Brent Olson: Get lazy and enjoy summer!

It's summertime. The hostas are wilting because the maple tree you'd counted on to shade them has some sort of blight. Rabbits have girdled two thirds of your apple trees. Your garden, which looked so clean and neat in May, is now growing foxtail and lambsquarter faster than you can get at them with the hoe.

So, what should you do?

Quit.

Seriously. Just pack it in. Get yourself a trashy novel, a glass of lemonade, and kick back. It's the right thing to do, and there's even a technical term for it.

You're rebooting.

Go to default

I've been a fan of this technique for years but never really thought it through in detail until now. You see, I recently installed a wireless Internet system in my house. It was no big deal. I bought a little gizmo in a box and then spent the next four days talking to a guy in India about how to install it. It works pretty well most of the time. And when it doesn't, all I do is shut everything off, wait a few minutes, and start stuff back up.

Why does that work? Geez, I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, anything more complicated than a '66 Chevy is basically magic. As it's been explained to me, when you reboot, everything goes back to the default settings. Apparently, when a computer is used a lot, the settings start to drift, errors creep in, and after a while even the simplest tasks seem impossible.

Sometimes the only solution is to get back to default. And it's one of the best reasons to live a country life. When you live in a place of birth and death, beginnings and endings, keeping a grip on what matters can be a little bit easier.

Everybody has their own way of rebooting. With the wireless system, I crawl under my desk, turn off the power strip, wait a minute, and turn it back on. When I see three green lights on the little black box, I turn the computer on, click the little Internet icon, and bada bing, I'm back in the game.

Hyperactive sloth

When I need to reboot personally, I lurch between sloth and hyperactivity -- evenings with my feet up staring into a campfire, or days working myself into sweaty exhaustion cleaning up the grove or turning an old hog house into a metal shop.

My wife is more of the nurturing type. Whether it's pulling weeds in her garden and throwing bad feelings and resentments onto the compost heap along with the quack grass, hand-feeding an orphaned kitten, or spending an afternoon in the shade giggling with a small child, her defaults clearly revolve around the essentials of life.

Mankind has always journeyed to lost and lonely places to seek wisdom. Nothing's changed in the modern world. A coffee shop may land you stock tips, and bars are terrific places for sports talk, but if you want to hear what's really important in life, you need to be someplace quiet.

This summer, find a quiet place and spend a little time rebooting. Your whole system will work better.