Mis vacationes
Ah, vacation. It was so nice to be away from the office and all the b.s. that being there entails.

Prior to leaving for Va Beach, I went with a friend to see John Mayer/Maroon 5. I was disappointed in Maroon 5, even though they did "This Love" and all their good songs off their album. They just jumped around and did rock star guitar moves and stuff, and I was over it pretty quickly.

John Mayer was fucking awesome. What was most puzzling about his show was that there was a sign language interpreter on the side of the stage. I couldn't look away from her (actually there were two that would switch off between songs) as she signed away the lyrics to his songs while also dancing. How many deaf people actually were there? I have no idea, but I now know the sign language for "wonderland."

He also did a cover of Poison's "Every Rose Has its Thorn" which made him even cooler in my estimation than before.

Once I got home from the concert, I watched a little bit of Tuesday's Big Brother and then we hit the road. I drove the beginning shift until about 4 a.m. until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Owen drove the rest of the way there (another 7 1/2 hours) while I mostly slept.

When we got into town about 12:30 Wednesday afternoon, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Hurricane Alex had blown back to sea and hadn't gotten as far as Va Beach, but apparently it had rained all day the previous day. We were treated to crystal blue skies without a cloud in sight. We parked our asses on the beach for a couple hours until we were sufficiently fried, then retreated to the hotel room for a nap. We showered and headed out to dinner.

Now I hate seafood. The sight of some of it makes me want to vomit. Anything that you have to pry out of a shell, in particular, turns my stomach. Owen, however, loves that shit. So he picked every restaurant that we went to and I resigned myself to three days of overcooked steak, dry, flavorless chicken, and various other bland dishes. He did convince me to try a bite of a crab cake once -- blah.

Our waiter at Wednesday's restaurant was our hands down favorite, and we imitated him for the rest of the trip. He was a surfer dude, and he punctuated every sentence with a Butt-headesque laugh -- "huh huh huh huh huh." He asked where we were from and when we said "Ohio," he told us that he "sort of" had a girlfriend in... "Colorado Ohio? Uh, Columbus?" whose ex-boyfriend was a professional hockey player for the Columbus Blue Jackets. And apparently this ex was not too happy with our surfer dude. So he told us to remember if we ever saw that hockey player to think of him.

After dinner we took a walk along the shore and were treated to fireworks that were shot off a ship on the ocean. A perfect ending to a perfect first day.

Thursday was overcast and we got in a few hours at the beach before they closed the entire thing down due to approaching thunderstorms that never quite did make it to shore. We got rained on, though, consistently thoughout the day. We spent the day at a bar, where the music on tap was the Greatest Hits of Phil Collins and Genesis. I personally never knew that Phil Collins had 800 Greatest hits, but we heard each and every one.

Later, we sat on our balcony watching the boardwalk (our hotel room overlooked the beach) and then went out to dinner. It was an Italian place, and as we were being led to our table, I realized that in the restaurant, a few tables away from ours, was a TABLE FULL OF CLOWNS.

That's right. Clowns. In full dress, orange wigs, big shoes and all.

Some of you may know that I am absolutely terrified of clowns. They creep me out. Particularly if I am trying to eat dinner and they are honking horns in my general proximity. So I sat facing away from them and tried to put myself in a happy place to be able to enjoy my meal.

Sitting the way I did was quite fortunate, though, because I was facing the bar. Which had a TV. Which was showing Big Brother's live show! I got to see Scott evicted (sans sound), and all was right with the world. We left before the twin switch, but I was able to get back to the hotel room to see Nakomis win HOH. After I got my BB5 fix, we went out for another walk on the beach and then called it a night.

Friday was freaking freezing. The wind was so strong that even when the sun came out it was still cold. We spent as long as we could on the beach and then decided to go to the Va Beach aquarium. That was pretty cool, my favorite part of the aquarium being the river otters, or perhaps a random turkey that was there (I took pictures; probably will post them tomorrow).

The rest of Friday was uneventful except that we ate excessive amounts of hush puppies and my stomach still isn't right from it. But damn, were they ever good.

Saturday was gorgeous, and it sucked, because we were leaving. Figures that our first and last days were the best. We sat on the beach for a while, then went out to the fishing pier where we saw dolphins swimming in the water -- I FLOVE dolphins! And then that was it. Begin the driving hell.

I'm still trying to catch up on live feed action, blogs, six finger plans, etc. Tomorrow it's back to work... gah. At least I have a tan.