We had crabs for dinner last night*, making the usual mess (and bringing back wonderful memories of annual summer crabfests in Maryland!)  This was taken at one of them; the man running it had a stuffed animal business and gave these to the kids.  And don't let Alex's size and youth fool you... he outdid his Grandpa and his Uncle Andy in the amount of crabs he devoured.  We were all afraid he'd explode (or at the very least get sick!) but he didn't!

While looking through my files of old pix for one of the messes we always made at the beach house after plowing through 3 dozen crabs (which I never did find) I did find this one from my high school graduation, so it wasn't a total loss!  Would you have recognized this 1968 me?  I know Patti would!

I did find this shot of Alex crabbing off the dock 

behind Andy & Sandy's beach house a 'few' years ago, though!

And this one, at the beach in Ocean City, from a few years after that.

Mom, I bet you remember this pic from the marine biology Elderhostel you took him to where he showed the other boys just how it's done (and where someone was heard to say, "this boy's done this before!")

Of course after dinner Tom took the rolled up newspaper straight outside to the big trash can - and came back in with my meds; the UPS guy was just pulling up with them at 7:15pm!  Now I don't have to sit around all day waiting for them (though I don't have any plans to go anywhere today - plan to work on the bag for Alex using the snowboarding fabric) but at least I can also take a break any time I want and go sit in the hot tub.  Missed that yesterday.

Tom (who did all the work for dinner) gave up during his first crab after just high-grading the legs (he says it's too much work, Mom, and he'd rather have a crabcake.) So Carlo and I got to split the entire pot, and when we got full we ended up with one poor crab left over.  Tom left a message on Alex's phone (Alex had FINALLY emptied it so there was actually room to leave a message, and I bet he's glad he did!)  Turned out Alex was just up the street at Tyler's (they're headed to Flagstaff this morning to go snowboarding... 14" of new snow) so he dropped in and scarfed up that last crab as we were cleaning up.

Anyone home? Any leftovers for me?

*The crabs were caught/cooked/flash-frozen by Mike and Carol, who fish out of Santa Cruz a LOT on their catamaran, and had brought the crabs down for us when they came for Quartzsite.  Maybe not quite as good as fresh ones, but Carlo and I certainly had no complaints!  Carlo's boat is moored at a Marina in Monterrey, and after meeting Mike and Carol he thinks he's seen their boat when he's been out fishing.  Small world.  Here's Alex on Carlo's boat a few years ago.  Too bad Carlo has it up for sale - everyone always had such a great time on it.

Tom and Carlo have headed up to Kingman today (4 hours there, 4 hours back) to look at some fire opal.

  They expect to be back by dark, but it's 'possible' they will spend more time looking at rocks than they plan!  Here's a Cahokia point made from fire opal.

Just looked at the calendar and it's a good thing - I'd forgotten that I have PT with Noelle at 2:00!  So I guess I'd better go take a morning soak and then get started sewing.