Harris Beach

I had a productive morning. Finished a 1300+ word scene (tough one, too), finished the week's laundry, drank two cups of coffee. Aaaah. Also cool: we increased Jake's dose of propranolol last night and today he felt better. Yippee! He felt well enough that we drove up to Oregon and spent several hours at Harris Beach State Park. Currently in bloom: foxglove, daisies, salmonberry, milkweed. Present year round: pillow moss, horsetail, poison oak. We had a clear blue sky, temp in the high seventies, and a stiff wind. Nothing of note in the tidepools except hermit crabs, and regular crabs of the I-don't-need-no-steenking-shell ilk. On the beach, we found lots of desiccated sailors by the sea. Here's a photo I pilfered from the web:

Sailor by the Sea

If you'd like to see this photo in its natural habitat, click here.

They're Cnidarians -- related to the man of war, medusae, and jellyfish. There: you've met your cool critter of the day. Here's another link for Velella. With all the wind and sand, I pretended to be T. E. Lawrence while Jake spent a couple hours building dams and destroying them. When it came time for DBE (deep beach extraction), I steeled myself for the inevitable five-hours-per-mile departure, what with Jake stopping for every hermit crab, every odd rock, and -- especially -- every running stream of water (more dams, more destruction). My son the hydraulic engineer. We stopped off at the pet store and bought two land hermit crabs. I'll get a photo or two up sometime soon. Cute devils. Land hermit crabs are known to swap shells rather promiscuously, all for fun. We also made it to the library today. I picked up Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. I was tickled to see that they have John Scalzi's Old Man's War on the shelf, and shocked to see Cintra Wilson's Colors Insulting to Nature. And here I thought I was so cool, probably the only person in Del Norte or Curry County who knew of Cintra Wilson. If you're unfamiliar with her work, Cintra is a razor-sharp humorist -- I prefer that to the stuffy 'social commentarist' -- best known for her articles in Salon. I think she's gorgeous (check out her gallery), but her home page is way, way over the top. Poor kitty! D.