1) Could there have been a lazier day? After getting to bed somewhere after 1:30 AM, up at 7ish, coffee, writing, conversation - and then a NAP before lunch. Before lunch.
2) Didn't feel like "rushing off in the heat of the day" for anything, even the beach. So I didn't shuffle down the road until about 2:30 in the afternoon. This being July Fourth weekend, bicycles were locked further down Route 6 than I've ever seen them before.
3) The erosion at the entry has accelerated in the last three years. This year the grade is easier to manage, but I wonder how long it will be until the CCNS has to put in a platform or something.
Erosion, year three.
4) Your fashion correspondent noticed the rising popularity of "beach-to-bar" swim trunks, briefer and crisper-looking than those abominable board shorts. But speedos are still de rigueur here, and white speedos were spotted exactly five times.
5) I get into the zone while plodding down the beach to find a spot, so I completely missed seeing and hearing a couple friends calling out to me. I ended up taking over their spot as they left.
6) I hadn't brought anything to read - shocking! - but with a view like this of the incoming tide, who needs to read? Just five lines - sand, surf, sea, smog, sky - and yet they hold all the world's magic.
7) Departures began about an hour after I arrived - off to get ready for Tea, no doubt - and by 5ish there were only about a dozen beachgoers scattered in wide spaces on either side of me.
8) I lingered until about 6:30, during the golden hour when the beach light is at its very best. As usual, the trek back during high tide meant I was sometimes in water up to my waist going through the dunes.
9) On returning home, surprise! Housemates were treating the household to a grilled swordfish dinner. Om nom nom.
10) Hostly dialogue —
Hochimina: “Don’t you ever look at your texts?”
Me: “My phone was in my backpack.”
Hochmina (to housemates): “Robert is technology challenged.”
Me (smiling nevertheless): “MY PHONE WAS IN MY BACKPACK COURTEOUSLY SET TO VIBRATE!"
11) Since I'd arrived so close to dinnertime, there was nothing left for me to do but wash the dishes afterward, which I was very happy to do after such a good dinner. Did I mention the braised figs?
12) The house settled down to watch Walk the Line, but I headed off to Comical Street to see what was doing. The answer? Not much for me.
13) Inexplicably, I ended up watching Island in the Sun, which I'd never seen. I think it must have been because I'd seen Olivia de Haviland's The Dark Mirror yesterday, and Joan Fontaine is in this. Along with James Mason, Joan Collins (oomph!), Dorothy Dandridge (I'd never seen one of her films before), Harry Belafonte (mmphgh!), and my beloved Diana Wynyard as a British matron with a shocking secret.
14) As Mae West famously said in Myra Breckinridge, "Ah, the end of another busy day!" Now on to Monday.