What I Did On My Vacation Part 2.....Not Quite as Long as Part 1

Last we left you dear readers, we had caught a matinee(movie! people, not THAT kind of matinee!!), spent like a drunken sailor on shore leave at a liquor store and ingested 'psketti and balls down in Ocean City MD.

Oh, here is a picture I forgot to share on the last post from our liquor store adventure.
This photo is dedicated to Mark......

I actually found my favorite Sangria in box form in DE.  This holds the equivalent of 2 large bottles and half the price.
Don't say Sluggy doesn't do her part to promote foreign trade!

Onward to Wednesday or Day Three of our Beach Vacation.
While I slept in, Hubs was up to see the sun rise, take a morning walk on the Boardwalk and by the time I arose for my morning ablutions, he had returned bearing coffee(for him)and donuts(for us).  No Fractured Prune donuts this trip, just your plain old everyday Dunkin Donuts variety ones.  I augmented my repast with yogurt and fruit.

We decided to venture out to Snow Hill Maryland, toward the southern end of Wocester County, on Wednesday.  Snow Hill is a small quaint town halfway between the OC area and Pocomoke City MD(which lies near the VA line).
We had visited Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum a few years ago, as well as the Julia A. Purnell Museum in Snow Hill.
The Purnell had a special exhibit of Negro League & Early Integrated Professional Baseball memorabilia that Hubs was interested in seeing so we stopped in for that.
While perusing the collection, Hubs spotted one of these baseball cards....

 If you can tell me why this card is so valuable, you are a Baseball Nerd! ;-)

Here is Hubs wishing he could be 10 years old again and do nothing but think about baseball all summer long.....

They also had their yearly Needlework Arts Competition going on at The Purnell.  Every year they have an art show there of local artists and hobbyists in the Needle Arts.  The visitors to the Museum get to cast votes for this competition.  Having been a semi-professional costume designer in my previous life, as well as a a longtime crafter, sewer, crocheter, crewel worker and needlepoint worker(miserable rug hooker, cross stitcher and quilter too), I have great interest in seeing this show.
As for our ballots.....it's funny that even though Hubs and I have been "together" since 1978, we hardly ever pick the same entries in each category for this Needlework Arts Show.  Maybe it's because he comes to this as a mostly unknowledgeable viewer, whereas my eye perceives details and filters that through a brain awash in what skills need to be mastered to achieve said details.
Hmmmm.....
I would be curious to know which entries actually win in this show.  Being transit through the area, we never get the pleasure of seeing how our votes stack up with the locals and other tourists who pass through the area on these contests.

And we ALWAYS miss the big Birthday Party the Museum holds for Julia Purnell each October, because we either come the week after or the week before they hold it on Oct. 27th.  This year it was the day after we left the area so no free Birthday Cake for us......sniff.....sniff.....
But Happy 169th Birthday Julia Purnell!

Missing that cake didn't stop me from posing in front of the building for a photo or two.....and yes, a nice big WIDE SHOT is always better.....lol

And here I am doing my Carol Merrill Spokes Model pose, showing off Door #2.....or was this Curtain #3?.....

After a brief stop in the gift shop where we picked up a couple of books, because you KNOW all museums, no matter how small, must have a gift shop, we set out back to OC for a late lunch.

And we found that this place had opened in West OC.....

Hubs and I have yet to eat at one of these places as they are not up here in our part of PA.   So we gave it a shot for lunch.
For atmosphere I'd give them a D.....the whole industrial-look and bare plywood doesn't enhance my dining experience.
For taste I'd give them a C+......while you KNOW this is a healthier choice than Taco Bell or other Mexican-type restaurants, it borders on the bland(if you don't like lots of "heat" in your food).
I know it's the "healthier" way to do Mexican, but while I don't need fats and deep frying of my burrito, I still want sauce and to have it slathered in CHEESE.
And trying to eat a Burrito the size of a premature baby with ones hands might do it for some people, I'd prefer a plate and a knife and fork please and not a foil type paper and a plastic basket.

For someone with no experience with Chipotle's type of service, it wasn't very user friendly.
The atmosphere was minimalist and "cold" as well.
The menu was very limited.  While this is good for the company to be able to keep freshness up and costs down, I didn't think the prices were that great.  Maybe being in this tourist area where EVERY EATING OPTION is overpriced didn't give me the best representation of their business model on price.

The one thing I didn't care for at all?
The HUGE signage overhead at the counter/ordering place/where your food was put together.  The signs about options was needed but really, do they need to post all the caloric information in such great detail and so largely?
I felt the need to get out a calculator and a scale and obsess over every morsel of food the burrito jockey employee was ladling onto my tortilla.
Will the brown rice or the pinto beans put my carb calories over or should I do both and leave off the guac?  Better get a pen out and do the math....
I started feeling like a neurotic teenage girl worrying over whether I should binge and purge or just nibble on a corner of my burrito and say I was just too full to finish.

Back at the room, we did a little boardwalking again......and then I sat a spell......my readers will be relieved to hear that there is full integration and diversity on the boardwalk in OC.  The benches of all colors live side-by-side in harmony.
Now let's all sing "Ebony & Ivory" one time with gusto....

