How I Spent My Summer Vacation – Day Four

Day four was the final full day at the condo, but since the yoots didn’t make it to Big Kahuna water park the day before, their primary mission on arising was to get to the water park as near to opening as practical (for Number One Daughter, who tends to sleep late). SWMBO and I dropped them off around ten or so and then headed back to the condo. I only spent a small amount of time on the beach, instead using most of the time to work on the last paper needed for my business finance class (final results a 95 and an A for the class). SWMBO spent a little time down at the beach and we ate lunch in the condo.

Around four in the afternoon the kids called and said they had finished with their water park fun, but had one more ride they wanted to do. Number One Son and Number One Daughter were going to the Cyclone and wanted to know if we wanted to watch. Actually, I would have preferred to be forever in denial that they would get on such a contraption as this thing, but ended up going and watching. The Cyclone is basically an eighty-foot propeller with buckets stuck way out on the each end. Passengers (two per bucket) are loaded on and it spins in one direction for a bit, then spins in the other direction. While the seat does pivot, leaving the slight possibility that you could rotate all the way around and the chair would pivit to keep you upright, it appeared to me that upside-down is just as common a position on this ride. In the picture here, clickable for a larger version, you can’t get a feel for how high up it goes or how fast it spins but suffice it to say I cringed wondering about little things like bolt strength, preventative maintenance routines, and the quality of the workmanship. But what you gonna do? They, of course, loved it.

Afterward we cleaned up and then made a trip out to a place called the Village of Baytowne Wharf, a collection of shops, restaurants, and clubs in Sundestin, a bit east of Destin. I really didn’t want to go and griped about it a fair amount -- yeah, I’ll admit to acting a bit of an ass about going because I didn’t really want to do a lot of walking around, but keep that to yourself -- SWMBO isn’t aware that, upon occasion, I can be a bit of an ass; it’d shock her should she find out. However, after arriving, it was an interesting place and I’ll plan to go back the next time we are in the neighborhood -- but it was a lot of walking.

My walking ended once we got to the restaurant where we were planning to eat that night, a place in the Village called Poppy’s Seafood Factory. They had an outdoor bar (as well as an indoor bar) along with the restaurant, so I put our name down for a table, plopped down at the outdoor bar, and had a couple while the rest of the gang did some Baytowne Wharf site-seeing. After a bit of a wait, we got a table outside where we could watch and listen to the live band, playing Margaritaville style music with a lot of Jimmy Buffet covers.

The best part of the night, though, was Number One Daughter’s first try at a whole lobster. Now, Number One Daughter can’t even handle shrimp at the table when the head is still on but somehow got the idea that she wanted a whole lobster ($30/lb, but that’s another story See note below). So our server brought one out for Number One Daughter to approve -- which, of course, Number One Daughter couldn’t do, couldn't even look at the thing. The reason she couldn’t approve any lobster was because she couldn’t, personally, sentence the poor bugger to death (never mind the fact she was sentencing some mud bug to death when she ordered it; these are her rules not mine). She told the server to pick one for her but to not let her see it ahead of time.

The second picture you see above is her reaction to the lobster when served, along with Number One Son showing a little brother’s heartfelt empathy for her plight. But as the last picture shows, she did manage to finally dig in; it was an interesting time getting to that point. As for the rest of us, we had various seafood thingies and enjoyed the meal and the music. It was late by the time we finished the meal, so it was time to wrap it up and call it a night.

Note: SWMBO and I discussed going somewhere like Ruth Crisp or the Copper Grill for some really nice steaks but I decided it would be too costly; as I told SWMBO, we would end up spending close to three hundred by the time the meal ended. When all was said and done, the total cost at Poppy’s Seafood Factory? $366.68. Never try saving money -- when will I ever learn?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Day Three

Not a lot to say here except “second verse, same as the first” (for you Herman's Hermits fans); day three was another day of lying around on the beach, taking it easy in the condo, and then going out for a nice meal. I ended up doing some work on a paper I had due shortly for an online class I was taking (some two weeks later, class now completed), so spent a fair amount of time working on it in the condo. I did find some time to slather up and lie around on the beach reading, along with some cooler reading in the condo (for day three, it was Vinnie’s Head by Marc Lecard). Lunch was also in the condo, using up some of the bounty we had bought when first arriving.

