Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 19

The beach, 6:45 p.m.

Two shots, one in each direction, from the same spot on the beach.

Looking east.

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Looking west.


I do love this place.  Being able to go to the beach and see no one who isn't with you reminds me of my teen years, when I loved Florida and thought it was the most beautiful place on Earth.

In more news of the beach, the BobCake is small but strong and seemingly impervious to our attempts to consume its final chunk.


The second CaBobCake, however, is now considerably smaller.


Will the BobCakes survive another day?

Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Keeping it simple at the beach

Saturdays are when people check out of or into their houses, so traffic is at its worst. Because we're staying in the house, we kept to ourselves and avoided the roads, going out only to pick up some take-out Chinese for dinner. It was a quiet day indeed, exactly what I like.

In news of the BobCakes, the big fella is definitely showing the signs of our continued assault.

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I do believe we will polish it off fairly soon.

The second CaBobCake managed to avoid detection for a while, but now we've cut into it, so its days are numbered.


Beach life is cake life.

Stress monkey checks in, CaBobCake #1 checks out

Last night's sleep bombarded me with the largest and most powerful set of stress dreams of the trip so far.  I'm choosing to view this as positive, as a sign that my mind is finally cutting loose some of the stress, but it could also be no more than another sign that my stress management skills suck way worse than I had realized.  Stress monkey is still on my back.

In news of the BobCakes, the first CaBobCake fell to our army of eaters.

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The BobCake itself, however, is standing proud despite an ongoing onslaught.


I think it's possible we've reached the halfway mark, but I'm not certain.  We clearly need to consume a huge amount more chocolate.

I have to confess that I am not doing my part.  Today, for example, I specialized in ice cream and had none of either BobCake.

Tomorrow, perhaps I will rejoin the attack on the cake fortresses.

In which I'm still sleepy, the meaty mess hits the beach, and the BobCake still abides

During normal work weeks, I sleep very little.  I simply can't afford the time in bed.  Here on vacation, I am sleeping about eight hours each night and napping every few days, yet I am sleepy almost all of the time.  Some of this fatigue is due to more exercise; though I'm not doing much, I am walking a couple of miles in the heat each day, and I'm usually in the pool twice a day.  Some of it, though, seems to be just part of the process of trying to shed the stress of my normal life.  I shouldn't be surprised at how much stress I need to get rid of, but I keep being caught off-guard by how pervasive it is.  Clearly, I need to learn to manage my stress better.

Beach life is sleepy life.

Dinner tonight found our group splintering, with some going out, some foraging on their own, and some eating my meaty mess entree.

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Kyle pointed out that without context it's hard to appreciate just how large that bowl of meaty goodness is, so he volunteered to be in the blog with it.


Yeah, the bowl is huge and brimming with meat, pasta, and cheese.

In BobNews, the first of the CaBobCakes is nearing its end.


The BobCake itself, however, abides despite our best efforts to consume it.


We may need to throw a BobCake eating party for our beach neighbors just to give ourselves a fighting chance against it.

And so endeth the news of the beach.

The BobCake abides

Over 24 hours have passed since our first brave eater cut into the massive slab that is the BobCake. Many more cuts has the BobCake endured, and yet it abides.

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For the BobCake is mighty, and it laughs at our paltry efforts to consume it.

The merely mortal CaBobCake (number one) also abides, but it is smaller now and showing weakness.


By tomorrow, perhaps it will have summoned its sibling.

We shall see.

BobFood

One of our many beach traditions is to have our friend and (former) deli owner, Bob, prepare a dinner for us. Even though he and his wife, Rose, are now retired from that business, he still agreed to cater a meal for us tonight.

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The beach crowd this week is huge, but Bob still made more food than we could eat in one sitting. The meal included grilled cheese sandwiches (delicious!), hot dogs with optional chili, burgers, cheeseburgers (great!) with optional bacon, buns, salad, two homemade dressings, tuna, salmon, and tile fish.

The meal was delicious, and everyone ate their fill (and then some).

For dessert, Bob made us three cakes:  two carrot cakes (CaBobCakes, and here's one),


and one incredibly dense chocolate cake, the legendary (at least among us), BobCake.


To our surprise, Bob said that he managed to put two more pounds of chocolate in this year's BobCake than in last year's.  That's not two pounds of chocolate, mind you; that's two additional pounds of chocolate beyond the insane amount in last year's BobCake.  As you can see in the photo. the frosting sometimes breaks in what one of my nephews called a shingle of chocolate; the description was apt.

Beach life is dessert life.

Why these beach blog posts have been so short

One big reason is that I'm on vacation, so I'm doing very little. That means very little writing, but it also means that I'm quite literally not doing much, which makes for days that sound boring when I write about them.

I'm cool with that, though, because sometimes boring days are exactly what I need and want.

The events that fill my days are the simple ones I've described: walking, splashing, reading, eating, and so on. I could work to make them interesting, but I'm not up for working right now, and honestly, if you're not part of them, they're bound to sound dull.

Finally, I'm thinking a lot about the value of this blog. I've published it every day for years, but after over 3,700 entries, the readership is still tiny, and it shows no sign of growing. I could put more time into creating stronger posts, but I and my readers would almost certainly be better served by me putting more time into writing books. So, I'll continue to ponder the blog's future as I spend my days in simple, dull pursuits that nonetheless help me rest and recharge.

If you have any thoughts on whether I should continue to write this blog, please let me know. In a world of not many votes, your vote could count a lot.

Doing nothing, enjoying it just fine

Sleep. Walk. Splash. Eat. Read. Splash. Eat. Watch.

Simple verbs, simple actions, simple days.

Beach time is good time.

Beach beauties

The moon tonight, distorted by the camera into a mini-sun illuminating the fading day.

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The ocean and, closer, the deck and the pool, a minute later, the clouds smothering the sky.


Sarah's caramel cake, which tasted even better than it looks.


Beach life, like most life, is full of beauty of all kinds, but here it's easier to pause to notice the loveliness.

Sunset, with thunderclouds and occasional lightning

The picture does not do it justice, but do click on the photo for a better view.


The storm never hit us, but the threatening clouds demanded our attention.  Lucky for us, for they were beautiful.