Travel

I still have Friday and Saturday’s photos in the camera but here are some shots from Family Day…

The ‘motivational’ run at 7 AM on Family Day

The other Marine…

Ohh-Rah

Looking for a job?

On their way to the All Weater Training Facility…

Sizing up future lodgings…

The terrain around Parris Island…at low tide of course.

I have around 500 photos from the weekend. Once I get the time to cull through them I will post a few. I have to start getting packed up and take a shower now. I will be back online at some point his evening.

When I ran several restaurants back in the late nineties I had my cell phone as well as a land line. The cell phones were a big pain in the ass and as soon as I went to work in our Norcross office I did away with the hand helds. They were a bit more like fricking walie-talkies in the nineties of course, about three times the size of my current phone. Anyway, back in 2002 oe 2003 it became necessary to go ahead and start using a cell again. With a 150 mile round trip commute every day I decided that it wasn’t a smart idea to go without one. Now we have three, one for the wife and another for the boy. Although his will sit at home until he is at least finished with MCT school I told him he could stay on the plan. It’s cheaper for him and although it’s only $10 for the extra line I will gouge him for about $30 a month to cover the cost of the damnable text messages. Of course over the last few months and my conversion to tweeting on occasion I am guilty of that as well.

I did away with our land line a couple of years ago as well. Considering that I am paying close to $200 a month for our mobile phones due to the amount of work usage mine gets it was just senseless to keep using Bellsouth, the worthless lumps of shit they are. Now if they would let me have DSL without making me have basic phone service they would retain some of my business but since they are only interested in fucking me by making me bundle services I don’t need they get NONE of my business. Take that you rascally retards. I get my Internet through my cable provider and during the on again off again times I can connect through my cell phone for fucking free. Since I have EVDO in my area while it’s not the fastest connection in the world it is somewhat acceptable. I have to use my son’s laptop due to the fact that my bluetooth dongle won’t work on my desktop, but at least I can get on. I hate it when my dongle don’t fit right.

Where the fuck am I going with this boring discussion about cell phone usage? Fuck if I know. I had originally started writing about the fact that my retarded employees call me at all times of the day and night and this has somehow (d)evolved into something else. Anyway, that’s what got me so ill. I am on vacation. I have been on vacation for five days now. I have a hundred employees and all should be aware of this fact. They should be calling their managers and not me, at least while I am on vacation. Then again, they are going to act like their managers and considering the fact that at least four of the calls have been from one my store managers I guess I shouldn’t expect any fucking respect from them. The calls generally go along the lines of “Hello” “Hey, are you busy right now?” “I’m in South Carolina” “Oh, well this is what I nee…” “There’s noting I can do for you while I am on vacation, call your boss” “OK, will you call me when you get back in town?”. “Maybe”.

That’s the bad thing about having gotten rid of the land line. I can’t turn my cell phone off for the simple reason that if there really IS an emergency at work, or a family emergency someone will need to get in touch with me. So I am tortured wth the occasional ringing of the phone…

No, I’m not back in town yet but we are at our friend’s house in Bluffton and I am sitting here sipping my coffee trying to wake up. We will probably head out at some point this morning or at least by noon and make the trek home. Somewhere in there V-Man and I will cross paths and play chicken. One of us will let you know who wins… 

Picking up from where I left off earlier…

It was OK outside pretty early but it got hot and humid very quickly and the stands were packed so it was extremely uncomfortable. The ceremony last between and hour and an hour and a half all total, which wasn’t too bad. They drilled a bit and the band played for a while. The commanding officer gave a speech and they presented a few honor graduates. All in all it was pretty exciting. Once I have my thoughts around me and have a few pictures to look at I may go into more detail tomorrow night or Monday at some point.

My brother and his entire family came down from Carey yesterday for the graduation and that was really cool. We ended up going to Golden Corral for lunch, all eleven of us. The boy pigged out and made himself a bit sick I believe. Once we got back to the hotel we hung out for awhile and my brother and the rest drove back home, as they had a drive of several hours to make. We had dinner at some joint called Luther’s on the Beaufort waterfront. It was a bit loud bit the food was good. I got really pissed off at the end though. I normally tip at least 20% and although there were only seven of us they tacked on a ‘large party gratuity’ of $27 to my check. There went her fucking tip. I can see restaurants adding on if there are fifteen people or more but they can kiss my ass. My check was $150 so her tip would have been a bit more than she actually got.

It stormed pretty for a while last night, enough to wake me up. Normally I can sleep through bad weather so it must have been tundering pretty loudly to wake me.

