Mondays are for suckers

Had an excellent weekend. Got up early and went garage sale shopping with R and J on Saturday. That’s right, I just said I got up early on a Saturday and was happy about it. We were looking for dining room chairs and had agreed to a wrestling match to decide who got them in the event that we found any in our price range. Unfortunately, there were no chairs to be had in Cambridge this weekend. Most of the places we stopped people were asking way too much for their old crap, but finally we found this little old lady who said everything was a quarter. I’d come prepared for just such an event with a pocket full of quarters. Bought some random stuff that I didn’t need but made me happy, then moved on to the book sale. On the second Saturday of every month, the public library opens up a room of used books, some from their collection, some donated by local folks. I came home with 7 books for under $3.

Strangely enough, I agreed to get up early again on Sunday to go to the beach. It was a perfect beach day, and I took the perfect nap on the sand. I was well slathered in sunscreen this time, so I didn’t burn at all. I did learn that while sunscreen does stop the burning, it does not stop the freckling. Des has threatened to call me Freckles from now on. Finally, the water has warmed up enough that others are willing to swim with me. The waves were kind of disappointing, but the water was just so perfect that we stayed in for a really long time. While we were out there, we realized that the agreed upon departure time had come and gone. As we were justifying staying in the water by waiting for just one more good wave, a rather large swell began to build in front of us. When it was about 10 feet from us, a huge, dark shape swam across it. I didn’t get a very good look at anything but the caudal fin, but that was enough to tell me that it was not to be messed with. I started swimming for shore, and realized that we were really far from the beach and that Des was not following me. I turned around to look for her, and she was still just happily riding the swells. I said, “Uh Des, I think it’s time to go in now.” She looked at me confused. Having learned my lesson about saying the word shark while swimming, I said, “You’re not really supposed to swim with those.” It took a minute to sink in, but the look on her face was priceless. She only got a look at the dorsal fin and thought it was a dolphin. Needless to say, we made it to shore without further encounters. Once there, she started grilling me on what kind it was. My best guess is a lemon shark. It was the right color and size. That area seems like prime lemon shark nursery, and this is the right time of year for large females to show up to pup. While my mom was here, we saw a guy catch a baby lemon shark from shore. The fool acted like he’d just slain a beast. It was all I could do not to go tell him that it was probably only about a week old.

The jellyfish are at it again. I can hear the laughter from my desk. Something’s screwy with the sex ratio. I need to catch some females, and of course, there seems to be only about 1 mature female in 100 jellyfish visible from the dock. I need to build some things, like a 2 gallon dipper on a stick so that I can collect them without turning them to snot, but my advisor has conveniently disappeared for the week. I’d have gotten purchase orders signed in advance, but he didn’t bother to tell me until he was already gone. It’s going to make for a very unproductive week. Have decided not to fight it. Going home to take a nap.