After lunch, the yoots planned on going to the local (to Destin) water park Big Kahuna; we took them there around three to find out it closed at six, so scrapped those plans and they decided to go the next day. While out, though, we did make a run to the Marble Slab Creamery where we had ice cream with stuff in it. If you’ve never been to the Marble Slab Creamery (or Maggie Moo’s or the Cold Stone Creamery) you choose an ice cream flavor and then some fixin’s - Reese’s cups, Butterfinger, Oreo Cookies, nuts, sprinkles, even gummy bears - and they throw it on a cold slab and smoosh it all together, using all the smooshing around to keep your attention diverted from the price you pay. But it was good.

Therefore the afternoon was more beach time, which included Number One Daughter, with minimal help from the other yoots, building a massively small sandcastle. Even had a family of itty-bitty hermit crabs moved in, the wife crab would have been complaining within two days of a lack of storage space, and quite honestly there was no room for a decent workshop to Bondo up a dent in one of the family's shells.

That night we went out to Rick’s Crab Trap for seafood. An interesting place. The thought I had after leaving is it is a family-run business run by a somewhat mentally challenged family. We were told there was an hour wait, but figured what the heck. We waited at the bar and noticed one section was completely empty, the rest half empty. While we were waiting, another fellow came in and was told they were closed (it wasn't yet 8:30). I think we were told of the wait to discourage us from staying because after about twenty minutes, we were seated. I also think we were why the hostess switched to "we're closed," deciding some folks just can't take a hint.

We tried for the crab cakes all around as an appetizer, but after taking the order our server was back shortly with news that it was a no go. A couple of us decided against an appetizer while the rest went with seafood gumbo (which, having a bite, I’ll vouch for being pretty good). I had the steamed plate which included some crab claws, some oysters, a whole crab, some shrimp, and an abundance of mussels. Number One daughter went with Alaskan King Crab – apparently the local crab wasn’t good enough, so she had to order from as far away as you can get and still be eating an American crab. Two grouper sandwiches and some fried shrimp rounded out the entrées. All of it was pretty good except the fried shrimp which had a doughy, not crisp batter. I had to ask for assistance on the crab, where upon the server picked it up off my plate and broke it in half and showed me how to pull out the meat. After she walked away, Number One Son commented, "I hope she washed her hands." As do I, seeing as how I was the one who ate it.

When we were getting ready to leave, I visited the (unsurprisingly named) "Buoys" restroom. There were two urinal stalls and, though the first was mounted so low as to be nearly on the floor, the second one was occupied -- so I took the first. I wasn’t sure what the fellow in the second one was up to, but there was a fair amount of banging and bumping against the partition while I took care of business. As I washed up and was opening the bathroom door to leave, a young lady (as opposed to my assumption of a male) stepped out of the second stall.

“I was cleaning” she quickly told me. Since she was wearing a Rick’s Crab Trap T-Shirt (“I Have a Crabby Attitude” as the slogan) and holding a toilet scrub brush, I had puzzled that one out on my own, but I guess she didn’t want me to think she was back there for nefarious purposes. Perhaps the T-shirt and scrub brush were just a disguise so she could hang out in men's bathrooms trying to grab a quick peep. In either case, she didn’t seem particularly embarrassed and I didn’t intend to worry about it. Whether cleaning while customers are using the facilities or trying to catch a quick (and, in my case, probably disappointing) peep show I just put it down as part of the charm of the place.

If I recall correctly, back at the condo there was another walk on the beach but, again, I stayed at the condo and pretended to be lazy. I fake lazy very well - you can hardly tell it from the real thing.

Interlude Two –Roast Bambi with Cabernet

Another quick interlude in the vacation posts because . . . well, because it was tasty!

