I wrote the following as a comment on The Tart Speaks' site. But maybe it bears repeating. Sheila was talking about the beach and in passing said something like if you don't get the beach, skip this part.

Well boy howdee, I get the beach. I spent major chunks of my life, sitting on it staring out into the distance wishing I were elsewhere. I spent other major chunks listening to Jimmy Buffett, an artist who definitely gets the beach.

I understand the beach. I grew up on the coast. When you face the ocean the world you know is behind you and the rest of the world (that is to say, infinite possibility) lies before you. I would stare at the Atlantic and think about what was across the water. I imagined Paris, but it was really the Ivory Coast. Does it matter? Periodically flotsam would wash up to toy with me. A champagne cork overgrown with barnacles. A glass globe from a fishing net. A wine bottle from Portugal. A piece of lava from some unknown and unseen underwater volcano. Fragile purple mollusks that only appeared after a hurricane, brought from some great depth or distance.

And you, gentle reader, do you understand what draws us to the shore?

Our correspondent in New York fills us in on la Reina's funeral. Complete with photos. It is a much better story than the one that ran in the Miami Herald. Check it out. But then, Ms. Jodi is one of my favorite bloggers.

So there I am, Friday afternoon. I'm leaving the office and I think I look pretty sharp: wearing a silk dress, matte gold sandals and carrying my briefcase. I walk up to the turnstile at the train station and I see that one of the three 'stiles is wrapped in yellow and black police tape. It is clearly out of order. But the spider web of yellow tape is interesting to me, so I slip my pass into the slot, enter the station through another turnstile and then turn my trusty Nikon to the yellow web.

HOLD IT! You can't take pictures here. Put the camera away.

You gotta be kidding me. I look up to see the elite Wackenhut guard looking at me. He repeats his orders. There is no photography allowed on the trains, the Metromovers, the platforms or the stations.

I ask since when? And he gives me a look of pity, as though I am the simplest of the simple and smirks, "Since (and then there is a long pause, as he cannot recall the exact date of what he is about to cite) since 2001, when they had the September Nine One One terrorism."

And taking a photo of a broken turnstile is a security risk? I'M a security risk? Is this a new law, part of the Patriot Act? I ask him.

And he says, that no, it isn't a LAW, it's a POLICY.

Well, fair enough, I say. Where is it posted? Or printed? Or publicly noticed?

And that's when he threatened to call the Metro Dade Police to "explain it" to me better.

Gentle readers, you know me. A challenge like that? To call in the police to do what, arrest me? For violating a policy? I checked my watch. Too late, the husband is already on his way to pick me up from the station and I really don't want to get into it with him: No, honey, don't pick me up at the train, come and spring me from the slammer, I was taking photos of broken turnstiles and it turned into a dangerous breach of national security.

So I let the snaggle toothed Good Ole Boy win that round. But I'm still steamed.

Blue skies over Miami. Clear and hot and not as sweltering as you'd think. I have an absolutely empty calendar for the next two days. I'm going to go and try to buy a nice little used car to drive to the gym. It's all I want. A gym/beach car. Big enough to hold a) the most excellent dog Nails and/or b) a friend and/or c) my gym bag. I'm looking at a Volkswagen Cabrio. Hey, if it's going to the gym or the beach it has to have an open roof, y'know?

I also have this on the agenda: loafing around on the float in the pool.

For the past 30-odd years I have scrupulously avoided the sun, for obvious reasons. I live in South Florida. I'm very, VERY pale skinned. I did not want to look like a well-worn baseball glove by the time I reached the age I've now reached.

And then last year, I had an epiphany, of sorts: if I got tan now, it would no longer be premature aging. So I attempted a tan. My husband told me it was a useless endeavor, as I was so pale, I merely reflected the sun light. I achieved a beige.

This year, I have a definite tan line, a two-tone butt. I'm thrilled. And with obsessive application of this particular wonder cream, I am neither leathery nor flaky.

OK, well, so the skin isn't flaky.

That's it for me, I am off to float.

New stuff! I got the "one hundred things" bug and started with books, which led to movies, which led to another hundred movies. Then I started on the list of live music I've been to see (not counting symphony orchestras, plays and operas) and from there I've started up the hundred totally lame and random things you'd probably rather not know about me. That list isn't live and probably won't be for some time.

But go on, click the links. You know you want to.

You know, every now and then something happens, randomly, that just makes you happy to be in this place and this time. It just happened to me, not five minutes ago. One of the guys from the office on the south side of the building wandered in and said "Manatee sighting." Huh? What do you mean? "I mean, manatees in the canal below our office."

I was out of my seat in a shot and across the hall, nose pressed against the window. Yep. There were two manatees, slowly cruising up stream. A larger and a smaller. I immediately identified them as a mother and calf. Of course, the calf was the size of a Volkswagen, but a calf, nonetheless.

They swam upstream for a while, and then they turned and headed back the way they came. There we were, half a dozen computer geeks, all lined up and smiling at the very randomness of nature in the tropics.

I have a mango in the refrigerator for lunch. I saw manatees. The sun is filtered and hazy today, but from my side of the building I can see the skyline of South Beach.

Hey... it's a great life, if you don't weaken.