While I sat Hubs went on the beach and down to the water to freeze his toes off.
Along with no feeling in his feet, he also bought back a souvenir.....

(Behind the shell is Not our hotel but the one next door.)

Wednesday night we made a quick trip to 7-11 for this.....

Having grown up in the Tidewater VA area, I was given to enjoying a Slurpee on hot Summer nights.  There is a dearth of 7-11 stores where I have lived for the last 28 years.  So whenever we got to OC, I indulge in a Slurpee......or 5......no really, just 1.....




We had restaurant leftovers and frozen pizza with adult beverages up in the room.
Adult Beverages again??!!   Seems to be a recurring theme this trip, doesn't it? lol

Wednesday was the 1st Game of the World Series so there was no going out for us that evening.
While hubs watched the game I read one of my new books.

Thursday was our last full day in Ocean City.  We still had 2 Restaurant dotcom certificates to use.  We also had a mission to accomplish before leaving OC for home but more on that in a moment.

After breakfast in the room(and no, there was no "hair of the dog" involved), I went out onto the balcony for some relaxation before commencing our day.
Our room/balcony was on the 8th floor and directly looking out over one of the 2 outdoor pools at the hotel.  The pool we overlooked was still full of water from the Summer Season.  After looking down into the pool for about 5 minutes I finally noticed something.....something that was not there the day before.
See if you can spot what I saw.....

I will add that a large group of middle aged men without their wives and significant others, a golfing junket, arrived at our hotel on Wednesday.  I will add that while the World Series viewing was going on in our room that evening, the boardwalk bar to the right of our hotel was filled with loud drunk guys, one of which decided to scream, "Woooo! I'm drunk!! I'm f'ing drunk!" over and over again while parading up the Boardwalk sometime around 1-2 am.
The weather that week in OC was such that we kept our balcony door open with the screen across every night we were there so we could be lulled to sleep by the gently crashing waves.  I fell asleep finally after Mr. Drunken Ass finished his serenade but totally missed out on the noise and excitement of the Aging Frat Boys who scaled the padlocked pool area and pushed 8 glass topped patio tables and 1 lounge chair into the pool beneath our room.


After readying ourselves for the day, we had some more boardwalk strolling time. 
Then it was off on our mission.....to find Daughter some tie-dyed apparel at the various Beach Stores/Souvenir Shops.
OC has about 1 Beach Store every half a block.....for miles and miles.....as far as the eye can see.
Each is filled to the brim with all that crap people find necessary to waste their money on.  I won't go into details but you know what I mean.
There are a few useful items but most of it?.....Crap.  And all of it overpriced.....unless you go off season when they start clearancing much of it.
We had a specific mission--find a couple of tie-dye t-shirts and a hoodie.  A tie-dyed hoodie, without a zipper.....in "nice" colors, bright and not muddy.....and in her size.  And my requirement?....costing under $20 but not made from crappy fabric.
Oy!

The t-shirts were found fairly readily but the hoodie?.....oy again!
I lost count after about the 6th store.  We just drove up the main drag and hit every t-shirt/souvenir store we came to.  Some had no tie-dyed hoodies.....some had just zippered hoodies.....some didn't have the size needed......some were ugly.......some were too expensive.......and many were a combination of these conditions.
But we finally hit pay dirt and it was 25% off which made me happy.

Having worked up an appetite, we went for lunch.
Chinese food?
Yes please......

Even Chinese food in OC is expensive.  Ok, so I didn't have to get the Peking Duck.  In my defense it was only half of a very smallish duck.
This was a very nice restaurant.  Not some place we would have chosen though if I didn't have a discount certificate.  It was a tad pricey for a casual lunch(I think they do a much larger weekend and evening business), so the dining room on Thursday was empty except for us.
 It had a nice atmosphere, an attentive waiter(with little understanding of English but he and we were very patient with each other), an owner back in the kitchen who seemed meticulous about every detail of the food and it showed in how everything tasted!

When I took my cup of tea over to the window to snap of photo of their sign with my tea(trying to continue my photographic theme I had going in my pictures), I spilled tea all over the booth seating, so no tea cup in this photo I took after cleaning up after that silly elderly Caucasian women pouring tea all over the restaurant.....

While we were over in that part of OC, we had another urgent need to fulfill.
The yearly purchase of FRUITCAKE.......not any old fruit"best use is as a doorstop"cake......the BEST Fruitcake outside of your maiden Aunt Gertie's liquor soaked cake.......

Yo, Yo....Represent!
Claxton's in da' house!
We gonna party, like it's ya birfday.....

Yes people, THIS fruitcake is edible!  Very sweet and fruity and not dry and "cakey".