One of SWMBO’s brothers is a really dedicated deer hunter who, unlike me, has not discovered you can buy steaks at the butcher shop. Instead, he thrashes around for miles going into in the woods, climbing over hill and dale to find a spot to sit in the freezing cold in the rare hope of seeing a deer at which to take a shot -- all of which is much harder than stopping by the butcher shop for a couple of T-Bones or Porterhouse steaks. Well, okay, I lied a bit. Actually he rides a four-wheeler into the woods to a heated "hunt house" where he sits back in a comfortable chair waiting for a deer to happen by. But still, I think the butcher shop is easier.

In any case, he does hunt often and a couple of years ago gave us several packages of frozen meat. One package was a tenderloin which we quickly scarf’ed up, but there was also four big packages of bone-in shoulders -- or at least I assume they were either a front or back shoulder (haunch? -- there may be some other name it goes by for all I know). The tenderloin I sliced and fried and had with biscuits & gravy and it was fantastic. This other, though, I didn't really have any idea how to go about cooking. Hey, that didn't stop me from trying. Shortly after we got it I decided to take a shot with one of the packages, but after thawing it out I realized it wouldn’t fit any of the pans we had. The fix was a tad bit of home-style butchery with a (new, washed) hacksaw, cutting it to a pan-fitting size. I don’t even remember now what I did to cook it, I just remember the hacksaw butchery was somewhat of a pain to get done. Thank God I'm not a serial killer; I'd confess rather than hack up an entire body.

Fast forward to now, when I’ve decided we are at the point of needing to defrost the (nearly fifty year old) deep freezer we have. I’m not going to throw away the venison because 1) it was a gift and you just don’t do that, 2) I generally like venison, and 3) I’m too cheap to throw away perfectly good food. But a new opportunity was at hand with a large cast iron pan I bought awhile back. It’s a fairly large pan and I thought (correctly) it would hold the entire shoulder. I figured I could cook it in the oven and then pull the meat and make a stew with it. As with most of my culinary attempts, I played this one by ear and, as with most, I ended up with something quite tasty (yeah, I'm braggin').

First I stuck the pan across two eyes and sautéed some onions and garlic in olive oil. I then seared the shoulder on both sides. After this, I poured in a can of Guinness draft beer and put it in the oven at 250 F for six hours. The plan was to use the pulled meat and juices in the pan to make a stew but when I pulled the meat off it was so tasty (had to sample) instead I put the meat into a 9 X 9 dish, saved the juices, melted a tablespoon of Crisco in the cast-iron pan to brown some flour, then deglazed with the reserved juices (adding enough water to get the gravy the consistency I wanted). Some mashed potatoes and peas, and an inexpensive McWilliams Hardwood Estates Australian Cabernet made for a very nice meal. SWMBO and both Number One Daughter and Number One Son, as well as Boyfriend (of Number One Daughter, not SWMBO or Number One Son (or me)) loved it as well. The pictures are of the meat and of the pan while making the gravy. Both are clickable for a larger picture.

So, next post will be vacation day number three (unless it’s not) but given how tasty this meal was I just had to share. Thanks, BIL, for the deer meat. I’ll be cooking the other packages of venison soon, and once the freezer is empty (there is other stuff in there as well) it will be defrosted. At that time, BIL, you are welcome to load me back up! I promise it won’t take as long for them to get used this time around.

Post Day Fifteen Post

Since the fifteen-day mark has passed I thought I’d stick in an interlude on the day-by-day vacation discussion and mention something else. I’ll get back to days three, four, and five in upcoming posts so for those who are repeatedly clicking their browser's refresh button to view the next “Wanna see my vacation slides” entry and sobbing that day three has yet to be posted, don’t despair. For now, though, back to the post-day-fifteen post.

Sha' Chi or Si Chi, bad karma, bad luck, I really don’t know which it might be. Maybe I need to rearrange the furniture, maybe I did something really evil in a past life, or more likely it’s just that there are millions and millions and millions of folks in the world so some are going to land on the statistical far right of the luck curve and win the lottery, others on the far left get struck by lightning, and some hang more in the middle. This post is for those of us who tend to spend our time just left of center on the curve. It’s certainly not a bad life; those who live downhill from us are much more deserving of sympathy. I don't think I can really complain all that much being where I am, but for we folk who do hang here it is a pain in the ass at times.

