Dennis the Menace

When you work at a company throughout an entire year, you might have a couple of weeks of vacation time to use. When you work for 10 weeks as a summer intern, you might be lucky to get a long weekend. That was the first of this week for me. Three off days sandwiched around July 4^th, which they gave me off as a holiday.

July 4^th on Miami Beach was a lot of fun, and I think I broke my record for distance walked barefoot in a five-hour period. There were some good fireworks, and the best part about them was the sheer number of fireworks because every few hundred feet down the entire beach there was someone else orchestrating their own personal show. After walking down the beach for an hour or so I found a decent enough spot to sit down and watch for a while. Down the beach in either direction all I could see was sand, water, people and fireworks. I’ve always said that the beach is a great place to witness human stupidity in action, so putting fire and exploding products in those people’s hands could be disastrous. I’m quite sure that at least one of the people I saw shooting fireworks left that beach without any eyebrows.

For my last two days off I drove down to Key West where I enjoyed the beach, clear blue and green water and the southernmost point in the continental United States. I got in the water for a while, but the signs that read, “Warning, Portuguese man of war could be present in these waters” just didn’t inspire much of a desire to swim for too long.

It appears I missed my first hurricane evacuation by only 24 hours. Hurricane Dennis, the first official hurricane of the season, is expected to hit the Florida Keys during the next 24 hours. As such, they ordered the evacuation of all tourists and nonresidents Thursday. All that is predicted for Miami is a lot of rain because the hurricane was supposed to go right up the western coast of the state and actually make landfall around Alabama. We’re under a tropical storm watch, so there will certainly be a lot of rain and some gusty wind much of Saturday.