Had a lovely time at the shore

The weather was wonderful and cool! In case any of you mistakenly think the water was warm, lemme tell ya, it was C-O-L-D. Cold enough to keep me out of the ocean. Mind you, in my native Puerto Rico we didn’t have hypothermia to worry about when in the ocean — or elsewhere — we only had to ponder whether there were any sharks making their appointed rounds, so maybe I’m oversensitive. You can tell the water at the shore was cold that The Husband put his wetsuit to use. Younger members of the family jumped right in and didn’t seem to complain, at least for the first hour. Most of the time the people in the water were in the age 12-17 demographic, except for the older males in wetsuits.

I sat by the water protected by SPF45 sunblock, a visor, sunglasses, and long-sleeved shirt. The label on the sunblock claims it contains Collagen, Elastin, Vitamin A, C, E and Pro-vitamin B5, which might be a good thing; at least it didn’t feel gooey. It was much too windy to put up beach umbrellas. There were many people bundled in towels and sweatsuits.

When at the shore I read. Not serious reading; I gave up on attempting serious reading at the beach years ago when I got sunburned after repeatedly falling asleep from reading Proust. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This year’s authors of choice were Steve H. Graham and Janet Evanovich.

Steve, for those not familiar with him, is the guy from the Hog On Ice blog. He’s also a devoted cook, a guy who really loves his food. He’s compiled several outstanding recipes and published Eat What You Want and Die like a Man: The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. His not-secret-at-all ingredient is lard. Oh yeah. Good old fashioned honest to goodness lard. If you don’t die from the recipes you’ll die laughing, since Steve’s also very funny and the laughs are many. Inspired by Steve I had to go to the Chicken or the Egg restaurant and treat myself to a fried steak dinner with white sausage gravy, baked potato with sour cream and butter on the side. While on vacation I’m not really on cooking mode.

Janet Evanovich writes the Stephanie Plum mysteries. This week I read High Five, Seven Up and Hard Eight (Hot Six I read months ago). Stephanie Plum, blundering jail bond agent, lives and works in Trenton, frequently meanders into Hamilton, and only once or twice does she venture into Princeton. Must be because

Princeton isn’t actually part of New Jersey. It’s a small island of wealth and intellectual eccentricity floating in the Sea of Central Megalopolis. It’s an honest-to-god town awash in the land of the strip mall. Hair is smaller, heels are shorter, asses are tighter in Princeton

(Seven Up, St Martin’s Press, paperback edition, 2001, page 134). The last time Stephanie went into Princeton she was chauffering a young Sheik, a job she got from Ranger. You can tell I’ve been reading blogs for a while that the character of Ranger brought to mind the Belmont Club blog.

Either that, or I was having blog withdrawal.