See, we’re the folks who buy the new mattress the weekend before the big sale, who win the homemade fruitcake instead of the ten speed bicycle in the church raffle *Note one below, who are the fifth caller when the station is looking for caller number six, or who have our freezer go out two days after taking advantage of the grocer's sale by buying an entire beef sirloin and one day after leaving on a week-long trip. Oh, we occasionally have something exciting happen, such as being customer number one-million-and-one at the electronic store and are seen standing in the background in the newspaper photo of the millionth customer receiving the big screen flat panel TV, but usually it's just day to day getting the rock to the windshield, ordering dinner just after they ran out of the daily special we came for, and so on. Basically we who spend life always just short of making it over the hump – we can see the top from here, we just never seem able to reach it.

There are those in this group who continually work to make it over that hump, to move to the easy life, to achieve comfort, to “get ahead.” For years I was one of those and let me tell you, it’s a frustrating existence. Maybe if you work just a little harder, maybe put a few bucks into a business and pour all your spare time there, try over achieving in your job, study everything about getting ahead you can find, listen to motivational programs, find something that will help you make that final little bit of a climb and allow you the opportunity to coast a bit. When that doesn’t work, you try even a little more, and a little more, and more, and more, and more. Soon you're overextended in all phases of life: working too hard, emotionally drained, physically unhealthy, can’t sleep, convinced the world is against you, and you are starting to get desperate. If you are in that group, let me help you: STOP. See, again, whether Sha' Chi or Si Chi, bad karma, or just bad luck from being on the wrong side of the curve, the world is against you. Accept it and life gets much easier.

I’ll give you an example. Recently (day fourteen of the post portion of the fifteen-day pre/post window, but I’ll get back to that in a bit) I went out one Sunday night to go fill my car up with gas for the coming week. I normally leave for work a little before five in the morning, and since I hate to set the 4:15 alarm any earlier I didn’t want to wait until morning to make the refueling stop. But when I went out that Sunday night the car wouldn’t crank, wouldn’t even turn over. It had been sitting there since coming home from work the previous Friday night, so I assumed I had left a light on or something, and ran the battery down. I pushed the car back (okay, Number One Son pushed it back and I sat inside and steered) to where I could get to the battery and then jumped-started it. I let it run for twenty minutes and then drove to get gas. When I shut off the car, it wouldn’t crank back up. Dead as could be. *Note two below

I called in reinforcements (Number One Daughter and Boyfriend) from home and, of course, this time it wouldn’t jump-start. I tried several times, then sent them back for the Big Black Blunderbuss (1994 Trooper); it’s what I had jumped it off with the first time and I thought, maybe, it had a stronger starting capacity than Number One Daughter’s Traveling Dumpster. No joy here, either. I finally pushed it to the side and left it for the night. On the brighter side *Note three below, I did get to sleep late the next morning. Since I figured I’d pay overtime fees to get a tow truck prior to seven or eight o’clock, I planned to wait until then. So I slept until six, a luxurious treat on a Monday morning.

Bright and reasonably early next day, SWMBO made the suggestion that we try and jump it off one more time before calling a tow service. We drove over, hooked up, and darned if it didn’t crank. Now comes decision time. I can either drive it to a shop to be looked at or drive it to one of the auto parts places where they will check for a bad battery and replace it if need be, with no extra charge for them doing the work of replacing it. I was certain the problem was the battery and replacing it would fix the problem -- but this is where a left-side paradigm shift is critically important, where the acceptance of being on the left side of the luck curve comes into play.

If I drive to the auto parts house to have the battery checked, the problem is going to be something other than the battery. I will turn the car off, have them check the battery, and have them tell me the battery is fine. At this point, no effort will get the car to crank so I will need both a tow to the shop and then significant work. But what I've learned over the years is a modified Schrödinger's Cat principle: until the decision is made the results are unformed. By deciding to go to the auto parts store, I would have cemented the problem to being more than the battery. But if instead I accept the inevitable trip to the shop, I can leave open the possibility of the battery being the problem. Once you learn this approach you can begin to mitigate the damage of living left of center. So I immediately drove to the closest dealer and had them check it out: bad battery. Forty minutes and a hundred and five bucks later, I’m on the road again. The fates rewarded my acceptance of living left of center by allowing the problem to just be the battery. You may be thinking that I spent an extra fifty or so, but instead I saved a tow, the cost of, say, replacing the starter (much more than a battery), plus the need to leave the car in the shop for at least a day or two.