But why pay through the nose online to have it delivered from Georgia?
Stroll down to your Rose's store and pick up a pound for $3.75.
One year we didn't go to OC and get fruitcake but I still got very lucky here at home.  We were in the local Price Chopper grocery store a few days before Christmas and they had a load of Claxton Fruitcakes on clearance for $1.99 each.
Yes, we were eating fruitcake that year well into October of the following year. lol

One item we did NOT acquire on this year's trip was FUDGE.  Candy Kitchen fudge is a longstanding tradition here at Chez Sluggy.  Every Fall they put their fudge on sale for 50% off in an effort to reduce inventory on perishable goods.
Great time to buy pretty good fudge, right?
Well this year, the Fudge was NOT such a great deal......not a good enough deal to get me to part ways with my money!
Buy 2 lbs., Get 1 lb. free.
Nope....the kids(and I)can live without fudge this year.  Inflation once again ruining my vacation fun....

Afterwards we hit up Dumpster's one more time for this.....

Chocolate chip coconut ice cream?
Yes, please.


After some "down time" Thursday afternoon and a nap, we ventured back out to Delaware to use our last restaurant certificate at the Hawaiian Crab Bar & Grill.

The place was a bar with some dining tables in the bar room.  We walked into the place to discover it was Bingo Night and the evening's festivities had already begun.
Oh goody!
Everyone....and I mean everyone was playing Bingo and drinking.....well, except for the 10 yr old boy at the table next to ours, the drinking part that is.
Hubs had a couple of beers with his dinner and I drank iced tea only.

There was a large group of Senior Citizen couples on the other side of us.   The World Series game was on the bar tv and these couples were dressed up, head to toe in matching/co-ordinating sports wear.
Not sports wear as in, "here is this season's latest sports wear fashions you'll be seeing in the resorts and on cruise ships everywhere"......more like, "I'll wear my Phillies red cap, red Phillies baseball shirt, my Phillies belt buckle and or String tie, and my royal blue sansa-belt slacks because they, you know, "go" with the ensemble."  The wife was in matching Phillies gear and red capri pants, and had a Phillies lanyard/glass holder and Phillies earrings to complete her look.
There were 2 Baltimore Orioles couples(decked out in black and orange and oh so fitting into a Halloween theme as well as the baseball one) with the "Phanatics" couple.  There were a few baseball fans as well seated at the bar, though they had not put in the effort that these elderly couples had in their bar wearing finery.

Think this but sports teams.....

So sad I didn't take the camera there because no amount of describing these people does justice to it.

And did I mention that everyone was drinking yet?

We ordered in between very quickly called games of bingo(Hubs had trouble keeping up.....with the bingo, that is).  It was mostly bar type food but they had some seafood so we both ordered crab soup and the crab cake sandwich and fries.  The soup was great, the sandwich not so much.  Not cooked right and I could tell it had been frozen.  There was too much bread and not enough crab flavor.  But it was filling and didn't make me sick so I'll settle for that.

And about an hour in, someone at the bar "had words" over something overheard from a fellow bar patron.  I don't know if it had something to do with Bingo cheating or just feeling that the last game was rigged, but suddenly aspersions were being cast and Pittsburgh Steelers fans were being maligned and I thought we'd see heads being knocked together shortly.

Oh and the drinking continued....

Then the Bingo caller got a tad risque with comments along with the numbers being drawn.
Much laughter ensued.

Then the Bar owner/caller enlisted the 10 yr old boy(remember him at the next table? with many of his female relatives and I ASSUME one of which was his mother)to Call the numbers and HE began making comments like he had heard the adult make.
Of course this kid had no clue about the double entenders he was throwing about and the drunken crowd roared even harder with laughter hearing this kid deliver the Caller's lines.
It became too too uncomfortable for us to hear(I'd call it child abuse), so we made a hasty exit before the Bingo portion of the evening's "entertainment" was over.
Yikes.
A few adult beverages back at the room to get the taste of the evening out of my mouth.

Friday's weather was still great, though Sandy was about to advance up the coast.  The  beach entrance in front of our hotel had been blocked off by Friday morning and the water was looking a tad angry and starting to churn up.

We left town fairly early so we didn't hit Philly around rush hour and didn't have to hurry our trip home to avoid that scenario.
I got a good shot of one of the WW2 observation towers and they also have a big sign up this year on their efforts to Restore a Tower.  Check out the website if this is a cause you think you'd like to get behind.

Then it was over the bridge up Rte. 1 and back to PA and home.

And then 3 days later Hurricane or SuperStorm Sandy came ashore along the Eastern Seaboard.  While OC didn't score a direct hit, the flooding on the bay side and along the southern end of the city was bad.

Here are my "diversity benches" on Monday.....

See the bench below?  These things weigh 300lbs. and are bolted down to the boardwalk.  They got tossed around.....

The boardwalk, while it didn't sustain much damage, there was alot of debris and ground floor flooding of hotels.  From the West OC bridge to 17th St. was closed down.  Our hotel was in that stretch of beachfront.

The Ocean City pier was greatly affected by Sandy.....

The bayside homes were swamped.....

And this landmark, Layton's, was underwater.  This is a block away from our hotel on the main drag through OC........I think our hotel was on a bit higher ground but still, I wonder how it fared......

And then I found this phot on Facebook of our hotel during the storm.
This is the back entrance to the hotel from the beach.
The pool full of patio tables in to the right of the fencing on the right side of this picture.....

So sad for everyone who lost anyone or anything in this storm.  Join the effort to help those affected if you can.

