A Happy Fourth

Clint and I celebrated this year's Fourth of July at the wedding of a friend in the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Clint and Ben were friends in high school and roommates in college. From the stories I hear, they had a healthy competition that encouraged both of them to be better at whatever task at hand. Ben was teaching English in Africa when we got married, and since his return has lived in another state, so we haven't had many opportunities to see him or his family the last few years. Thankfully, this weekend we got a healthy dose of Ben, his family, and other friends from Clint's youth. One of the nights, as we walked back to the car, I told Clint that my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much during the evening. It really wasn't a complaint, just an appreciation of the friendships Clint has had and a gratitude that I was welcomed into the fold with open arms.

While we were in Alabama, we visited the beach to see the evidence of the oil spill. The experience was a little surreal; we were in the same area two Christmases ago,

and in many ways the area looked the same, with not many more people than were there in December 2008. While we enjoyed not fighting the crowds, it was sad to see so many beach houses vacant or

boarded up. On the beaches, sand has been pushed into berms to keep the oily water off the sand; where the oil has been, black specks the size of quarters look like pebbles but are really tar balls. One of the friends from the wedding, a scientist at heart, mentioned that he had taken some of the oily sand back to his hotel room to try and clean it. He said it took soap and hot water to get the sand clean. In general, the water looked darker than usual, and the sparkle one would expect from the ocean on a bright, sunny day was a beat later than it should have been.