What I’m trying to do here for those of you who, like me, are just slightly left of center on the luck curve, is to get you to understand that, once accepted, it’s all about mitigation of the damages. I’ve come to realize over the years that, whether Sha' Chi or Si Chi, bad karma, or (most likely) just bad luck, once accepted you can appease the fates of life by this acceptance and mitigate the costs, both financially and emotionally. Since life’s gonna slap you from time to time, just roll your head with the slap and it hurts a lot less. I used to fight it, used to think I could win, but a glance at this picture and you'll see what lies just below the surface of those who follow that path; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Munch spent his life just to the left of center on the luck curve. I have found it's much easier to accept and then plan for the inevitable. *Note four below.

All of this brings me to the title of this post, the “Post Day Fifteen” part. We left for vacation on August 1st and returned on August 5th; add fifteen days and you have the 20th of August, which marked the fifteen days post-vacation point. Subtract fifteen days from the day we left, and you have July 17th. This is the fifteen-day pre/post zone, and something that I have to plan for on any vacation. It’s like this: whenever we decide to go on vacation, there will be extra costs. No, not the clothes that inevitably must be bought for vacation, the extra, unplanned money spent while on vacation, or such. I know we hemorrhage money when we take a trip and of course that’s built into the vacation budget. But, heck, many on the other side of the curve can state that claim. What my fifteen-day rule is about is the left-of-center situation that I face.

Anytime we plan a vacation, there are going to be unrelated expenses that occur sometime during the fifteen-day pre/post window. Basically, I budget an extra thousand dollars to try and cover those. Sometimes it’s enough, sometimes it’s not, but at least once I cross the fifteen-day point I know the damage. In a good year, it's only a few hundred to replace a dishwasher (happened twice). Other years, it’s worse news, such as the year of the air conditioner (over five grand, all told), but that was before planning for such to occur.

This year it was more than just the battery example above; that was just the final item in the plus/minus fifteen-day window. Altogether, it was plumbing and automotive problems totaling just under three grand – yep, a tough year and doesn't even include our cost in Number One Son's new car (as opposed to putting $1,800 into his old one). I’d have much rather installed a third dishwasher, but you get what you get. (I could mention that the battery, at $105, would have been 100% covered under the car’s 36K mile warranty had it occurred the week before, but this sort of stuff goes without saying when you live on the left side of the curve.) Even though it was a large chunk, I can now breath a sigh of relief as the fifteen-day pre/post vacation window has closed. Oh, other things will occur, but at least it won’t happen because we decided to take a vacation. We had already pushed our luck by SWMBO's suggestion early on that we could pull this vacation off inexpensively, and that's the most likely reason the fates hit us as hard as they did. But at least the window is now closed.

Hopefully this post has been instructive to some of you out there who, like me, live just left of center on the luck curve. Acceptance is the ticket to live with this problem, mitigation is the key to smoothing the face in the portrait above. Just remember, once accepted, life is good even from the left side of the curve. So for those left of center like me, take it easy . . . and, hey, good luck (insert whimsical smile here) to you! *Notes five & six below.

*Note one: No, winning the homemade fruitcake isn't good luck, it's much worse than not winning anything. Fruitcake sucks, and being homemade, it was made by some nice church lady who is going to ask you how you liked it. You will be in church when she asks. You will lie. In church. This is bad.

Note two: I know what you’re thinking: driving to the gas station and shutting off the car was a foolish mistake. Smarter would have been to circle the block a few times, then go home, cut it off, and see if it would crank. That way, when it didn't crank, you are at least home where you can work the problem and not stranded at a busy gas pump in front of a Wal*Mart Supercenter. But that’s “right side of the luck curve” thinking. If you go home to try shutting down and restarting the car and it would crank right up . . . but would have bit you later. Accept it: you are going to be stranded somewhere, so you might as well get it over with while near home. Otherwise it'll happen in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in the middle of a pouring rain.

