A Week Ago Today

A week ago today, I was in Charleston. Kyle and I foolishly assumed that leaving town - and leaving our children behind in said town - would result in a long-overdue sleep-in the next morning. But at 7:00am sharp, my cell phone rang. It was Sean, chirpy as could be, calling to tell me that he had just leveled up his starting Pokemon (named Alex) to the point where it evolved to its highest form: a Charizard. Pretty big news, but it didn't really qualify as 7:00am-type news. I congratulated him, asked after his sister, and told him to call me later. "But not immediately-later, more like later-later, okay?" (You have to be specific.)



So, later-later, Kyle and I went downstairs to the hotel breakfast nook (I can't really think of anything else to call that little lounge off to the side of the lobby) and partook of their not-free buffet. And then went off to town to see what we could see.

The first stop for me was to find some sunglasses, as I had foolishly neglected to pack any. I thought, Hey I'm on vacation, I'll just get some of those gigantic Nicole Richie sunglasses that are the size of dinner plates.



Image courtesy of the highly recommended Gallery of the Absurd.

But it was not to be. Those things are only sold at Target (in the price range I could afford) and there was not a Target to be found. As I mentioned, this is not a bad thing in the historic city of Charleston, but in the sprawling and rapidly developing suburbs just north of the city, I expected to find a damn Target!!! Instead, I settled for the grossly overpriced CVS. I got a pair of biggish but not really stylish sunglasses which, as I discovered upon walking outside, had some cheap Taiwanese plastic lenses that were really fucking with my vision - almost as though they had the faintest of prescription to them, making everything look a hair blurry and giving me an instant headache.

So I went back inside to return them and get my money back. Kyle opted to wait outside in the car. And he waited and he waited and he waited...

When I finally got back in the car, triumphantly clutching my refund, he said, "So, what's Tuesday's blog going to be about?" Ha! Try Friday, Mr. Know-it-All. ;-)

As you know, buyer's remorse is never really about an internal sense of doubt that the correct decision has been made. It's more about having to stand there in the one open line, waiting to get your money back, tapping your foot as the cashier lethargically runs your credit card through the reader 16 or 17 times without success before finally calling the manager - who takes his sweet, handicapped time peg-legging over to the register and also trying your card 16 or 17 times before reaching into his shirt pocket for a fresh plug of tobacco, then slipping the keys out of his pocket and turning them in the register to simply force it to do his will... meanwhile you have aged about 900 years waiting for this all to take place and the customers behind you are breathing bad karma all over you...

So that's what Tuesday's blog would have been about, had I not still been recovering from the trauma.

But then we went on to the beach and a grand time was had simply sitting there in the sun, reading, sipping surreptitiously at a beer (just like everyone else, despite the postings that no alcohol was allowed on the beach), and just generally not being at work - and really, what more could anyone ask for, being on vacation?

And here, I thought I'd end with that classic shot of two people's feet and a Corona bottle on the beach or whatever, but when I did a Google search of Corona images, I got this. Enjoy, boys!




Last year's post: Summertime Blues (on unexpectedly buying a new air conditioning unit)