Home Stretch (Beaches)

Good Evening, Sweet Baby,

Just getting home from Pearl's, back at work again. Not a busy day, but it was hot out, so I just stayed inside between work shifts. I hope your day was good. You've gotta be in the home stretch now, right? How many more weeks of school - four? Five at most? You're almost done in any case. Then Summer, then Italy! The rest of the year is gonna be quite awesome indeed.

Well, I'm gonna relax for a few, then walk down to the store for part of my daily mileage. Then I'll finish up my walk later on tonight. I just wanted to check in and say I Love You.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

10:45pm : I love the picture of the ice skating couple! That's us - gliding through life together with graceful effort.

I am a little tired tonight, just from the heat and getting up early after all those sleep-ins, but I'll adjust quickly as I always do. I wanna do more road trips, find more nooks & crannys, maybe go to the beach. It's funny, because I live less than 30 miles from the ocean, and yet I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been there in the last ten years. I used to love the beach when I was a kid. My Mom drove us there all the time, to Santa Monica Beach. Dad too. He took us down to San Diego a lot, and Laguna Beach.

I loved to body surf when I was a kid. But I'm not a huge beach person anymore. Back then, you didn't have to worry about being in the sun, or at least we didn't know any better. But also, I don't think I'd have a great desire to wade out into the ocean anymore. It's one thing when you're a kid......

I'll tell you what I'd love, though, and that would be to take you to the beach, and just have a nice walk along the shore. Shoes off, toes in sand. Early evening, sun going down into the water. Maybe in Malibu or Zuma beach. Or Santa Monica.......Laguna.........San Diego.......

We will go.

And, I wanna take some b & w pictures at the beach, and if it was a day trip during a break in my Pearl hours, it would be at Santa Monica. The problem down there is traffic and parking. But I will see what I can do before the end of Summer....

I also wanna get out to Pearblossom in the desert. That one is huge for me, to find the old airplane graveyard out there, where Dad and my Uncle Earl took me when I was eight years old. Gotta find that one.

Your photo of the lightning has inspired me. I so much love black & white. It's not that I don't love color, because of course I do. It's just that nothing beats black and white for setting a mood. Black and White removes the distraction of the color, the word distraction not used in the pejorative sense, but in the literal sense because the beauty of color can dominate an image, whereas black and white is all about the image itself, and the mood of the image, as described by contrast and the gradations of the grey scale.

Look at Ansel Adams' legendary photos of Yosemite. Had they been in color, they'd have had more of a "picture postcard" effect, i.e "pretty". And they'd still be great! But in black and white.......the eye of the viewer focuses entirely on the shapes and shadows of the landscape.

At any rate, I'll stop preaching now, haha. And, I will wish you Sweet Dreams and send you Love, and then I will see you and be with you in the morning.

I Love You, my Darling.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)