Sandy kind of put a damper on our trip after the fact.
I hope y'all enjoyed the Trip.
And next year, I'll try not to be such a downer at the end.  8-(

Sluggy

What I Did On My Vacation Part 1....Sort of Long

We spent the Week of Oct. 21st down at the beach in Ocean City, MD.
You may have noticed that I didn't post as much that week and that the posts that did go up went live at weird times and not on my usual schedule.

The reason being that I don't have a laptop and the only internet access I had was via the desktop computer in the hotel's lobby.  I stayed up late the night before we left and wrote a week's worth of blog posts and scheduled them to launch at set times.
Or at least I "thought" I had scheduled them.  8-(

I get a C- on that whole scheduling thing I guess.
I did jump online at the hotel when I could get a moment here and there to manually launch and/or approve comments.
That's quite the accomplishment when you have a disapproving husband glaring at you for taking a few minutes away from HIS vacation.
But I am digressing here, as usual......

The point is I was formulating how to structure my "What I Did On My Beach Vacation" post while sitting on the balcony that week enjoying adult beverages, as well as while driving home on Friday, October 26th.
Because, though you may not believe it,  the rambling stuff that I post doesn't just tumble out of my brain onto the page.  I do put some forethought and try to structure my writing so that it doesn't need propping up by 2 x 4s and lots of nails and duct tape.  At least not massive amounts that show on the outside.   The inside of my writing?  It resembles the inside of a parade float.....lots of paper mache slopped everywhere and exposed chicken wire.....not so purty. ;-)

So I finally figured out what to talk about and how to word it about November 1st.
And here is how it goes.....

Y'all saw my little teaser photo earlier in the week.....

And no, it took me more than 1 day to empty all those bottles.8-P

Hubs and I spent most of our time on vacation just kicking back, tipping back(bottles) and eating out, with a little shopping on the side.

We have had miserable experiences eating out in Ocean City over the years.  The places that sound appealing are always closed for the Season by the time we get there in the Fall.  The local(non-chain) type places have only disappointed us, either by being GROSSLY overpriced(even for a tourist area!)or the food being just plain.....well....GROSS!lol
And sometimes it was both.  (La Hacienda anyone!?  Seriously, 99.9% of commercial kitchens in the USA are FILLED with workers who called their grandmother "abuela" and this Mexican Restaurant apparently has only ethnically Caucasian cooks who serve Mexican food so bad that THEY should be deported! )

Hubs and I thought we'd take another crack at eating local again this trip(Subway and hot dogs at the 7-11 was getting tiring).  I jumped on Restaurant.com and bought 3 certificates for the trip before we left, so I knew we'd venture out into unknown territory for at least that many meals.

We stopped on the way down in Rehobeth, Delaware to do some outlet shopping.  Every year we hit the Vans, Converse and Jumiez Outlets to restock 2 of the kids on clothes & shoes that they like from these places.  You know the only way I'm buying this name brand/designer stuff is with a deep discount at an outlet.  The credit cards were smoking from use by the time we left Rehobeth!lol

We got in early in the evening to our hotel and after some down time we headed out for dinner.  The destination was Dumser's, an Ocean City Landmark......

You probably can't see hubs standing under that sign, huh?  Trust me, he is. lol

* A little side ramble here.*

I have a habit of renaming things and places.....so that it sounds almost the same as the actual name for something.
It was my mother's habit--you see? I'm turning into my mom!lol
She would get a mental block about a word or a phrase and call it something else and once she did this, it was forever referred to as that "not quite the right word".

Actually it was her boyfriend's habit.  He was a good old Southern backwoods country boy who never learned to read or write and his hearing wasn't all too good either.  He mispronounced lots of words and mixed up sayings much in the vein of Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals(hence the term malapropism).
For example, he used the word "predny".  This meant soon....."I'll get to that project prendy."
He also had a word "addawhile".  This meant soon but not as soon as predny......."I think I can get that part "predny" but it's gonna take me addawhile to fix that car".
This sort of thing rubbed off on all of us.  We should refer to these as "Earlisms", as this guy's name was Earl.
The funniest Earlism my mother could NOT for the life of herself get right was the term she used to refer to Pokemon.  When my kids were little they were very HUGE Pokemon fans back in the 1990's when this craze first hit the US shores.

My mother called Pokemon, Pickaninny.
At first it about made us pee ourselves whenever she talked with the grandkids about Pickaninny.
But then, when I'd bring the kids home and they started getting confused and used "that word", well, it lost it's funny factor real fast. 8-P

And now that I've gone on and on with this, I'll get to the point.
I find myself coming up with Earlisms more and more these days.
Those coffee machines....Keurigs?  Those are Nancy Kerrigans around here.
The Old Country Buffet?  That is the Old Peoples Buffet.
Dumser's?  As of October, It's now officially Dumpsters in this family.  Yes, I misspoke and called it Dumpsters on this trip......so Dumpsters it now is.