We slept in a bit this morning and once we finally got moving this morning we cleaned up the room and van, checked out and drove down here to Bluffton. Our friend Niqui will be moving later this year so this was our last chance to see her, at least me and the kids. The wife may drive down before she moves. Hopefully anyhow.

Ate lunch at Golden Corral again and then came back to the house and promptly took a nap. For supper we decided to drive in to Hilton Head and eat at Coligny Plaze, which is right off the beach. Had a great time there. We walked down to the beach as the sun went down and hung out there for a bit before heading back.

I will most likely not put a post up again (other than tweets and the occasional flickr upload) until tomorrow evening. We are going to head out mid-morning and drive back home. It’s about a five hour drive for us. Once we get home I am sure that I will have a mess to clean up. Even though we boarded the dog I set the cats up in my bathroom with two litter boxes and several pans of food and water to take care of them. It is going to be awful to clean up I am sure.

We are in Bluffton, SC now. After I got off the computer this morning we had a bit of breakfast, packed up, checked out and drove down here. It’s only about 25 minutes from Beaufort so was a nice easy drive.

I think I left off this morning discussing Thursday afternoon. After we took the boy back to the squad bay we drove back to Beaufort and hung out at the hotel for a while. The wife and RePete stayed at the hotel while I went to have coffee with Pete and my parents at this little coffee shop down by the bay. We had a pretty good time and Pete thought she was hot shit getting to go have cheese cake and cream soda with us. It was just pretty nice hanging out with them. We got back pretty early for me on vacation and I was in bed before eleven.

I slept in yesterday and managed to get up at some point after six. Once we got some coffee in us we headed back down to Parris Island. We were in the stands shortly after eight and they were packed. I had to call my parents and make sure that they were on the way as they weren’t letting anyone save seats.

Once again they are ready to go. I will get online later this evening. We are heading in to Hilton Head Island to hang out and have some supper. More later…

We’ve been here for about 30 minutes now and everyone’s safely tucked in bed, even the wife. Just as soon as I post this I am at least going to try and hit the sack. We are planning on being up around 5:30 so I need to get at least a little bit of shut-eye. We are staying right on Bay Street and from what I could see in the dark it’s beautiful. Planning on taking a bunch of photos tomorrow and if there is time I will upload them tomorrow afternoon. Blogging will be somewhat sparse during the day except for the occasional twitter or maybe if I take a few shots on my cell phone and send them via flickr.

Family Day on the base is tomorrow and we are planning on spending most of the day there. The base opens at 7 AM and we have to leave at 7 PM so unless the girls are complete buttheads we will spend the entire time there. My parents checked in earlier this afternoon and will be with us tomorrow and my brother’s family is going to drive down tomorrow night and be at graduation. They are crazy. I am too old for that shit and what little sleep I do actually get I value too much to drive all night, stay awake for something half the day and then drive back home (to Carey North Carolina) right after it’s over.

I probably have mentioned it several times but I will be out of town from tomorrow afternoon until Sunday afternoon for my son’s boot camp graduation. I have several things scheduled to post so there will still be a bit going on here and I will try and post some photos up there. Hopefully I can look a few people up in the area on Friday afternoon as well. I would kind of like to hang out in the general Beaufort area if there is anything to do. If anything you can look for the nearest bar stools to find me propped against one 🙂

Not that I particularly want to get or stay drunk but I am so stressed out because of work that I am going to do my best to relax and have a good time.

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That one day off stuff has just kicked my tail. I am exhausted this morning. Both of my alarms were set for an hour ago and I just crawled out of bed long enough ago to start coffee. Yesterday was an extremely lazy day. I spent the morning writing, although not much, and making that video. The wife and girls got home from clothes shopping around noon and I ended up lying down for a nap at 1 and couldn’t wake up until 4pm or so. I slept much too long and ended up not getting back to sleep until midnight and that’s only because I took a Benadryl to knock myself out.

I had planned on writing quite a bit more but it just ended up working out that way. If I have time this afternoon I will write several entries and schedule them to be posted overnight. Right now my body is trying to tell me to go back to bed but my brain is saying “kill the moron”…Oh wait, that’s something else entirely.

All three of my managers are working today so unless a whole boatload of people don’t show up for work today I should manage to get home at a decent time this afternoon. I have to get by and check schedules and that sort of stuff this morning and then will most likely spend the morning cooking for one of them to ease payroll a bit.

I called the hotel in Beaufort last night just to confirm my reservations for Wednesday and they are still intact. I also wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be a problem with late check-in and they said that was fine. With leaving Wednesday that won’t put me there until sometime around 9pm at the earliest and that’s if I can get the wife and girls out by 3pm. It will probably be even later than that unfortunately.