Words &c.

David returned, finally, and with a mighty effort we loaded Catherine's belongings (including an unwieldly leather couch) up a flight of stairs out of the basement into a U-Haul. We called it good after stuffing things in, and decided to have a 'night upon the town', as some call it. This consisted of looking at the Atlantic Ocean for a few minutes and then finding dinner, for us.

Looking out at the ocean is fairly mind-bending, to consider there's so many thousands of miles of water between you and the next major landmass. It's chilling when you think of everything that's below those waters, in the deepest ocean trenches.

There was a man with well trimmed mutton chops leaving the beach. I don't feel quite so alone now - though I do wish I had a friend or two along with me. I'm finding that novel experiences are less enjoyable alone (not that David and Martin are bad company, but they're not quite so interested in the shifts of beer ad demographics from one coast to another. Then again, my friends may not be either).

We drove about the area looking for a decent place to eat, most in the actual 'town' area being fairly packed and not especially interesting.

You know you live in a rich neighborhood when there's a store dedicated to monogrammed sundries.

We settled on an ostenibly Chinese restaurant called Wei Fun. It was assuredly not for the name. The food was not unreasonably spendy for this area, decent, and probably not poisoned. The owners seem to have focused primarily on the appearance on the plate, which was lots of white and plain wood. Everything tried to be plain but elegant - the menus were printed on disposable white paper, the glasses the kind so generic and featureless they have to be special ordered, and the bowls the white sort with a blue carp on the side you can get at any Asian store for fifty cents apiece. The wait staff was made up of frantic and apologetic foreigners, but I'd be feeling apologetic and disoriented if I worked at a place called Wei Fun.

With no ice cream shops open and uncrowded, we stopped off as a Latino specialty store on the way home. The Latino community here are the only people you could call working class. This is, after all, a town frequented by Alec Baldwin.

And we then returned back to this agoraphobia-inducing home.

On the way back I see the sixth ambulance with sirens a-blazing so far. Just how physically dangerous can this place be? Do the rich try to overdose on cocaine to take away the dull edge of their financial success? Do they just call 911 every time they stub a toe?

There's more wildlife than I thought there'd be. This very property is frequented by deer, who have no qualms about coming out in open daylight here. There seems to be a colony of rabbits near the Lutheran church, as well.

Tomorrow, we make the drive out to New York Fucking City, where I hope it will be Catherine's roommates Alex and Marcos wrangling that leather sofa up two flights of stairs.