This first Lines of the year always feels more like an intimate conversation than a newspaper column. From the looks of the Long Beach Island area, I have to imagine I’m talking to only four, maybe five people. I guess six, since my grandmother hasn’t left for her month in Florida yet. But we are the diehards, the ones who’re living on and around this forsaken sandbar because we don’t know anything else.

Since Christmas and New Year’s Days fell on Thursdays, everyone seemed to have off for six weeks.