Spent Saturday morning on the beach while Ian reacquainted himself with his boogie board. I watched a pair of tiny, translucent crabs excavate new homes, appearing at their doorways to throw bundles of sand an average distance perhaps five times the length of their bodies. A golden mutt hung out in the shallow water, leaping into waves as they came ashore, always looking seaward, watching her surfer. Another dog, a black lab, refused to stay ashore but kept swimming out to his person, a woman in a flesh-toned bikini who had to haul the dog onto her surfboard and bring him to shore at least three times.

It’s rather strange to have the sun rising over the water. I’ve discovered a flaw in my sense of direction: until now, the ocean has always been in a generally westerly direction. Here, the ocean is all around, but our closest access to it faces east. Ian is trying to use the Hawaiian directions “makai” and “mauka”, “toward the water” and “toward the mountain”. We pick up stray bits of language as we travel: nearly four years after Germany, I still ask for the time in German. I have vague ambitions that “menehune” remain part of our vocabulary – it’s so much more poetic than QuikStop.

I know I don’t usually mention work here, but an article/pitch thing under my name is actually published on a site I don’t own. It’s more militant than I actually feel about things, but the response so far has been good.