Beach Bum

Hey hey! I’m coming to you this morning from my roommates beach house, and while I’m technically still on the clock for today working from home isn’t so bad when this is the view out your door.  Why not just take the vacation day?  Because by doing this I only use four hours of vacation tomorrow instead of 16 for today and Friday.  Gotta conserve where ya can!

Dani and I hit the road to Bethany Beach around 7:30 last night, and just about 2 hours later we were here!  There’s only 4 of us here currently, but the remaining guests are expected to roll in at various points today and tomorrow.  I love Dani’s families beach house, and I’ll probably cry the day they decide to sell it.  Until then, I will enjoy my view of the marina from the kitchen table.

Mine and Darren’s new oven was delivered on Tuesday night, and look how pretty it is!

Looks like it juuuuust barely fit, haha.  My mom and sister have offered to go in on the matching microwave together as a joint birthday/house warming gift so that’s pretty cool too.  Little by little our kitchen is getting a face lift.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you.  Happy Thursday! Almost another weekend!

Sweet Summertime

Hello, hello and happy Monday to you!  How was everyone’s weekend?  Mine was lovely, because I spent most of Saturday and Sunday in my roommate Danielle’s pool.  Well, technically it’s her parent’s pool, but they were out of town and we took full advantage.  When I say I spent most of the day in the pool, I mean in, it was 106 degrees out.  I’m sure the amount of chlorine I absorbed through my skin was not healthy, but you couldn’t even stand on the pool deck without your feet burning.  Anyway, I’m sporting quite a deep tan/burn today, and I like it.

Dani, her bf, and his daughter enjoying the pool

Prior to heading up to MD for the weekend, the Orkin people came to our house to try to take care of our mouse situation.  My appointment window was from 10-12 and the guy showed up at 10:23 which was awesome.  He was so nice, and asked me where I thought the mice were coming from.  I told him that the cat usually sits in the kitchen staring at the oven, and the trap I had placed in front of the oven on Friday night was the only one that caught something.  He pulled our oven away from the wall, and immediately saw our problem.  Two giant holes in the floor by the back wall.  There was also mouse hair and droppings along the sides of the wall and the back, so it seems my intuition about where they were coming from was correct.

He put some copper wire mesh stuff in the holes, and then calked over them, which he said should ultimately solve the problem.  He also closed up another hole on the side of the wall near our radiator.  I took advantage of the oven being pulled away from the wall and scrubbed the side of it clean with bleach.  It was disgusting.  After taking care of the problems in the kitchen, he did a once over of the whole house, including my room in case there were any strays up there, and then sprayed the outside.  It’s been two nights now with no mice in traps and none in my room!  So hopefully we’re in the clear.

So, I’m only in the office for three days this week before I head off to Bethany Beach for a nice long weekend at the shore.  This is the 4th annual trip, and we have a pretty big group going this year.  I’m excited.  Past year’s trips included things like this:

2009

2010

2011

I’m excited.  My liver is not.  We’ve gone every year around my birthday, some years the trip falls on my birthday, this year it doesn’t, but I’m still calling it my birthday trip.  It’s also my one and only beach trip/vacation for the summer and I plan to relax and enjoy as much of it as I can.  Come on Wednesday, get here!

My Liver Needs a Rest Day

Hello!  I’m back from my beach vacation, well sort of, I think my brain is still there but I had a lovely time with my friends.  It was nice spending pretty much a whole weekend disconnected from the world, seriously we didn’t even watch TV, and now it’s back to reality :(.  I’ll try to make this long recap as painless as possible, mostly because I’m tired and don’t feel like writing a lot.

A fully stocked fridge makes for happy guests, what’s not pictured are the 11 frozen pizzas in the freezer.

So much for our plan to take it easy on Friday night so we all felt good for Seacrets on Saturday morning.

Cupcakes to celebrate my birth… they were delicious despite getting a little melted during the drive out.

Made it to Seacrets the next day by 11:05, and that my friends, is a huge accomplishment.  Waters and pain in da asses for everyone!

Not sure lemon drop shots were necessary, but they were delicious nonetheless.

There were two giant thunderstorms that rolled through on Saturday, one lasting about 5 minutes, the other a little longer.  Both times they kicked us out of the bay until it passed, and after the second our group had dwindled from 10 people to 6.  It didn’t deter us though, and once the storm passed we continued our party in the bay.

Things not captured on film on Saturday:

• chicken fights in the pool upon our return to the house
• massive amounts of pizza eating
• a game of trivia
• a game of cranium
• a new game we made up called complete the lyric which was played until 4 am
• how much everyone was struggling after Seacrets

Sunday we gathered ourselves and made it to the actual beach for a few hours, before another thunderstorm once again rolled in and ruined our fun.  We took cover at the Rusty Rudder for lunch to try to wait it out, but were unsuccessful, instead we watched tons of boat drama as the storm raged.

If I told you Sunday night involved three games of Trivial Pursuit, and two games of Family Feud and you picture a wholesome night of fun, you’d be wrong.  We ran out of booze and resulted to drinking Smirnoff straight, from a bowl, with a ladle.  Which probably explains pictures like this:

Laughing so hard I couldn’t stand up.  But yes, real life Family Feud takes my prize as the most fun game of the weekend, despite the fact that my “family” The Pitbull’s, was robbed!  The vodka had a specific role at one point, something about you take a sip when you get a strike, eventually it was just passed around for fun.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, probably why everything seemed so funny, and no one could stop laughing.  Anyway, yesterday everyone that was left packed up and hit the road to home, except for me and Dani.  We weren’t quite ready to bid farewell to the beach, so we spent a few last hours reading by the ocean before enjoying a Snow Crab leg feast at Crabby Dick’s and heading home.

We made it back to VA around 9:30 last night, and thus ended the final part of my birthday celebrations.  It was a good one, so I’m hoping the year is up to par.  And hey, it’s already Tuesday!