When to ignore the locals.

We are in Hilton Head enjoying some beautiful weather and getting ready to head out to dinner, but this was too good to wait to type for fear I would forget one glorious instant.

So, we have had the worst dining experiences in the past 24 hours I have ever had while on vacation. I have never been to Hilton Head before, but I expected delicious buckets of fresh shellfish and seafood lining the streets and available on every corner since it is an island. Seriously, it should be wonderful. Unfortunately we have been lead totally astray if there is decent food on this island. Last night Jake asked the conceirge for a "fun local seafood restaurant", and we ended up at an unfortunate Joe's Crabshack knockoff. Although Joe's has better food and probably some non-skunky beer. I also need to mention that I finally got a book and read that it is "the best restaurant for kids on the island"...just imagine how much I enjoyed that plus crappy food and skunky beer. Then this morning we went to a highly noted restaurant on the water where they promptly burned the snot out of my FRENCH TOAST...they screwed up FRENCH TOAST. So then we just gave up for lunch and went to a joint called The Earle of Sandwich which is a bar like the Stuga. Food was sketchy at best, but better and less expensive than the rest of what we have been eating. Then we got to talk to the bartender. Dear Lord. All the people that know anything about travel always say that you should ask the locals for the best spots to eat. I think there should be some sort of disclaimer regarding exactly the typ of locals you should ask. So despite that little voice in my head, I asked. He had several brilliant nuggets of insight for us:
1. "The best seafood here is at the Holiday Inn Buffet, it is awesome." Yes, he said that.
2. "Never use the coupons they give you in the magazines, b/c anywhere you need a coupon to go, you don't want to go".
3. Another thought on the Holiday Inn, "There is a great Tiki bar back there. My friends and I go there all the time. Just walk back there like you are a tourist (easy as we are indeed tourists) and they won't bother you. We also like to use the hot tub and the pool there. Did I mention how good the seafood buffet is for $11." Yes you did mention that earlier.

So out we venture in an attempt to find seafood better than at your local Red Lobster in a city that is an island in the ocean. Seriously. If we do not succeed I will be crabbing for myself in the ocean tomorrow morning because this is ridiculous.

Oh, and there are alligators everywhere. I am not in love with Hilton Head.

Betty Crocker Ain't Got Nothing On Me!

I am hanging out tonight baking cakes for work tomorrow. I have never had to bake multiple cakes for anywhere I have ever had to work, so this is fun. There is apparently a HUGE Halloween event every year at work called "Spooktacular" where all of the peds patients, kids from a shelter, and employee kids dress up and come trick or treating in our building. It is really a cool thing. Of course what is any good get together without a cake walk, so I am at home being Betty Crocker and getting ready to head to Hilton Head for the weekend. The pediatric therapists have been working on this deal forever and everyone gets really into it, which is especially cool since very few of us actually have any kids ourselves. I am talking fake spiderwebs on the weird hallway art every business has, spiders hanging from the ceiling, and apparently a haunted house springs up sometime overnight. A little out of control, but still a pretty good time. It is nice to take someone else's kids, sugar them up, and then send them home with their "real parents".

I really am appreciating the altruistic spirit of the hospital I work for. You are given a lot of opportunities to do some neat service activities because we are so much a part of the community since the area we serve is relatively small. It makes me happy. We also get to celebrate holidays. Apparently political correctness is totally optional down here as a bunch of people are dressing up for Halloween and there is already talk of a CHRISTMAS party..nope, not a HOLIDAY party, a CHRISTMAS party. That's what I am talking about.

Nascar with Bicycles..

We headed to Greenville on Sunday to do some big time shopping...that you can find at any regular mall that is not in Greenwood, SC. We were going to stop in downtown to grab a bite to eat when happened onto the "Fall for Greenville" festival. Really a pretty cool thing. Greenville has the Reedy River flowing through the middle of downtown, and they have done a great job of building the downtown area around it. There is a bridge suspended over the river (which is amazing) with assorted parks around it, amphitheaters for events and restaurants....and apparently a very important bike race through downtown a few times a year. The idea is you cordon off all of downtown, then ride your bicycle in a circle as fast as you can around several blocks against a group of other insane people roller derby style (flying elbows, etc). And then you can go have a funnel cake or watch a bar tending competition. Oh, don't worry if you fall off your bike in the first billion laps you can get back on and still race, but that is totally against the rules in the last 5 laps. Apprantly even anarchy has rules. It is an awesome event that Greenville has really embraced. Greenville is much more progressive than you would think. Lots of almost hippies with bikes, dogs, granola, Teva sandals, but they are just not as serious about their "hippiness" it as their Asheville brethren. We had our dog along and I have no fashion sense, so we blended right in. Jake and I sat outside and ate some lunch in the sun while watching crazy people drive in circles as fast as they could on two wheels. Not a bad day.

I am certainly surprised with all of the biscuit eating I have witnessed that SC is actually one of the hotbeds of triathalons, running, and other fitness business in the US. Very weird when they eat fried chicken for breakfast. I think it runs in pockets. The fit people are REALLY healthy, and everyone else is REALLY UNHEALTHY. Yikes.

