Summer, don’t go! Is it something I said?

{Misquamicut Seagull No. 4, originally uploaded by robinsegg0523}

Oh Summer, why must you be over? You came so late this year, and went by too quickly. I feel I had only a few weeks to enjoy your sunny skies, your pleasant breezes, your sweltering days that make me appreciate your cool nights all the more…

This Saturday The BF and I enjoyed what is likely the last* “beach day” of the summer. Under blue skies and with a soundtrack of crashing waves, we sunned ourselves, read magazines, swam in the ocean, sat under an umbrella and enjoyed lunch and cold beers with an old friend of mine. I grew up on Long Island Sound, but there is nothing like a real ocean beach, with big waves and soft sand, a thousand colorful umbrellas scattered like Easter eggs on the shore. Yes, I have a bathing suit full of sand and seaweed, I got stung by a jellyfish and there is a line at the bathhouse, but I like to walk to the water’s edge and look out at the sea and appreciate that I am standing on the edge of a continent.

For more on what I love about summer click here.

*the last for us that is, ‘cause we don’t play no hooky once school starts.

A mouse for my house

I am in love with this mouse print, by Berkley Illustration and available on Etsy:

I imagine their names are Beatrice and Bertram. The artist says they live “in a yellow cottage full of cozy nooks and secret passages. You may find it a bit peculiar, but their best friend is a grey cat from France.” I totally believe her.

Found via MA Belle. More fun prints from Berkley Illustration here. Reacquaint yourself with Beatrix Potter’s mischievous Hunca Munca and posh Johnny Town Mouse here.

Now that my computer is back up and running I will be posting more and stopping by more of your blogs. I have some great pics from a recent NYC weekend for The BFs birthday. Eating and shopping and celebrity-sighting, oh my!

Whoosh!

Every day I tell myself I’m going to finish one of the many blog posts I’ve started, and every day my day goes by thisfast. Just like these guys. But without the accurate landing.

It's like slip-n-slide, only better

Croc-a-doodle-doo

Maybe you like them and maybe you wear them and maybe to you they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I personally detest Crocs and all the ubiquitous knockoffs, pseudos and wannabes. I detest them with the heat of a thousand melted plastic injection mold forms.

But these are cute and un-Croc-ey enough that if I were to somehow acquire them, and if they didn’t gross me out in person too much, I'd find a way to remove the logo. Perhaps with a metal file and a small blowtorch, like the kind you use for creme brulee.

Here’s another reason to always pack clean underwear

Knock wood, I have (or more accurately, an airline has) lost my luggage only once. And it wasn’t really lost, it just took a later flight than I did, thanks to bad weather at my connecting airport.  I know there are some poor souls who’ve never gotten their luggage back, and stacks of luggage that never finds its way home. And while the premise makes sense, in a Goodwill/Salvation Army Thrift Store way, I am a little creeped out by the bargain-hunting that goes on at the Unclaimed Baggage Store, mostly because the goods at a charity thrift store were donated, while the merchandise at UBS is “donated” by default. The UBS site claims they have found antiques, art, expensive electronics and gemstones in lost luggage.

Admitted voyeur Luna Laboo has been buying lost luggage, photographing the contents and posting it on her Is This Your Luggage website, hoping to reunite the goods with their owners.  Most of the cases contain clothes, but one on the site includes some souvenirs and gifts from Mexico or South America or maybe just the American Southwest.

Here’s a tip to keep your luggage both off her site and out of the Unclaimed Baggage Store: use a real luggage tag, not one of those free paper ones the airline hands out at the check-in; put two business cards in your luggage – one taped to the inside bottom of the case, and one in an inside pocket of the case. And maybe a third in an outside pocket. Oh, and stop tossing your loose diamonds and emeralds in with your dirty socks, okay?