Note three: When you live left-center of the luck curve, look for bright sides wherever you can.

Note four: Don’t think of this as giving up. Would you tell a quadriplegic that if he doesn’t just jump out of that wheel chair and get on with life, he’s giving up? Of course not. Instead, you are impressed by what many handicapped individuals are able to achieve in spite of what life dealt them. In the case of the left-of-center luck curve folks, it’s the same; not nearly as debilitating a condition to be sure, but as it’s a foregone conclusion where their luck lies, be impressed with the mitigation plan.

Note five: Is this tongue in cheek? Of course; life should be lived tongue in cheek.

Note six: Wow. I had a lot of footnotes in this post.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Day Two

Day two was, obviously, beach day. You can’t go to the beach and then not, on the first full day, go to the beach. A service on the beach rented out sets of two chairs and an umbrella, so I rented two sets for the next three days. I think we really only needed one set, as the yoots spent most of their time in the water and not on the chairs, but having two umbrellas gave both SWMBO and myself plenty of shade; while I’m willing to go to the beach I’m unwilling to broil.

After renting the chairs, I went back up to the condo and we lotion’ed up for the beach. This took forever; it’s bad enough for the rest of the family, but when you get my size you need a bucket of lotion and a paintbrush. Number One Sun brought up his idea hatched in previous years of beach-going where he was going to install spray-on lotion booths at ocean-side condos. You get in, pick your lotion, put in some coinage, and get sprayed all over with SPF 20/30/40/LP (latex paint) at your preference. I went one better and suggested cabanas set up on the back part of the beach. No need for an "ocean-sound" CD playing as the real thing is right outside. Add a breeze blowing through the cabana, a comfy padded table, a bottle of suntan lotion, and a hot babe massage therapist, and you have the recipe for ending up completely relaxed and ready for the sun. Pay attention here, massage therapist SIL, but I want a cut when you make millions from this idea.

There were a couple of sorties into town, once by just me prior to hitting the beach and once by both SWMBO and I in the afternoon. On the first trip I picked up a shirt - turns out, the shirt I had packed didn’t match my swimsuit and though I didn’t see a problem with this, SWMBO found it an important shortcoming in my attire. But mostly I was willing to go on the shirt run to pick up a TomTom navigation unit that I had eyeballed on the previous night’s visit, a device I far more wanted than needed. *Note below Later SWMBO and I ran out and got four boogie-boards for the yoots and for SWMBO who, when on the beach, is going to hit the water just like the yoots do. We also went, again, to Wal-mart, this time to find some over-the-glasses shades for me. Actually, the shades were a great idea because we decided to stop off at Hooters and get some wings to go for lunch. I learned you can swivel your eyes all you want without turning your neck and avoid SWMBO’s notice altogether – worked great on the beach, too. Oh, and yes, I remember the mention of all the food we had stocked up on for lunch – but those wings sure were good.

Back to the beach, though; the picture here shows the four boogie-boarding folks en route from far, far, far out (okay, about waist deep or so) riding the wave back in to shore. The yoots and SWMBO kept walking into the ocean and the ocean kept throwing ‘em back out, over and over and over. Sort’a like a NASCAR race, where as a viewer it’s a pretty repetitive scene -- except, of course, for the crashes. My job on beach day was to guard the umbrella and the cooler full of bottled water, read (Red Light by T. Jefferson Parker) and snooze, with the occasional picture-taking break. SWMBO hung with the yoots pretty much all the way, and I think the ocean was thinking about giving up on throwing ‘em back and just swallow them whole when we stopped all the hard work for lunch. (Hey, snoozing on the beach is hard work! You have to adjust the umbrella sometimes twice in an hour, not to mention digging through ice for another bottled water.)

After the late wings lunch, it was back to the water for the yoots and SWMBO, and another hard couple of hours of snoozing under the umbrella for me -- though I spent about half the afternoon in the cool of the condo reading and doing a smidgen of work (I had brought my laptop). I sent an email to my boss regarding a report that I read, and he sent one back that said cut off the laptop and enjoy my vacation. Not a bad piece of advice.

