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......
* 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".
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....
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
