beach trip

I got back Thursday from a 2 week trip to Myrtle beach (Surfside) with my room-mate and his extended family. Here are some highlights from the trip:

1. Day one on the beach and two women approached us with free samples of Pringles SnackStix. We accepted a few packages and they went on their way. A few minutes later, another duo approached with more samples. Then a third group, and finally a fourth. When the 5th group came around, we politely declined. Apparently, they were poorly coordinated and didn’t realize that they were hitting the same part of the beach over and over. Or they didn’t care. In any case, we got a pile of snacks.

2. We met up with some of my room-mates somewhat distant cousins at another condo for a cookout and game night. The odds were somewhat stacked against my team as we were playing Scene It and there were limited TV/Movie/Music fans on our side. Fortunately, I do pretty well with the visual puzzles and we held our own. On the last set of questions, my room-mates 8 year old cousin came up with the answer of Jimmy Newtron before anyone else and I followed up with another cartoon based answer – Princess Monokoe. The rest of the group was stunned when they answer came up on the screen. Thank you, somewhat obscure anime.

3. On a separate occasion, we played Scatagories and for the question of “Things you Replace” I suggested Needles. Which seemed quite responsible and clever. For “Things You Shout”, I used - for different rounds – Kneel before Zod! and Spoon! That being the command of Superman’s enemy in Superman 2 and the battle cry of the Tick, respectively. I was denied both times.

4. In the past, I’ve gotten pretty well burned on these trips. This time, thanks to liberal applications of SPF 30 and 45, my pale geek flesh was only moderately tanned.

5. I bought and tried a boogie board. The only way to describe my experience on that is “Epic Fail”

6. I watched a lot of “shark week” on tv in the evenings and a special on the History Channel on corn.

7. While out to dinner one evening, I split an order of calamari, black olives, and cheese. It was disturbing to look at, but quite good.

8. On the last night we were there, there was a massive lightning storm out to sea. It seemed like the lightning kept hitting the same general area with huge strikes and in many cases, the lighting would branch out in cloud to cloud strikes. Really amazing.

9. While we were down in the area, we also went to see Brookgreen Gardens. It has a bunch of really impressive outdoor sculptures and a sprawling garden – really neat to see. They also had a sort of outdoor zoo – my favorite animals were the huge spiders near the horse barn, the three otters in their own creek, and a giant alligator that moved just enough to show us he was the boss.

10. I didn’t do as much reading as I thought I would, but I did a lot of writing on the beach. I worked mainly on a short story – but I’ll need to type it up so that other people can read it.

I also did a lot of swimming – but I’ll go over that in another post. It was a good trip, but it’s also good to be home.