Today's haul

Went to Casey Key today and hunted for shells for something like 3 hours. I like the simple things, it seems: looking at birds, collecting shells, burying Eric in the sand...I can spend hours doing these things. Who needs a Wii?

As I walked up and down the beach this morning, I inadvertently picked up a companion, a four-year-old boy whose name I never learned. He followed close behind as I scoured through endless piles of shells, asking me personal questions, occasionally selecting shells for himself, and imparting to me every fact he knew about the sea. When I told him I had driven to Florida from California, he said to me, "Oh, man...that must have taken 5, maybe 6 hours!"

He was pretty close, on the scale of geologic time, anyway.