Coney island!

Yesterday we went to Coney Island! You know how sometimes you get ideas in your head that don't actually match up with reality? Mine was "Going to the beach, meh, HUGE hassle." Which, now that I live in Flatbush, it really isn't; less than an hour total travel time, and despite going on a Sunday in late June it wasn't that crowded if we walked all the way down to the end of the beach. (I did, however, forget to account for the difficulty of finding a vegetarian lunch. Although I do love onion rings.)

I don't own a bathing suit, so I rolled up my sweat pants to my knees and waded in until I got cold and then I sat on the beach and read Chime by Franny Billingsley which is splendid -- the narrative voice is both self-loathing and very funny. It's steampunkish only in the way that fantasies set around the industrial revolution in England tend to the steampunkish; so far, no actual hypothetical steam technology.

Today is my last Monday of freedom before I go back to working full-time.