When we finally got around to cleaning up for dinner, we headed out (with TomTom showing the way) to McGuire’s Irish Pub. Now this is a pretty cool place with an interesting decor. Clearly a touristy place, and a bit pricey as such, it was still a lot of fun. One very interesting thing about the decor was the dollar bills, dollar bills, and more dollar bills. Folks would write something on the dollar bill and then staple it to the wall or ceiling. The picture here, clickable for a larger version, was taken with my camera phone and didn't turn out so well, but all the "furry" stuff on the ceiling is solid in dollar bills hanging down. We didn’t partake in the dollar bill bonanza, but with some paper-napkin figuring we decided there was at least a million bucks hanging in McGuire’s. The cool part was how McGuire’s managed to get a million dollar décor with the cost covered entirely by the customers a buck at a time. While we didn’t leave a buck stapled anywhere, we did leave a few coins in the gift shop, the wine store, the bar, and the restaurant that make up McGuire’s Irish Pub. The wait for a table can be both lengthy and expensive!

After the meal, Number One Son and I were ready to depart, but the rest stayed at McGuire’s for some more music. About an hour and half or so later, they text-messaged for the chauffeur (me) to pick them up and we then all called it a night.

Either all GPS navigation systems are less than ideal or the TomTom is an under-performer. I've nothing to which I can compare with the TomTom, but it has been disappointing. If you are looking for a portable navigation unit, look elsewhere.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Day One

For our annual get-a-way, the family planned a vacation down to Destin, Florida, for a few days on the beach. Let me extrapolate that a bit. When I say "the family" what I actually mean is I got a phone call at work one day a couple of months previous explaining how we really needed to get away for a couple of days and we had yet to plan anything; wouldn't be expensive, just a quick trip to the beach. Having been beaten into fairly routine submission from some ten years of continuously raising at least one teenager, with overlapping years of two teenagers, along with being married to SWMBO (as the acronym suggests, "Must Be Obeyed;" i.e., if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy), I was pretty much destined (no pun intended) to go along.

So, on Aug 1st, we were packed and headed out just after 7:00am, which is amazing for this family; I was operating on four hours sleep, but the excitement of five days away from work plus numerous variations of the alphabet driving game kept drowsiness at bay. You have any idea how hard it is to randomly drive by something that starts with "Q," "X," or "Z"? If I had known where a quarry was located, I'd have detoured to it.

First stop, excepting some bathroom breaks, was shortly after passing through Mobile, Alabama, for lunch at the Original Oyster House. Though I wanted 'em, I refused to break my cardinal rule of “no raw oysters in a month without an ‘r’,”*Note below but we all had seafood of one sort or the other. Number One daughter had the grilled shrimp salad, her boyfriend (along for the trip, henceforth called “Boyfriend”) had a fried fish (grouper) basket as did Number One son. SWMBO had some sort of fish with a hollandaise sauce while I had the seafood gumbo. All was quite tasty. It’s here that I’ll point out what I discovered after our return: we suck at photo chronicling. A ton of pictures at the beach, very few of anywhere else on the trip -- in fact, none taken of the inside of the condo. But so you know, the OOH is a nice -- though busy -- place to stop for seafood. A sandy playground on the bottom floor for the (younger than my) kids, you go upstairs to eat. Our table -- incidentally the same table where I sat when there the week before on a business trip -- overlooked the neck of water that runs behind the OOH, so we saw a few small boats passing through while eating. Along with the boats were silvery flashes that started up a discussion of whether it was sunlight on waves or schools of fish hitting the top of the water, with SWMBO going for fish and Number One Son falling on the side of waves; I mentally went along with my son, but kept quiet. I think the end result was Number One Son winning the argument, but in any case all differences were settled while splitting a frozen chocolate-peanut butter pie thingy that was fantastic and, after the meals, plenty for all five of us to share.

A few more hours of driving and, around four-thirty that afternoon, we arrived at our chosen condominium. Through some internet searching we (and the "we" here is used in the sense that I made the telephone call to reserve the condo) had decided on Jetty East as our condo of choice and had reserved a three bedroom with two balconies overlooking the ocean, one in the living room and one in the master bedroom. I'll point out in passing that the cost of the condo for four nights was roughly double the entire trip's budget that was thrown at me in the original telephone call, but I had never bought that number for a second anyway.

