I Got a Potato

There's a little neighborhood just across the street from us called Beachlands. It's a good place to walk Olga, with sidewalks and grass. That phone booth behind the boat above has been turned into a little free library, and I picked up a paperback by Ian Rankin there yesterday. It's my insurance policy in case I get through the two books and multiple New Yorkers I brought with me. God forbid I should run out of reading!

This is one of the streets in Beachlands, where many of the houses have a sort of Art Deco design, at least on the outside. I think they're pretty cute. Kind of Miami Beach, right down to the paint jobs. Dave and I fantasized yesterday about local real estate and I got online to look at recent sales, and found that these little houses sell for about £300K. (The ones across the street, on the ocean -- like where we're staying -- are double that, at least.)

I'm not sure we'd want to live out here year-round -- it's a bit remote -- but who knows? It's good to think about options.

This is how we spent the morning after our walk. Well, one of us, anyway. I sat nearby and read "The Frozen River," which I got about halfway through. I'm enjoying it so far. I've questioned some of the language use -- the book takes place in Maine in the late 1700s, and the speech patterns seem very modern. One of the characters used the word "puked" or "puking," for example, and I wondered, "Did people really say that then?" But it shows up in Shakespeare, so I guess they did.

I tried to take Olga for a walk on the beach in the afternoon but she turned around in short order. I don't think she likes the pebbles.

Speaking of which, some kids seem to have had fun with some of the rocks around our place.

A mermaid? Someone swimming? Not sure.

We bathed Olga in the afternoon. She hadn't had a bath in ages and if she's going to stay here in this house, she can't have a not-so-fresh smell. She dried pretty quickly lying out in the sun.

I got the bright idea yesterday from a review in The New Yorker to watch some of Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" movies, which seem like they'd be good, lightweight, beachy fare. So last night we cranked up "Mission: Impossible II" which I got about two-thirds of the way through before realizing a) it's not that good, and b) we'd seen it before. In fact, I read on my blog that the last time we watched it (five years ago) I realized I'd already seen it and didn't like it. Sheesh! I do not learn my lesson, do I?

This morning it's foggy. We were up at an insanely early hour -- 4:30 a.m., because it's daylight then -- and I let Olga go out to the deck. She promptly rounded the corner and saw a fox, and took off after it. She ran all the way down the steps leading to the street. Of course the fox was long gone by then, but it's good to see the old girl still has some fire in her belly!