Friday afternoon Donna and I drove up to Loveladies, a town near the northern end of Long Beach Island, an 18-mile long barrier island on the New Jersey coast. Donna spent the summers of her youth in Harvey Cedars, one town down from Loveladies, in a house on the ocean and a short walk across Long Beach Boulevard to Barnegat Bay. Her family sold the house in Harvey Cedars and built the Loveladies house around 25 years ago. It was a beautiful evening, warmer than you would expect for mid-October. We unloaded our stuff, turned on the house's heat and hot-water heater, and headed out to one of the few restaurants on the northern end of the island to stay open year round. After dinner, when we got back to the house, we went out on the deck. The stars were spectacular and the night so clear you could see the light band of the Milky Way stretching across the sky. We slept in until 7:30, practically a record for us, turned on the gas fireplace and had coffee at the same table we hav