Sonya and I pretty much burned Saturday waiting for the cable guy to show up and fix our internet access. As usual, the cable modem came back on moments before he arrived. I let him come over anyway. Unsurprisingly, he couldn't fix the problem and someone had to come out on Monday. That was Saturday, along with a little gardening and a trip to Pier 1 for a CD rack and a magazine rack. The thrilling life of Active Young People.

So Sunday morning we got up relatively early - for a weekend - and went to Biloxi. Biloxi - where the beach is like an ashtray, all bottle caps, broken glass and cigarette butts.

But we didn't really go for the beach. First we went to McElroy's for lunch. McElroy's has been there forever - I remember going when I was just a little Harold. There's a reason it's been there that long, too - mountains of fresh, fried seafood. Sonya and I ate like the Simpsons, then slid to the parking lot on a thin layer of our own crapulence.

Then we went to the cemetery.

Let me explain.

As some of you know, Sonya had a best-in-show photograph in the Cemeteryscapes show last year - Cemeteryscapes being a show put on by local preservationists Save Our Cemeteries. They sent her a letter the other day, inviting submissions for this year's contest.

Last time I was in Biloxi I went to the cemetery and was impressed. It's got some big, ancient vaults like the graveyards in New Orleans, but it's also got a bunch of weird, almost folk-art type monuments, plus a big Vietnamese section that's like nothing I've ever seen. Sonya took lots of pictures.

Ask yourself: what do you have to do when you go to the beach? That's right. You go to the tacky tourist shop. We went to Sharkhead's, so named for the gigantic shark head where you walk in the mouth to go in the store.

"Useless crap! Shells! Hermit crabs!" I gibbered on the way in. 

"These places always make me feel like I'm on vacation," Sonya noted later.

Sonya was pushing for a hermit crab, and I really wanted to get some yard flamingos, but in the end we settled on a discount kite. 

We went out on the beach and flew the hell out of that kite, too. To have cost $2.50 it was pretty durable, considering I nosedived it into the sand countless times and deep into the Gulf twice. I just kept reeling it back in and sending it back up. 

The beach was just as dirty as it ever was, but it was kind of cool anyway. Sonya was the picture of cool in her leather jacket, shades and big black shoes.

It was a totally fun day.