My life is a series of illegal left turns

Often on Mass Ave. in Boston.

This weekend Mike H., (I have to specify as there are about 345832782 Mikes in my social circle) Ben and I went climbing. Or rather we tried to climb and instead got disgustingly hot and ravaged by mosquitos for a few hours before going to the beach. We ended up in Manchester-by-the-Sea, (I can't stop saying that out loud) where we found free parking and managed to sneak onto the beach undetected and thereby avoiding the $5 admission fee. Stealthy and cheap! Or more accurately, we just walked by the attendant who looked at us quizzically for a second before returning his attention to the people who were paying.

It was blazingly hot. So hot that we almost melted before we could dive headfirst into the ocean, which was about 8 degrees. But oh so refreshing. We slathered on some of Ben's "factor 50" which prevented me from getting a terrible sunburn, and had I reapplied it, would have prevented me from getting a minor sunburn as well, and spent the afternoon lazing about and talking about nothing with some of Ben's co-workers (one of whom is another Mike and who we used to climb with when he climbed; he is curently either retired or on sabbatical, tbd.) and snacking. It was such a lovely afternoon I forgot all about the mosquito bites and sweaty attempts at climbing. Success!

I have been spending a good amount of time at the beach lately. I was at the Cape last week with my family for the annual Family Fish Fry and Hearts For Blood Card Tournament. Morgan and I also fulfilled a longstanding dream to have tea at the Dunbar Tea House. It was everything we had hoped for: finger sandwiches, scones, tea cozies and bitchy women of a certain age. Luckily for us, Morgan had recently watched a show on the Travel Channel on how to have tea and not appear gauche, so we knew to eat from the bottom up on, take small bites and save the chocolate for last. I enjoyed some really lovely aged Stilton and slathered everything in strawberry jam. Mmmmmm. Sticky.