High Summer.

Mid-July, friends and fans of weather, means the annual pilgrimage southward to 32080, or thereabouts. The ANYLF Zipometer is struggling to find Crescent Beach, Florida, so we're settling for St. Augustine, south of which by not so much lies Crescent Beach, until you get further south to the Matanzas River, and thereafter it's something else. Marineland lies south of the Matanzas, for one thing, which as I recall from being too young to sit on the beach and read all day, which is what's done now, sells views of tame dolphins and also blue vinyl squeaky dolphin toys and dolphin-shaped I'VE BEEN TO MARINELAND bumper stickers. I have to say that their website has nothing to do with how I remember the place, which is to say, I remember a sort of metal gymnasium-style building in the middle of a crushed-shell parking lot. The website seems to be about smooth jazz, bikinis, and weddings.

Marineland got fancy.

We're dry here, and the forecast is for heat and rain next week, off and on, and even probably occasionally at the same time. There's no telling how local or even how forecasty we might be able to be here at ANYLF until give or take July 26, but if there's time between now and tomorrow, we'll set some intern to the task of managing the front of the store. If not, look for us bright and early the week of July 28, when we'll be looking back at a week of rainshowers here in 27408 and hopefully down way south in 32080. I do love a storm at the beach, and we've seen them come in from all four of your major directions down there. Keep an eye to the tropics, where Bertha seems headed eventually from Bermuda for Scotland, and something on or near Jacksonville seems like it could perhaps drop a little something Carolinaward if prevailing winds and atmospheric conditions allow. Your lettuces are probably about done out there, but if you've behaved justly, then your tomatoes should be arriving forthwith. Another draft of the novel's nearly in the bag, the product of a crazymaking week of twelve-hour days on the heels of my Virginia trip and out in front of this one. So now: A week of reading, of cocktails in red Solo cups, of single cups of coffee in the morning, of moving the chair up when the tide comes in, back out when it goes out. A week of salted evening air. A week of the last couple innings of some baseball game after everybody else has gone to bed. A week of shell-based interior decorating. A week of books.

Drink a lot of water, friends and fans of weather. Wear loose-fitting clothing. Stay in the shade if you can. It's high summer. We'll either be back next week, or we never will have left.