Old Style and Pineapple

So the K-State game is on this evening. Weird, weird, weird as it is starting around 9:30 which is shortly before my very lame self goes to bed. Anyway, in celebration of the KSU game I got a hankering for a little "So Long Saloon" Old Style and Pineapple juice. Now that may sound like a rank combination, but I invite all of you out there to give it a try. Truly a delicious taste experience. And a really nice way to use up any additional crappy beer left around your house after a party/tailgate involving any of the Toll family who brought crappy beer and then drank your delicious beer (Molly and Matt Toll..you know who you are). So Jake and I set out this afternoon to find some Old Style beer. You would think that would be something that would be available in a place that sells A LOT of "forties" in the grocery store/walmart and has a wide selection of different flavors of Milwaukee's Best (the beast). Incorrect unfortunately. Also unfortunate is the weird liquor laws in this state. You cannot advertise "liquor"...so they sneakily disguise what they are selling by saying "Package Store" or "Red Dot Store", which just means liquor store once you figure it out. For a while I just thought they shipped A TON of mail out of this place, taking "package store" to mean "UPS store/FedEx store". That would have been confusing when I went there with my mail. I think it is kinda like swearing in a foreign language, it still means the same thing and my mother informs me that it still counts as swearing....I still have to put money in the cuss bucket for it whether or not it is in English. The Package/Red Dot/Super secret liquor stores all have to close at sunset. Yep, could be 9 pm, could be 5 pm depending on the time of year. Furthermore to further dissuade you from becoming an alcoholic they hide these places in the WORST parts of town, or maybe it is just a considerate move by the county to make it easier for poor people without cars to get their drink on. I got so freaked out by the location that it kept me from going into the one place we did find. Think about that...a place so scary it kept me away from alcohol. Yep, pretty scary.
Anyway, I ultimately gave up on my search for Old Style and settled for Pabst's Blue Ribbon that you can find at any neighborhood Food Lion grocery store. I figure that PBR sounded equally rank and nasty and would do nicely. Jake Worcester the beer snob was so embarrassed to buy it that he made me carry it all over the store. However, ultimately all of the work and embarrassement and near death was worth it as I sit here sipping my lovely yellow concotion and cheering on the cats!

What is "Soul Food" Anyway?

So tomorrow is October birthday celebration day and the theme is "soul food". I admittedly have no clue what that really means, and my co-workers informed me that it is what you eat on Sundays for dinner. I informed them I would be bringing a nice steak with a baked potato and some sort of veggie...apparently that is not right. After further instruction I am now making my sister Molly's famous creamed corn. One bag of corn, two sticks of cream cheese, half stick of butter, and 3 T of sugar...that should be southern enough hopefully... It is a tablespoon of butter short of a stroke so that should be about right. I have no clue how people eat this stuff down here and are not dead. It scares me that I am now the "healthy eater" in the group at work. They all seem fine, but I am minorly afraid they are all going to drop dead simultaneously of a stroke in the middle of the chicken finger, mac and cheese, green bean casserole, creamed corn, cornbread lunch tomorrow...

Minor Toe Surgery

For those of you that know the saga of the ingrown toenail there is finally an end. For those of you that don't know about it, count yourselves lucky... I will have to see if I can figure out how to post pictures. It would be totally worth it. The toenail procedure is definitely the gnarliest thing I have paid someone else to do to me. I got it fixed yesterday afternoon in the sports clinic at work. It was a slow day with no one else to poke around on, so I asked the doctor and residents where I should go to get it done. Their eyes lit up like Christmas and they practically ran to get all of the necessary tools. I guess the ingrown toenail is a good draw. Lots a blood like surgery but very little risk... The doctor and resident that did it certainly had a good time and it was a nice learning experience for everyone. Especially my co-workers who came to ask me questions only to see my bloody foot all propped up with a bunch of people around it. "Sweet Jesus" was actually used! I really appreciated them fitting me in during work time and so far it has not falled off yet so YEAH! They rammed 2 Q-Tips full of Phenol (which smells freakishly like fermaldehyde) into the hole to kill the nail bed, then twisted it around for good measure. Pretty soon the black stuff should peel away and I will be good as new!

Absentee Blogger

My husband ran away with the working computer last Monday and left me with one he insisted was "just a little slow"...or maybe just a lot broken. However, I suppose then I am a testament to the fact that the world does continue to spin even though you cannot get to your hotmail...or see the latest Brittany video on You Tube. I should lie to you all and tell you that I read several books, discovered a cure for the bird flu, and located the Arc of the Covenant..or the truth, that I watched a whole lot of Law and Order re-runs punctuated by occasional ridiculous movie Jake hated or a new show with commercials intacted..UGH. Good lord how I miss the DVR. Cox cable was the biggest rip off in the world, but the DVR made it all worth it. Luckily now I have the 24 hour hunting channel. Now instead of watching commerials I can simply change to channel 31 and watch not only stalking of the prey, but the actual kill shot...I don't think they have that on tv in Kansas that I can remember.