So back to Dumpsters.....
I have a love/hate relationship with this place.   Hate the food, love the ice cream.
The food is fried stuff(fish, shrimp, chicken, etc.)with french fries.  There are burgers, sandwiches and 1950's style diner meals.  Someone is in back opening lots of cans, heating it and manning a fryer.  Not a meal I look forward to.  And while it's "cheap" food it's not priced cheaply enough for me.
But we got ice cream afterwards.....made on site ice cream.
I "heart" chocolate chip coconut ice cream with real pieces of coconut in it.....and I spring the extra .50¢ for a waffle cone.

And Dumpster's is where I first encountered that nasty version of a great side dish--cole slaw.  I guess this is an Ocean City or Maryland style Cole Slaw.  Though I spent 4 years in Baltimore and never tasted anything as revolting as this cole slaw there, so it must be an OC thing.
They should  rename OC Cole Slaw, Wilford Brimley Slaw
You know...."Mr. Dia-beetus".

The Wilford Brimley Slaw is shredded cabbage and carrots that has been soaked in mayonnaise infused simple syrup.  It's grotesquely sweet and will spike your blood sugar levels within minutes.  I took 2 bites and wanted to run around the room 20 times and then take a header into a wall.
Where was the vinegar....the tart to counterbalance the sweet? 
I NEEDED ice cream to wash that taste out of my mouth and then a walk on the Boardwalk to work out all that sugar.
Again, when I picture OC cole slaw in my mind now I see Wilford Brimley therefore my Earlism has taken over and this sweet cole slaw will forever be known as Wilford Brimley Slaw.

On Monday we did our errands......all those little shopping stops that needed to be done, most of them over the bridge in West Ocean City.  We hit the Sav-a-lot and the Dollar Tree for water and fruit, snacks and breakfast foods so we could eat in sometimes.  And Hubs hit Walmart for a pair of clip-on sunglasses.
We decided to use one of our Restaurant.com certificates for lunch at a pub called Whiskers in Berlin MD.  Since we were on the outskirts of Berlin by then anyway we drove around downtown Berlin looking for this place with no luck.  So we called them and asked for directions.
And it's a good thing we did, because Whiskers is not actually IN Berlin!  Berlin is the mailing address but the pub is in Ocean Pines over in a strip mall near the Casino.
Hubs had a couple of beers(I didn't)and we got fried pickles(ok but the dipping sauce was bleh!)and we each got a juicy burger.  I could only eat half of mine it was so big and came with so many fries.....on second thought I should have left the fries alone and just eaten the burger.
It was a lowkey, non-tourist place....somewhere the locals hang out.  And the inside was covered in Halloween decor.  I mean...
every.
single.
inch.
I wish I had remembered my camera on that day.  I can't find a photo of that place decked out for Halloween online and words would fail to give you the impact of a glimpse at the inside of that bar.
Let me just say that imagine every Halloween decoration, animated or blow-up or light-up figure and costume that you've every seen in your life was put into a room and a bomb was set off in there.
THAT is what this place looked like.

While I can't show you the dive bar's interior, I can show you this photo of the beach I snapped from the balcony back at the room....

Yes, we were up rather high this trip on one of the top floors and those tiny dots are full grown people.
The weather was great for late October that week.  Warm into the 70's, sunny and a slight breeze.  Lots of people on the beach and a few even went into the water!
We had awesome warm weather the whole trip and no rain.

A co-worker of Hubs told us to try Jr's(the place for ribs) this time.  It came highly recommended.  After an afternoon nap, we headed out for Jr's.  I was sorely disappointed in that the only pork barbecue was a sandwich, in a standard sized hamburger bun.  And it was $12!  Why does no one sell BBQ pork platter dinners anymore?

I am not a big fan of ribs but I got the ribs and as an after thought I threw in a crab cake to make it a combo plate.
While the ribs were good, they weren't anything to write home about.  I can and have made just as tasty ribs on my little home smoker on my front porch, and for a much lower price point.
But the crab cake?.....Who would think that a place that does smoked meats would have such a GREAT crab cake!!
It was awesome.....large, very little filler and huge lumps of crabmeat that you could actually taste.
I loved that crab cake so much I almost didn't feel pain when I saw how much it cost....
If we ever go back there, I'm doing the crab cakes, forget the ribs!lol
Another round of adult beverages on the balcony back at the room finished off the day.

Tuesday I made a late breakfast/brunch in the room and we lazed around until noonish.  We decided to hit the movie matinee on Tuesday.  We saw ARGO.  Having both lived through the Iranian hostage crisis time, we knew the ending going in but we still got caught up in the drama of it all.  I was surprised at how much humor was in the film.  I guess with Alan Arkin and John Goodman in it, there had to been some shits and giggles, right?
And if you think Ben Affleck is a doucheketeer, don't worry, you hardly notice him in this film(even though he has the main role). ;-)

We went to the 1 pm showing during the non-tourist season, so the only people in the theater with us were age 60 and over.....the Senior Citizen crowd.  Lots of canes and walkers and oxygen tanks to dodge to get out of the theater when it was over.  Thank goodness for no screaming babies and unruly children and ignorant younger folks who don't know any better than to be talking through the entire film!  It was so weird that when the credits started rolling, everyone in the theater burst into applause.  I don't know if that was because of the dramatic tension release experienced by the audience or if the film imparted a heightened sense of patriotism onto the crowd, that they then expressed or what.  It just seemed like the natural thing to do......

