Beach Anniversary Weekend

I mentioned a while ago that the Husband and I were going away to celebrate our 20th anniversary (which was actually last month). After much deliberation and notes left pinned to the official "note peg" right in front of the door as you come in, we decided that a night at a beach would be perfect. Somewhere close (within half a day's drive) yet quiet, which was why we waited until what we hoped would be the off season. Eventually we remembered Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Fortunately, our hunch and the weather were both fabulous.

Surprisingly, the trip over the bridge on Rt. 50 on the far side of Annapolis was both uneventful and fast, even taking into account the traffic for the Navy home football game. For those of you who live outside of our area, this is a notorious traffic hangup spot on weekends. Anyhow, we managed a leisurely drive over to Chincoteague Island in enough time to register at the hotel (fortuitously located right outside the entreance to the National Wildlife Refuge (link in first paragraph above) and still have time to walk along the beach before dinner.

There were a few amateur surfers, anyone who tries to "surf" this far up the Atlantic Coast has to be an amateur. We laughed at them for wearing wetsuits in the warm water and because they persisted in trying to surf down the wave AFTER the curl had passed. The Husband, who once spent SIX WEEKS on Oahu playing soldier with the 25th ID, learned to gracefully fall off his surfboard on the North Shore of HI and judges all surfers by his teachers from that time. Yes, we were married then and no I couldn't go. I was stuck in freezing November Kansas with two young children and no money.

We found two empty horseshoe crab shells and watched a flock of tiny little birds hunt for sand crabs in the foamy surf- successfully. We marvelled at how much time has passed and how happy we are still. How time has both changed us and kept us the same. How our roles are changing this year. Our hopes for ourselves, for our relationship and for our children. I love the beach because you can see so clearly how far you have come and how far you have yet to travel. The vast and mysterious ocean provides both comfort and assurance and yet reminds you that time waits for no one.

Cell Surfing & Template Issues

As I've mentioned earlier, I'm not surfing on the computer much these days. Instead I loaded a whole bunch of URLs into my cell phone so I can surf whenever I've a moment waiting with the kids, etc. I can't post comments from the phone, but I do manage to keep up with nearly everyone.

There are a few interesting notes. Some custom templates will show up without background interference. CindyS and Jenster come to mind immediately. As do Marg and Karen. Some templates show up with :P all over the background (eyes closed, tongue out smileys). These are blogs with a slight background detail. The smileys render the text unreadable. KristieJ's blog does this. :( Other custom templates, like Tara's, only show her photos and no posts.

So the long and the short of it is- I am keeping up with you via cell if your blog's template cooperates with my phone. However, if you've a custom template it's iffy and I may only get to visit you once a week or whatever and only from an actual computer.

Speaking of RSS feeds- many US print media websites are behind the times. Slackers. Only one or two or three feeds. Max. The Brits are much better at this kind of stuff. For example- the NYT RSS feed only has one or two pages of links (5-10 articles). C.S. Monitor? No feeds. Might be my cheapie cell phone, but even so, I'm surprised the major U.S. print news outlets are so far behind. The digital (tv, cable, online only, etc) media are up with the times. BBC, IHT, etc. have signifigantly more content online. The mainline print outlets are going to go the way of the dinosaur if they don't keep up with the times more & better. London Review of Books has a monthly feed, even.

I guess I'm just a news junkie. But the good old boy new guys? They'd better hop on the bandwagon & quick, before the parade passes them by. The sad thing about all of this is, I'm not a digital native- by a long shot. The digital natives at my house only read an actual newspaper for one thing. The comics. Any news they get online or from the tv or from their phones.