Tennis, golf, sailing... ah, what a week. :) Though we did play poker, go bodysurfing, drink a lot, and wander around small beach towns in North Carolina too.

I was in Phoenix most of the week before--Friday I went from Phoenix to Raleigh with a very brief stop in the Austin airport. The vacation was nice, I'd been doing 15 hour days in Phoenix, and 10+ hour days for about the last 6 weeks, so I was WAY ready for a bit of vacation. The beach was lovely ? Zach and I spent a couple of hours one day bodysurfing, which was very cool. We also took a sailboat cruise on the Neuse River, which is briny where we were (half seawater, half fresh water), so it had a bunch of ocean life in it. We saw a half dozen small jellyfish, three stingrays (two of which appeared to be mating), an osprey, and a whole bunch of jumping mullet (kind of fish, apparently). There wasn't much wind (kinda disappointing, I miss sailing) but it was still fun. I guess they get a lot of bull sharks in there (someone was attacked earlier this month, 200 staples, but she was being towed behind a powerboat at the time, which sounds remarkably stupid to me? :). This was a big boat, 43?, so not too much like the old catamaran my parents used to have, but still fun. I guess the captain had sailed her old 36? boat solo to the Bahamas etc, which sounded like heaven to me and hell to Jen. ;)

The second day we were at the beach there were a bunch of big fish--not dolphins, but a couple of feet long easy--jumping very close to us. A couple of them jumped about 20 feet away, which was exciting. The ocean was great, perfect temperature, except the last day, when it was a little cold.

All of the guys played golf one day, which was? interesting. I had just enough decent shots to actually be frustrating. I almost hit a (moving!) car with one shot, which was briefly exciting. Other than that I gotta say golf is still not my favorite sport. ;) We did discuss a few times how my upbringing was very sort of ivy league/New England--sailing, golf, tennis, horses, about all I was missing was polo. ;) I told Jen I?d love to have a sailboat someday, but she?s skeptical of the whole idea.

Also, there was poker. And Jenny did clean us out the first night, it's true. But we were playing five-card draw, not the real stuff that night. ;)

Anyway, it was a nice week and I got a pretty decent tan -- managed to only burn my shoulders and my nose, and apparently my elbows (weird).