home for the summer from MSU where he'd had a predictably great first year. I could go on and on about his academic achievements, but that kind of bugs me when other parents do it, so I will just say that it was so damn good to have the big goof back home occupying my study, coming home with nannying war stories, sitting down at the table for dinner and just being my pal again. I love that kid more than it's easy for me to express here, and I guess that's as good a reason as any to say why this is a cool thing.

1. Endless love, bottomless kindness, infinite patience of JBH. Julie Boyer Hanley, my wife, the BW, Beloved Spousal Unit, however you want to describe her, is just the best thing that ever happened to me. Her love for me has only become more apparent during my struggle with Parkinson's Disease as she as shown kindness beyond measure (even as she has mixed in the sternness of the great nurse she is where necessary) and really, I'm not exaggerating here, patience as broad and deep as the universe in helping me to stay on my feet and fight this fucking disease. I suspect she knew it would be a handful, being my wife, the day she married me, but by God, she's really stuck by me in sickness and in health, and at risk of trivializing her loyalty with the adjective, that, during the summer of 2016 with all its ups and downs, has been the coolest thing of all.