1:45 a.m. Well, yes it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend I had, and I have worked as hard as I possibly could today, Monday, to try to make amends. Gotta work, gotta scrub, gotta pass the salt.

Yesterday we walked on the quote boardwalk unquote as the shadows were getting long and it was getting to be time for dinner. As you can clearly see from this photo, the boardwalk contains not a single solitary board.

As you can also see -- the surface is pretty smooth and clean. It's the new Venice, newly repaved and ready for rollerblading. It's only a matter of time before they make wee blades for the dogs. Somebody will buy them.

So I worked all day on office cleanup. The urge came upon me like a fever and I gave in to it. Once I got started, I was unstoppable, and my brain will not switch off now. I've been ripping through the backs of closets, the insides of drawers, and I've been organizing the contents. It's my all-time favorite thing do do.

And I'm able to enjoy such a luxury, I might add, because I haven't moved in over a year. I am almost unpacked, but not quite. In fact, I'm getting down to my own old stuff, my own past writing, my own reviews, all those things I put off until all the more pressing work is satisfied.

I have printouts that I haven't read for many years.

And I think it's going to make me crazy if I try reading them now.

So. Unless I want to write the "Jim Valvis is right" entry, I'd better stay away from my printouts: no rereading the novel, the novella, the novellini. That entry is in my head and I don't want to commit it to print. Not yet.

And I keep thinking about this row of girls I saw on the boardwalk yesterday. They were coming at us in the opposite direction and since the day is sunny and full of people from every country on the earth and under it, you tend (I tend) to walk along with a swivel head. Swivel left, look, scan across the front, swivel right, front, left ... which is what I was doing while I was walking and talking.

And I must have swiveled and backtracked or stayed too long on one spot because I suddenly found myself staring at four girls wearing identical cantilevered bathing-suit tops. Different colors, different sizes, but the heaving breast jerry-rigging was identical and one of them got pretty angry.

She could have punched me out, I realize now -- without waiting for any explanation. She sort of yelled "hi" and I said "hi" and she repeated it and stupidly, so did I, and lucky for me I was still walking in the opposite direction the whole time and she was probably too lazy to bother backing up and beating me to a pulp.

But it gave me pause because I meant no harm. And I've seen on television that girls in gangs now try to be tough like boys in gangs. And I keep forgetting how old I am and how many social mores have come undone between me and her generation.

And I'm writing on the web, and I am out of my element.

And dogs wear little hats when they're out for a stroll.

And Jim Valvis can't be right. He is but a mere youngster.