We made it in one piece!!
And I am well out of range of potential nervous breakdowns, YAY!!
No unsecured wireless close enough to pick up a signal, and Speakeasy doesn’t have any dialup numbers down here, so I’ll just continue adding to this until I hit the coffee shop w/ free wifi. IT WILL BE LONG! I’m currently typing out on the screened porch, listening to the birds, enjoying the sea air (my skin is clearing up already), ocean sounds, a great breeze and recharging my PDA and dumping more music on it (totally should have gotten the 2G card, I will likely have to pare down my playlist a tad). We’re the third house back from the beach. The boys have both suggested that I just take the laptop and walk in increasing concentric circles around the house until I can connect. (For the record, I’m not the only one w/a laptop here.)
I apologized for being so anti-social, but Donald pointed out that they were immersed in Harry Potter and doing the exact same thing, just all in the same room.
Got on the road around 9:30 or so, (made the pharmacy in Burke!), a very relaxed trip once we got going with many stops, got in around 6 or so. Only real bad traffic was on the final approach, and even then, not too terrible. Bringing along my PDA was a very good idea, as my brother’s iPod FM transmitter just couldn’t quite cut it, and the internal speakers on mine are pretty good in a pinch, and he was impressed to see he could rebuild a good 90% of his playlist on my PDA - apparently we have very similar musical tastes.
The cast of characters this week:
Donald - aka little bro, aka dlove107.
Tev - Donald’s roommate, aka he who has stated he will be very disappointed if he doesn’t see a shark.
Lisa - Donald’s roommate & Tev’s fiancee.
Overall, very little seems to have changed in the last 5 years, which is nice. There is now a $2 escape tax to get out of VA (Toll on the “Chesapeake Expressway” just before you hit the state line), and a new drawbridge in Great Bridge which we got to see in action. Not too terribly much changed at the beach itself so far. Whalebone Surf Shop is now a mortgage co, hopefully they’ve just moved elsewhere, and there is a new Wings (cheesy beach shop) in Duck, and one of the banks has a new name. There is also a new little shopping center at the entrance of Southern Shores. Ports O’ Call restaurant is still here, which is one of my favs (yay estate jewelry store in the lobby!) that we’ll be hitting, just need to find out if Carolina Seafood & Jolly Roger are still around. We haven’t ventured that far south yet to see what’s around.
Saturday’s big excursions after getting in were to the market for some forgotten items, the pizza place to get dinner and to the beach to stomp around for a bit. Storm was coming in, very cool to watch the lightning out over the water. One Corona and I was down for the count. Fell asleep with all the lights on in the room and slept a good 12 hours straight.
Sunday has been filled with food making (we have enough ham salad for a week, WOOT and another WOOT for having the presence of mind to throw my mini cuisinart in the food box), more beach time (I’ve got tan lines already!), trip out to the Brew Thru (Tev is a NC beach rookie, had never seen one before, and well, we needed more beer), drug store for a few more forgotten items, and now it’s evening chill out time. The gents are in charge of dinner, as we picked up a hibachi so we could grill the hot dogs, so they get to play with fire for a while. Donald is making a dash to the closest quickie mart for ketchup as I completely forgot anything to put ON the hot dogs..
Lisa is hard core - she was out in the water up to her neck several times today. She also has the ability to snooze absolutely anywhere - even moreso tham me - we gotta make sure she’s well sunscreened up and doesn’t zonk out on the beach without supervision. :) The water is too cold for me to do much besides dunk my feet and cool off, but it’s at least not turn your toes blue cold. (I have experienced that down here once. If you go out one fine morning and find a load of expired minnows on the beach, don’t bother touching the water - it’s THAT cold.)
Just a couple hours in the sand and the skin on my feet is in better shape than it’s been in years. Two weeks and I’ll have gorgeous footsies. Glad I snagged some nail polish at the drugstore today. :)
One of the forgotten items was sunscreen, as the bottle I’d bought for the beach is apparently still sitting on the kichen counter. Ended up w/Bullfrog for kids, cause that was the only version of it they had in a spray bottle. My luck it’s something that sprays on purple or smells like bubble gum, LOL. But it’s SPF 40 and I can’t imagine it can actually figure out my age, so it should work…
The house is great, smaller than where we’ve stayed before, but perfect for 4 people. (Technically it sleeps 8, but that’s definitely pushing it.) Lisa is going to help me figure out if the young man across the street is jail bait or not, cause I just can’t be leering at a high-schooler…
The cable here has G4 TV on it, also known as “tech TV which was good and now it’s all damn video game reviews”… The boys are thrilled. The travel channel was also showing poker earlier - when did this actually become a spectator sport?? Even more hilarious - they have COMMENTATORS. I couldn’t help but spend some time mocking THAT…. “Well, Jim, if the flop doesn’t go his way, he’ll end up in 4th place.” “Exactly, Bob, and his girlfriend won’t sleep with him for WEEKS if that happens…”
Tev says I have quite the Lara Croft thing going w/my braid & my hat. He’s very sweet that way, overlooking the fact that I am just missing the insanely fabulous body and Brad Pitt on my arm. Lisa says the hat is “so totally me”. I will have to get pics of me in the hat at some point, as it really is quite the kickass hat.
sagamore is tending to the four legged brood while we’re gone, and called this evening - I’ll admit to a moment of panic upon hearing the ringtone, but all is well - his very sharp eyes saw my driver’s license sitting out at the house when he went to check in on the cats. Fortunatly, that is my old DL w/the old address that I am keeping as a backup should I lose my current one so I can at least have that piece of plastic in my wallet while waiting on a replacement. Major props for noticing something like that! And I couldn’t help but laugh when he said, “You sound like you’re unloading beer” - cause that was EXACTLY what we were doing at the time. He’s a good egg to not only be looking out for my critters, but me as well.
The wheels are already turning in my head about buying property down here - happens every time I am here without fail - more dangerous this time around as I have more means for it… But gosh, wouldn’t it be GREAT? I mean really, get a place w/decent rental history, that offsets some of the mortgage costs, yes, I should stop thinking about this RIGHT NOW… ;) But MY house would offer a wireless broadband internet connection… Tev says he’d DEFINITELY rent from me. :)
Storm is blowing through, we’ll probably be seeing this every evening - that’s July on the east coast. Think I got a few cool pics of the stormline, we’ll see when I get them off the camera.
My big plans for the next two weeks are to hit the Elizabethan Gardens, the Weeping Radish (most excellent brewery), the aquarium (this may be the only place Tev gets to see a shark), the Pea Island Nature Preserve, and very possibly going parasailing. Figure that should do something for that whole fear of heights, shouldn’t it? (That or I’ll be puking from several hundred feet up, LOL.) There will also likely be an all day putt-putt excursion one day this week.
It’s amazing how you kind of manage to forget everything that’s bothering you down here. Wish I could figure out a way to replicate that up in DC. Hell, if I could bottle it and sell it, I’d be a millionaire. I am seriously in my happy place. I’ve almost always been that way down here. I don’t know how it happens, but it does. (The only exception was the year my ex-h had bailed on me, that was a rough year, and it rained nonstop.)