Since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, we headed from the movie theater off to Selbyville, Delaware to use another of our dinner certificates at a place called the Hawaiian Crab Bar & Grill. 
And it was closed.....no hours on the door, nothing.  We called the phone number and got a machine that told us to leave a message but gave us no information on their hours.  The website did NOT say they were closed for the season either.  On the way back down to OC, we did some shopping here.....

While in tax free DE, might as well stock up on more adult beverages, right?
We had fun browsing around.
$110 later we left with some goodies for the vacation, some goodies for home and a few Christmas presents.
We give great presents you know.....you might want to get on our list. ;-)

We still needed to eat a real meal on Tuesday so we heading back into OC. Next to the movie theater was a Denny's.   We decided it was a safe place from high prices and food poisoning so we dined there.
I got the All-You-Care-To-Eat Meatballs and Spaghetti.  In all my years, THIS was the first time I ever ate something other than Breakfast foods at Denny's.  I was just not feeling hot cakes and eggs that day.  So I took a chance and the meal was actually pretty decent!  The salad was awesome and not just wilted iceberg and 1 cherry tomato.  The garlic bread left a lot to be desired however, but the pasta and balls were good.   And really, the spaghetti should not be all-you-can-eat because I had problems just getting through 1 plate full.  Who could actually eat more than 1 serving!?!

A nice walk down the boardwalk and then back to our hotel for some adult beverages and television watching finished off our day.

To Be Continued.......

Sluggy 

Guess.....

.....where I have been lately?

Does this photo help?

How about this one?

We hightailed it outta Ocean City MD as they were rolling up the sidewalks and blocking up the beach access against that unwelcomed  guest due to arrive soon, Hurricane Sandy.
Good thing we didn't elect to take next week for our beach holiday, right?lol

I'm back and sober(for the time being)and trying to get up to speed in the blog world.
What has everyone been up to?

Sluggy

Did Anyone Miss Me?

Hubs & I took off for a couple of days to go down to Ocean City MD.
It's a regular thing now that we try to do every year in October....just the two of us.

And no electronics come along, except the cell phone.
So that's why you haven't heard from me online.

It was short this time(2 nights)but sweet, as the high temperatures hovered around 75 each day! 8-))
The bad was that we found out the hotel turned off the A/C for THE YEAR before we got there.
Meaning, the room was hot as heck, even at night and I had a hard time sleeping for 2 nights.
bleh.

Now I would NEVER go to Ocean City in season.  The place is tacky, wall-to-wall tacky shops(beyond the actual ocean and beach part)and WALL-TO-WALL PEOPLE!
Loud people, out of control teens, screaming tots, drunk people, obnoxious people, cruising up and down the strip blaring music(mostly bad)so loud that the car vibrates people.
All of which I had to endure growing up in a beach town during "the season".....all of which are not on my list of fun things to be around.
So we go in the late Fall to avoid all these annoyances. The beach and ocean is still there and even though there ARE people there,  relative quiet is also there.  It was so warm this time you could have gone into the water though we opted not to.

Here is the lone photo I took....

Either I forgot to take the camera when we went somewhere or on a walk on the beach or we just didn't do anything photoworthy.
Mostly we sat around on the balcony or went out to eat something.  Neither of those things make great pictures.

We made a detour on the way down via Reading so I could get some Easy Spirit shoes.  These shoes are expen$ive but there is an outlet in Reading.  Ok, so there is an outlet in Rehoboth too but that one is so small I haven't been able to find any shoes that fit me there for the last 2 years.  The store in Reading is twice the size.  I found 4 pair of shoes that fit and they were on BOGO50% sale so it was worth the detour.

We stopped in Rehoboth on the way home at the Vans Outlet and I picked up most of #2 son's Christmas loot there.  If the child could have Vans tattooed on his butt, he would. ;-)
They also had the Jumiez Store a couple of doors down from the Vans Store opened now(at Easter when we passed through, it was not opened yet).  #2 son will be sad to hear that he missed it but that place was crazy expensive and not outlet prices so not on my places to go back to again.  I did find some jeans for #2 son clearanced to $9.97 plus BOGO50% off which was sweet. 

Since the weather was even warmer than forecast(Hubs didn't bring but 1 short sleeved shirt)he picked up a couple of summer polo type shirts at an outlet store in West Ocean City.   They were on clearance so I didn't have a fit. lol

Then we get to the 'unconventional shopping' that I do....grocery shopping!lol

On Wednesday we hit the Sav-A-Lot store down there.  We don't have one here so I like to go in and see what I can score for cheap.  Last year I got a ton of 100% juices but the pickings were thin this year.  They had Gwaltney rolled sausage for $1!....but it was sold out. 8-(
So here is what I picked up.....

Good strong instant coffee for Hubs at $3.99 a jar.
Sloppy Joe Sauce for .85¢ each.
Peach cough drops for .99¢....while not a deal price, the flavor is unusual for here and Daughter is addicted to peach anything AND she loves cough drops, so these go in her Christmas stocking.lol
I also picked up a couple of Jiffy brand corn bread mixes for .45¢.  They are selling for .70¢ & up around here.  No real stock-up worthy items there this trip.

