Back to life, back to reality

There is something about the beach that feels like coming home to me. The palm trees, the warm ocean breeze, the sound of the waves, my feet in the sand, always make me feel like that is the place I was always meant to be. Of course, that's how I felt when we went to New York last year, too, so who knows. Anyway, I never wanna leave when I'm there, but I guess it is good to get home.

Oh well, as I sit here with a rosy red glow and still finding sand in all sorts of places I didn't even know I had, let's briefly (as possible) recap:
Arrived around 6:30 Friday evening, I think. Turns out our beach house was in Sandestin, but Ft. Walton, Destin, and Sandestin are all next to each other from west to east. The house was nice. I'll try and post a pic later. It was two bedrooms, two-and-a-half bath, two story, with three TV's, and a deck outside both upstairs bedrooms. Went to eat at a place called Pompano Joe's Friday night. The wait was an hour and forty-five minutes. Not everyone was up for pulling my Lambert's stunt to get us in early, so we just waited. It was right on the beach. I had a shrimp po boy. It was decent, but not worth the wait.

Saturday was a pretty full day on the beach. The weather was nice most everyday except Tuesday, and except for an occasional afternoon shower. Drove over to Panama City Saturday night and ate at a place called Captain Anderson's. I had fried shrimp. It was good. Seafood near the coast makes seafood up here hardly worth eating. Everyone was exposed to the Human Jukebox on the drive there and back. Oldies, country, pop, 80's, whatever. I can sing along with most anything.

Some clouds brought us in early from the beach Sunday. I took about a two hour nap Sunday afternoon, then we went to Guglielmo's, an Italian place, for dinner. I ordered the Penne Pesto, with shrimp and scallops. When my plate came out, everyone was like, "Your food is green!" Yes, it was. But once you got past the color, it was actually pretty good, except for the fact that there were only like four shrimp in it. We experienced the great lockout when we got back from there (see earlier post).

Sunday night was pretty painful. I rubbed some blue sparkly aloe stuff (it matched my speedos bikini swimsuit... what?) all over my body to try and alleviate some of the burning. We went souvenir shopping several times on the trip. At this one place, I found some Life Is Good caps. I started to get one for Kyle and one for myself also, since that is our motto. Then I noticed they were $19.99 each. Life isn't THAT good ;-)

As I said in an earlier post, we went to Big Kahunas waterpark on Monday. That was a lot of fun. It was pretty exhausting, too, so we just got some pizza that night and took back to the house and ate. Went out to the pool for a bit. The little community/complex/resort where we stayed had a pool. Then most everyone was tired, so I went down to the beach by myself. I sat there for probably 45 minutes, just relaxing and thinking. The beach was deserted. I saw a group of five people walk by. Those were the only people who passed by the entire time I was out there. It was lightning in the distance and stuff.

Tuesday was cloudy and rainy most of the day, but that was actually good if you wanted to get out in the ocean. The waves were pretty big, so we rode those for a little while. When we got down there, Jess' parents said they had seen a shark way out in the ocean a few minutes earlier. I swam out where it had been spotted, but no luck. What? Ate a late lunch at Fudpucker's. I had a pound of fried crawfish. Mmmmmm. I just kept eating and eating and never could see my plate. That was a lot of food.

Jessica and I left out about 6:30 to come home. Her parents are staying until Saturday. We arrived back around 12:15 this morning. I drove the whole way back. Not much traffic on Tuesday night anywhere, which was nice. I'll try and get some pictures posted at some point, as well as any other stories I can remember. I need to get back to work, I suppose.

Edit: Oh yeah, a BIG thanks to Jessica and her family for inviting me along and letting me stay for free. That's hard to beat right there. Don't worry, I make it up to them in other ways.

"Friends, get scattered by the wind, tossed upon the waves, lost for years on end. Friends, slowly drift apart. They give away their hearts. Maybe call you now and then..."