July 8, 2007

While Richard is away baking himself at the beach, I took a mini-vacation of my own today.  Where did I go?  Some exotic getaway?  Nope. I stayed right here in my own little city.  I packed up my husband and daughter, and we acted like complete tourists.  Porkchop (husband for those who don’t know my “peeps” from my blog), Dolly (daughter), and I went to the uptown area and just did all the things people do when they’re tourists in a new place.  We visited all the landmarks, took goofy pictures of ourselves, spent too much money eating at a restaurant overlooking the water, and we just took our time and walked up and down the city streets we so often fly by without giving them a second thought.  We read plaques and monuments that we’d never read before, looked in shop windows we’d never stopped at before, we basically took a moment to stop and smell the roses of our own city, to appreciate the things we take for granted about where we live. 

I’m not saying it’s not good to get away or visit a new locale, but it doesn’t hurt to stop and take the time to remember the great things about where you are right now.  Try it sometime – go be a tourist in your own city!

Now that I’m re-reading this, I can see that this is way too flowery and nice for Shadowscope.  But it’s late, I’ve had a couple glasses of wine, and this is all I had.  Sorry Richard, I’ll try and perv it up tomorrow if you’re not back by then. 

I don’t know what Richard was thinking, asking me to guest blog.  See, the thing is, I knew him when he was four.  From what I can remember (which isn’t much, seeing as how I was in an infant when he was four), he wasn’t as ugly then, nor as bald.  Then, for a few years he was teenager, and grew his hair so long that it somehow damaged the roots, and it wouldn’t grow back at all. Damn shame, too.

So I was trying think….

Yeah.

Anyway, what was I going to do while I had temporary keys here to the old Shadowscope? As we know from Richard’s occasional ruminations, Shadowscope launched back when the internet was put together by Al Gore by stringing together two 1950’s mainframes with a string. Or at least back in the old days of BBSs.  (For what it’s worth, I used to occasionally dial in to his dial-up version of shadowscope, back when I had a modem that weighed fifty pounds.  The content has improved a slightly since then).

The best I could think of was to completely deface it.  But clearly he’s smarter than that, because  all I can do is add new posts (I really wanted to change the template back the girly gardening template he had back on April Fool’s, but I couldn’t figure out how.  Too bad I didn’t grab a screenshot).   So, instead, I’m going to post a blatant advertisement (which won’t be particularly out of place), and then I’m going to link to all of the sites I read, which Richard almost certainly doesn’t, because they are all way to freaky lefty communist type stuff.

So here’s the blatant ad: please buy my book.  Please.  Come on, you can do it.  As an additional incentive, if you order it from Amazon today, I’ll throw in nice plastic packaging and a cardboard container with a UPS label.  You can’t beat that.  All you have to do is click, supply your credit card number, and away you go.

Ok, first part done.

Now, for the second part, here’s a list of websites Richard doesn’t read, but really ought to be listed on his blog in order to be fair and balanced:

DailyKos
Huffington Post
Democratic Underground
Democrats.com
Buzzflash

Alright, you have officially been defaced.

See how much better looking I am than he is?  It’s the hair.  Definitely the hair.

Thanks, Richie, for the opportunity.

There are approximately 3,000 hucksters willing and able to take your desperate dollars for a cure.

None of them work, of course. You’re bald, bitch! Deal with it, and move on.

That is all.

As usual no matter where I go I am awake several hours before anyone else. I tossed and turned until about 2AM but did manage to sleep until 8, which is quite late for me. The girls are awake alreasy as well and I have been trying to keep them quiet so as not to wake up the tribe here. Once they get started they don’t shut up and the peace and quiet is nice. Altogether there are about six kids here, two of which are mine.

Yesterday we drove on to the island and spent the great majority of the day at the beach. I have quite a nice sunburn, maybe I can add to it today. My original plans were to go to Savannah today and then spend tomorrow back at the beach but those may have changed on me. I will have to wait and see what everyone else wants to do I suppose.

After the beach we went back to the Art Cafe, which is our friend’s shop, and let the girls paint for awhile and the wife and I slipped away for a coffee at Java Joes, which has the best coffee on the island aside from Starbucks and that’s only because I am like a crack addict when it comes to Starbucks.

Once Niqui’s eldest daughter arrived we drove to the Salty Dog because no trip to Hilton Head is complete without a trip to the Salty Dog. It’s actually a pretty cool place. It is a collection of several restaurants and an outside bar on the marina, with live music. Children are extremely welcome, thus the reason for the trip. Anywhere that I can have several beers while my children act like idiots is good. Normally restaurants kick you out for that type of behavior. I had also picked it because V-Man was supposed to attend, but he apparently found that he was enjoying trashing my house so much that he came up with some lame story about a check engine light. Check engine light my ass (it still aches, thanks V-man).

As soon as we got there of course it started raining but we hung in there for awhile. It fucking poured for some time and right about the time it started clearing up a bit everyone decided that it was time to go. They were all wet and uncomfortable and wanted to leave. You wouldn’t think they were from England the way a little water scared them 🙂 Actually only the mother and oldest child is from England, the rest were born here. I got my panties a bit in a wad about having to leave, but they were uncomfortable and tired after having been at the beach all day so it wasn’t without good reason that they wanted to leave. I just want to get the most out of my first vacation out of town since Disney in 2005 other than going to Helen for the weekend last year. This looks to be my only real vacation for this year as well.

I will probably go along with whatever plans the wife and her friend come up with today as this fall her friend and the kids are moving to Cyprus and it is unlikely that we will see them again anytime soon. I don’t particularly want to be the turd in the punchbowl just because I am on vacation. I think at some point the girls and I will drive in to the island though and do something just for the family. I have a three week pass to get into Sea Pines so might as well get some use out of it.

For those that don’t know, Hilton Head is divided into several different areas. Some of it is for the plebes and rednecks that live there like you and I, but quite a bit of it is gated communities. During business hours you can get in, but you have to pay. Just to get into the South Beach area which is in the Sea Pines community, and where the Salty Dog and the lighthouse are, is $5. Not much, but if you are making more than one sightseeing trip it can start getting expensive.

Just checked the weather and it looks like it’s got about a 40% chance of rain with scattered thunderstorms so it shouldn’t be too bad today whatever we do. I can only hope that I am getting some rain back at the house. I went ahead and watered my tomatoes and stuff at the house before we left and hopefully they won’t all be dead by the time we get back on Tuesday.

I told the wife yesterday that I didn’t like this laptop thing but I am starting to get used to it and if the keyboard would act right and I could configure it the way that I like I could probably get used to it pretty quickly. It’s got a nice big widescreen and I am able to set the resolution to a nice big size which I prefer.

I am sure that I will get the chance to post at least a couple of pics later today and maybe something from the iPaq as well, but this is about it today otherwise. Don’t know if any of my guests will stop by to abuse me today or not, but if so it’s bound to be fun…