A Feverish End to the Summer

Last night was the final Taco Tuesday of the summer at Barrio Costero—Soder joined us for steak tacos, but Stacey did not . . . she was still recovering from her trip to Vegas—and now I am sad to report that this long and wild month of socializing, partying, drinking, smoking, swimming-- so much swimming, the water at the Jersey Shore has never been warmer-- doing Zyn nicotine pouches, reading, strumming my guitar, writing podcast scripts, eating seafood and thin crust pizza at Vic's, drinking fancy drinks at The Wheelhouse, napping on the beach and all the rest of the good stuff is coming to an end; we visited so many people and had so many visitors that my head is reeling—but now it's time to dry out, start eating healthy, and get ready for school; vacation is not quite over, however, so my wife and I enjoyed a serene paddleboarding/kayaking journey this morning on the Manasquan Inlet, and because I was on a paddleboard and I was wearing my polarized sunglasses, I was lucky enought to see a number of needlefish darting through the water and several packs of fifteen to twenty cownose rays, flapping their wings just below the surface of the water . . . you should actually call a group of cownose rays (or rays in general) a "fever" of rays-- but I'm not a pedantic douchebag, so I'm not going to do that  . . . anyway, I paddleboarded over a whole fucking bunch of cownose stingrays and it was a little scary-- but apparently they visit every summer when the water warms up, and they're fairly docile unless you step on their poison barb-- so be on the lookout and try not to shit yourself if you find yourself in the midst of them.