Beach Weekend by Russ

Friday morning the Wife and I drop Miss L off at the parent's house (further confining the week concerning my homework), then we headed off to Hilton Head Island. All along the way, we were checking against each other concerning what we had forgotten.  As we figured it, very little.  The charger for the camera.  Everything else that she forgot, I remembered.  Conversely, what I forgot, she remembered.

Or so we thought.

We arrive at our hotel and pull our bags to check in.  My bag was missing. You see, the Wife brought down her bag and the kids bags and then loaded the car.  I never looked to see if my bag was included in the pile.  (No tire marks on the Wife's back.)  I never asked if she brought my bag down.  I just saw a pile of bags and assumed.

So we start our time on vacation shopping for clothes.  Not my idea of a vacation activity.  There was a TJ Maxx near the hotel and their selection was poor and pricey (for TJ Maxx) and we head over to Belk hoping for sales.

Well, sales they had!  I replaced everything in my suitcase for under $100 (including shoes).  Three dollar Izod shirts, $4 Columbia shorts and Haggar pants go a long way to making that number.  Now we could begin our vacation.

The beach was, er, breezy.  The weather channel had it at 20 mpg with gusts to 25 mph.  My hair looked like Don King was my stylist.  No amount of combing would get it to lay down.  Evidently, salt air is quite the styling product.

Dinner that night was at EAT! by Robert Irvine (Restaurant Impossible on Food Network).  The food was quite good and plentiful.  Normally, I'm not a huge fan of celebrity restaurants (only other one I had been to was the eponymous "Emeril's"), but I'm not adverse to them.  This one had good reviews on some foodie chat sites, so I thought we would give it a try.

Originally, we were just going to do tapas, but the waiter did such a good job selling the entrees that I was talked into the pork chop.  I also had the pork sliders which were better than my entree (which was very good).  The pork chop in question was ginormous.  Easily the size of my daughter's head.  (Yes, I finished it.) I took a picture of it, but the fork was not provide adequate scale, I should have used my hand.

Day 2 tomorrow.