Then we went looking for Smithfield ham(meaning salt cured ham).  While I no longer cook a whole Salt-Cured ham for the Holidays, we do like ham and biscuits on occasion so we always pick up ham slices when we get below the Mason-Dixon Line.

6 packaged of salt-cured ham for $4.39 each.
4 packages of Jiffy banana muffin mix(for #2 son)on clearance for $.39¢ each.
1 bag of masa or corn flour for $4.49
3 lbs. of dried chillies(various types, nothing really really hot though) for $2.99 lb.


Except for the muffin mix, this is all stuff I can't get here in my Ethnic Polish town.  I might be able to get the Mexican/Southwestern items up at Wegman's but I'd pay a much heftier price.

Then on the way out of town yesterday we picked up these items.....

FUDGE!  Select varieties were BOGO Free.  Fudge was $11.75 a POUND this past season!!
I would eat fudge until I weighed 800 pounds but NOT at that price.
So we picked up 4lbs. at a price equal to 2lbs.
1 lb. each for #2 son and the Nephew and 2 lbs. for Hubs and I.
I will try not to eat all of mine before the weekend is over........

Then we stopped at Rose's.  It's still there hanging on in OC, but barely.  Rose's is a department/discount store that has been around in this area of the South since before Kmart/Walmart, etc.    It is the place to go for this......

Claxton Fruit Cake!
Best.
Fruitcake.
Ever!!!

I know you are all making nasty faces at this because fruitcake is gross.
ALL fruitcake EXCEPT this or your granny's homemade are gross!

This fruitcake is all fruit and nut meats, barely any cake.
It is the CADILLAC of Fruitcakes!
But if you order this from the company in Georgia that makes it, it's Very Pricey!
I go to Rose's and get it for $3.75 each.
Last year it was $3.50.  I was shocked that it hadn't gone up more!
1 fruitcake will go into #1 son's stocking(He loves this stuff!)and the other 4?
They will be eaten, trust me!lolol

I also picked up this at Rose's......

Some slippers for $5 that I might actually get my foot into.
If not, I'll give them to Daughter for Christmas as her foot is as big but not as wide.

We left Ocean City MD and it was around 11am and 65 degrees....re-cue my first photo but with a little more overcast clouds....

We hit rain as we left Rehoboth DE.  The drizzle picked up and the temperature dropped slowly as we drove northward.

By the time we got 20 miles from home, we had this on the Turnpike....

FREAKING SNOW!
Ok, I didn't take that picture and it wasn't QUITE that bad, but it was SNOW!
I was in a summer dress and sandals.
A 4 hour drive shouldn't take you from summer to winter weather, right?
Ugh.

At least it didn't stick and it's gone today.....though they are calling for more snow on Saturday!!
Did I say UGH yet?lol

I'm off to catch up on blogs and real life now.

Sluggy

My Trip--The Ocean, WW2, Pruney Donuts and Russian Prostitutes Part 2

Here's where we left off last time.....

A beautiful sunrise on Wednesday morning.
Being bored with the cafe in the motel for breakfast(we had used 1 voucher and had 1 left for breakfast to use on Thursday before we left), Hubs ventured out early to forage for morning sustenance while I tried to pry my eyelids open.

I had introduced him to The Fractured Prune last trip.
Seems he was hankering for more 'pruney donuts' this trip.
The FP is a gourmet donut shop that originated in OC.   A few years ago when we had a teacher's strike at the local school and the kids were out of school for 4 weeks at the beginning of that school year, I had taken my boys and one of their friends to Virginia Beach and then, OC and had dragged them to the FP for breakfast one morning.

There were only 2 locations at that time but it seems the FP has caught on and there are scads of outlets down in that area and beyond.  The only problem is they are only open from 7am to noon during the off-season.
They make cake type donuts.....fresh and hot. 
When they pull them from the deep fryer, you tell them what glaze to put on your donut and if you want toppings....like jimmies, chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, marshmallows, etc.
There are 'regular' combinations that are popular that they have on the menu you can get or you can make up your own.
This is something like what Hubs carted back to the room.....still hot.

They may not look like much, but if your computer had Smell-o-vision, you'd be licking your screen.

Seriously, if I lived down there, I'd weigh 600 lbs.....

This was just the incentive Hubs needed to pry my off of the mattress....at least until I ate 3 and then I just wanted to lay back down for 4 hours and sleep the sugar/carb coma off.lol

We did some sightseeing on Wednesday.  Up in Delaware near Bethany Beach they are replacing the little bridge with this monster....

 It's the same type of construction as the bridge on Route 1 that replaced/bybassed the one over Route 13 near St. George DE.   Actually it's called the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Bridge.  It was one of the 1st cable-stayed bridges in the country and the only one in the Delaware Valley.  This one just seems gargantuan for it's purpose.
Gee, did I just talk about another bridge on my Maine trip post?  Maybe I have this latent 'thing' for bridges and engineering, huh? ;-)

When I took the kids during the teacher's strike to OC I noticed these big concrete things along the shoreline as we traveled up the coast from OC to Rehobeth.....

