What A Mess

This is the beach renourishment project in fabulous Juno Beach (from the south end, facing north), otherwise known as How To Spend Millions Of Dollars On The Most Ridiculous Mess Ever. This whole thing is supposed to be for the benefit of the sea turtles. (The project is working its way south, towards the camera, so the beach you see in the foreground has not yet been widened.) Do you see the ship out in the water, on the right (left-click on the picture with your mouse to get a larger version)? That is dredging sand off the bottom of the ocean and they are pumping it onto the shore and distributing everything around with bulldozers. The problems with this are: 1) the sand is now so firmly packed that no sea turtle alive would be able to dig through it and 2) in addition to sand, they are also sucking up sharp rocks, about the size of your fist or larger. Because of the heavy machinery, they are also breaking up many shells that now have sharp edges. In my mind, I envision any sea turtle coming to this beach to lay her eggs as crawling over one sharp rock or, failing that, trying without success to dig into the sand and promptly heading back into the ocean, to lay her eggs somewhere else.

Anyway, enough of my rant. You can see that otherwise the sky was beautiful but there were some clouds. The breeze was off the ocean and it was comfortable when the sun was out. I saw a few people fishing, all without success. Up by the pier, I happened to overhear one fisherman saying all anyone's caught in a week was cobia, which is similar to kingfish, at best only marginally edible until they get too big, which opens the possibility of their having eaten something poisonous to humans. I was back to my car at a little after three, so it took me about seven and a half hours of mostly walking, although I did indulge myself by running to reach the pier on one really boring stretch of the beach north of this dredging project.

Most of the public beaches were closed to swimming, again because of the sharks, but I saw none. A nice looking honey was studying a thick textbook, something medical, while trying to catch some rays south of the big hotel, whose name escapes me, just this side of the main beach. Another blonde cutie in front of another new and expensive hotel said Hi to me and smiled as I walked by, but she seemed awfully young and it looked as if she was there with either her family or friends. She also had her cell phone out on her beach blanket, as if she were expecting a call.

I did some more work on the sequel, so the ending is coming along but I don't want to post it here until it's done, which could be a while. Also got caught up on the newspaper. Otherwise, I'm sitting here waiting for the telephone to ring, as I did find a few job positions in the last couple weeks to apply for. But with more than six people unemployed for every position that opens up and my resume looking terrible, unfortunately the silence makes a great deal of sense. I did apply for a Census 2010 job and took the test and passed, but when I called earlier in the month, I was informed the soonest that hiring might begin is late February, if not early March.

I have enough money to pay this coming months' bills, but I won't have enough to make my car payment on the eighteenth. If nothing materializes between now and then, I will be forced to sell some diamonds, gold and coins I have. Then I do have cash advances on some credit cards but after that, I'll have to sell my condo, so at least I have a way out, because I owe only $27,520 on my place. Sadly, many people who either bought at the height of the real estate bubble or took out a second mortgage do not.