Another pleasant weekend with reasonable surf for August and lots of chances to swim and run; and because I have a nice pool/patio area, I can hide from the weekend crowds in the backyard.  This is a rather good life.

There are complications, though.  The kitchen cabinet installation has been delayed and I had hoped that would take place this week.  Now it looks like the week after or even the week after that.  Also, the home owner is talking about coming back just for the next weekend for reasons that I suspect are physical.  Not that I have a problem with that, but it does make life a bit more entangled with emotional politics than I care for it to be.  As long as she's just here for the weekend; I'm stingy about offering hospitality at a house that isn't mine, aren't I?

Perhaps if I play up the fact that the town's really, really crowded with tourists.  No, everyone knows that it isn't, especially after last year's hurricanes wiped out more than half the beaches.  Still, maybe a last minute influx of people taking advantage of end-of-season discounts?  I'm really over thinking this, another sign that I may need just to move along earlier than usual.

Too much thinking.  Well, I know the cure for that.  I'll need to indulge myself some.  When I returned from overseas in the early 1970's it was to a neighboring town that I came.  I had no connection with the town, other than another guy in the barracks used to speak of it fondly and told me that there were jobs there and cheap places to live.  He was right on both.  I found an apartment on the upper floor of a converted Victorian a couple of blocks from a ratty beach on the bay, where the water was greasy from the gasoline motors of the many, many powerboats that roared on through, and I found a job at the local marina, helping the rich guys "park" their expensive boats so that they didn't embarrass themselves in front of their expensive second wives.  I lived there for about five months, enjoying that I now lived in a sunny place where far fewer people wanted to kill me, and it was a perfect existence. 

My ambition got the best of me, though, and shortly thereafter I re-entered the academic world, never to leave until recent times.

A block away from my former apartment and equidistant to my former marina was and is a small bar.  It used to be a place where the pro fishing guides would gather in the evening along with the marina rats, so it was a simple and convivial place.  There was no kitchen so to speak, but there was a small galley that was employed when some of the skippers had some extra catch that their charters didn't want.  They would cook up the fish and share them, for free, with whoever came into the bar.  Also, when a shark was caught, they would boil the flesh off of the jaws and mount them on the rapidly dwindling wall space. 

Occasionally, some stray tourist would wander in, but they would be treated well and welcomed.  I would stop after work on most nights and talk to the skippers.  Mostly I would listen, I guess.  One night, a touristy type of guy, whom I recognized from my marina, came in and sat next to me at the bar.  My hair had not yet grown out and was still recognizably high and tight, and we got into a conversation about the Marine Corps and such.  This might be a story to tell another day, for he then hired me as a bodyguard to protect him from his girlfriend's ex-husband.  Things got a little weird at that point.  Yes, that will be a story for another day.

The bar, which was called "the shark bar" by the locals, is still there but has been transformed from a fishing guide hangout to a proper sports bar/restaurant.  The interior has been completely gutted and modified, all of the shark jaws are gone, but it still has that neighborhood bar ambiance and I thought I would head on over and watch a ball game and eat a 900 calorie cheeseburger.  I could use the protein and the company.  Maybe the nostalgia, too.