This shot was taken from the car so it only shows the top half.  They are quite tall and obtuse, sticking out from the scenery.
I just discovered that they are fire towers that were built along the coastline in NJ and DE during World War II.  Fire Tower is a misnomer since these were really enemy spotting & artillery aiming towers.  Our military feared/expected a Pearl Harbor type attack on Trenton and the Philly munitions and shipbuilding yards at the head of the Delaware River, so these towers were built along the route to guard against the German battleships they thought were going to sneak up the River......ships that never arrived.  Quite a few have yet to be torn down and there is a group taking on restoring them as they are historically significant.

This shot thrills me yet makes me sad....

The shoreline of Delaware is NOT totally developed and settled yet.  There are towns dotting the shore but there is still open, undeveloped acreage without huge condos or hotels on it.  This is a big contrast to the shoreline once you hit the Maryland line which is wall-to-wall monolithic buildings.  There are some state parks on the beaches in Delaware too so some of the beaches will never be developed.  This was a piece of a state park I saw from the road near where one of the fire towers is located.  It just gave me chills to see a piece of shoreline without a building or a trace of a person having been there.  An unsullied place....well, except for the road.lol

Besides buying groceries again on a vacation....lol....we went to Roses.

When I was growing up, our area was lousy with Roses stores.  It was the Woolworth's of my part of the South.  The Wal-mart of it's day. 
Now it's barely hanging on.  It concentrates on high-end dollar store junk....sort of like a Family Dollar or Dollar General, but the stores are usually bigger.  There are still Roses in VA, DE, MD and NC that I know of.
If we are near a Roses as the holidays approach, we always stop in for this....

I am NOT a fan of fruitcake per se, but.....
Claxton's Fruit Cake is da bomb!  As Alton Brown might say....
Serioulsy.
Good.
Eats.

But being the cheap, miserly, frugal gal I am, I refuse to pay $9 a lb. to buy it locally up north or online.
It was $3.50 a lb. at Roses.  We stocked up......for eating purposes, not gift-giving purposes so if you are on my gift list, don't be a'feared that I'm sending you a fruitcake for Christmas.
You are safe....

After lugging fruitcake bricks to the car it was time for an early dinner so we headed over to West OC to search out a BBQ place we had seen in the phone book.
We found it quickly enough but gee, it was CLOSED like every other restaurant down there in the off-season.
So we drove down the main drag for a bit until I smelled a heavenly porcine aroma and turned me head and saw this....

A kitchy old motel sign, a motel office with a huge B for BUDWEISER Neon sign in the window and an OPEN Flag waving us in from the other side of the office building were a BBQ Joint was perfuming the air with pig from it's on site smoker pitt.

They had me at pig.


We had stumbled upon bbq heaven.
It's name is Rascal's in West Ocean City MD.
If you hanker for smoked/barbecued chicken, brisket or pork, check it out.  Good eats and cheap eats!
We stumbled along to the back entrance of the building into a tiny poolside bar with a few boofs and sat down.

In walked Roscoe Nelson, the owner/manager of the Alamo and Rascal's.
Roscoe turned out to be a pretty colorful character.
He told us all about the history of the Alamo and it's original owner and then about himself.
He knows all the locals in OC and told us to get Denny, the guy who owns the tavern next door to our motel, to tell him the "one armed man" said hi.
Did I mention that Roscoe has one arm?
He lost it when he was 12.
After about a minute and a half of talking to him you forget he's got one arm....that is, until he brings the subject up.

Seems because Roscoe hires pretty foreign women to work his bar and more pretty foreign women live in his motel during the in-season when they work at the hotels in OC, rumors of Prostitution Rings at the Alamo started going around.  And drunk men started showing up in the late evenings/early mornings looking for the whores.....wreaking all kinds of havoc.
Bullet holes in motel windows anyone?

The gal working the bar & tables when we were there was decidely American, not foreign.  Though this rumour started years ago people still turn up at the motel looking for some 'comfort' besides the bbq kind.
Figures I'd end up at an infamous seedy motel owned by a one armed man, with fabled Russian hookers.
Even when I try to be boring, I can't.  I can't make stuff like this up.....lol

Here's a you tube vlog that the DC paper did on the story.....


 I personally liked this article located HERE that the same Washington City Paper outfit also put out.
And before you ask, no, I didn't play horseshoes or "party" with Cory and Roger.  ;-)

The motel is decidedly flea bag-esque but worth the trip for the 'Cue!

After a leisurely breakfast in our motel's cafe Thursday morning-served by Fran who after 2 pots of coffee in her by 8am was chatty as a flock of seagulls fighting over a tourists dropped bag of salted peanuts-we packed it up and headed home.
No lingering since we had to get north of Philly before rush hour started at 3pm.

Here's one more pre-sunrise shot of the Atlantic Ocean.

Funny thing I noticed this trip......usually I can smell the sea air miles before we hit the coast.  This time, not so much.  The beach didn't smell like the beach should.  Hubs even commented on it.  Maybe our noses have shorted out from old age or something....lol

Sluggy