The two photos here (both ‘clickable’ for larger views) show the view down the beach on one and in the other the view of the beach below our condo. We’ve stayed at a number of condos over the years but this one had the absolute easiest access to the beach.

You’ll also notice the tennis courts, the pool, and the pavilion on the beach – we used none of these. The folks using the tennis courts were running around, sweating, whapping tennis balls -- it all looked like work to me, and this was a vacation. The pavilion had grills and tables where you could take some dead animal parts of one sort or another, light a fire, roast said animal parts, and eat on the tables, all to the accompaniment of the ocean breeze, the ocean sounds, and the ocean view . . . but let's face it, while this looked somewhat fun, we discovered there were many places in Destin where you go in, sit down, tell some nice folks what you want, and they cook it and bring it too you -- and then clean up afterward! We decided this was a much better plan. As for the pool, while it might be inviting when otherwise landlocked, it seemed silly to use that little dot of water with an entire ocean just steps away providing not only splashing area but a continuous wave-pool environment that was totally missing from the man-made version.

For dinner that first night we went to Fisherman’s Wharf and sat on the deck overlooking the Destin marina. It was late afternoon, and the boats were returning so it was nice to sit, eat, talk, and watch the activity of the marina as darkness approached. Fisherman’s Warf is a great place for seafood, and if the weather permits the deck is the way to go. I immediately broke my afore-mentioned cardinal rule of “no raw oysters in a month without an “r” and had half a dozen as an appetizer. Nobody was willing to try one of my oysters, as expected -- otherwise I’d have ordered a dozen. The restaurant had some sort of "guarantee" of quality, and I, wanting raw oysters, quickly bought into the guarantee.

For the main course I, along with Number One Daughter, went with the grilled grouper while SWMBO had the Grouper Destin; it was the special of the night though we don’t remember what made it special as opposed to the grilled grouper. Boyfriend had chicken alfredo (yes, we verbally beat him up over a “chicken while by the sea” choice). Number One Son had pasta as well, but went with the seafood pasta.

Afterward we stopped off at Win-Dixie and loaded a basket of “condo staples” and, in the process, realized two things: we would still need to stop at Wal*mart for items not carried at a grocer and, two, without a Win-Dixie card everything was way overpriced. There was a gaggle of folks at the customer service line where you had to get the card and I wasn’t waiting, so we abandoned the cart and headed for Wal*mart. For us, this approaches a criminal act and was rationalized away by Win-Dixie’s choice of going with the “shopper’s card” methodology. SWMBO wanted to put everything back, I abandoned not only the cart but the discussion and went to the wine shop next door (where I got both wine and directions to the Wal*mart super-center) and the ‘yoots’ of the bunch talked SWMBO into a compromise of returning the refrigerated items to the shelf and leaving the rest. We did all agree to blame it on Win-Dixie and their shopping card, as we would have gone ahead with the purchase otherwise.

The stock up of staples was considerable, with lots of quickie breakfast items (pop tarts, cereal, milk) and some lunch items (bread, peanut butter, sandwich meats) along with some junk (popcorn, cookies) and drinks, not to mention toilet paper, paper towels, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent -- you'd think, for $400+ per night, they could throw in a box of cascade.

We went back to the condo, unloaded everything, and while I took a short walk to the couch with a book, SWMBO spent a bit of time on the balcony, the yoots took a long nighttime stroll on the beach with a newly acquired Wal*mart flashlight each. Afterward reports indicate few sand crabs, but much chasing of Number One Daughter around the sand with a pretend crab. I doubt either Number One Son or Boyfriend would actually pick up a live crab, but that apparently didn't occur to Number One Daughter.

Thus ended our day one of my summer vacation.

Note: I am amazed at the foresight of the long ago Calendar Planning Committee for not only pulling off the number-of-days-in-the-month-by-the-knuckle trick, but including the oyster rule in the month names as well. If such superb planning was displayed in the meetings I attend at my job, we'd own the business world.