What I learned on my summer vacation

That would be the beach vacation, not any of the other three I took this summer.

- A walk along the beach provides absolutely the best environment for meditating on your next story developments.

- Grease burns hurt like the devil. But they're a great way to take your mind off the minor sunburn on your shins.

- I need to learn to sail.

- If you must put pieces from two different puzzles in the same box, due to box shortage and complete absence of ziploc bags, you really ought to make them puzzles with notably different-sized pieces (really I think I could have worked this one out via common sense. So perhaps the real lesson here is that the owners of our beach house lack common sense in the area of puzzles.)

- My family has higher standards in the way of kitchens and kitchen appliances than just about anybody I know. Much, much higher than those of aforementioned beach house owners.

- The Outer Banks wireless network is kind of a ripoff. Nick the tech support guy is very nice though. Spent lots of quality time talking to Nick.

- Excellent summer beers include: Dogfish Head's Aprihop, Delirium Tremens, and Unibroue's Ephemere.

- The ocean is happiness. But I knew that already.