101 Things I Did on Summer Vacation

Does anyone remember having to write about your summer vacation when you went back to school in September? I remember writing about lazy days by the pool, hooking up with friends, sweltering hot but fun practices at band camp (yeah, don't start with the jokes) and otherwise being bored to tears. Long gone are those days where the most one had to worry about was putting on sunscreen. Hell, I'm sure that I didn't even WEAR sunscreen back then.

Alas, this summer hearkened back to those days of yore. While I now have to worry about a crapload more than I did when I was 16 (like making sure that ALL of the Things are wearing sunscreen), Summer 06 was the stuff that dreams are made of.

I'm having a "Life Comes At You Fast" kinda September so my plan is to slowly climb back on the blogging wagon in the coming weeks. I just logged into Bloglines for the first time in three months today and was completely blown away by the number of posts since I read anything last. I'm sure that I missed some significant events in people's lives and that makes me sad. Y'all are like the big family that I never had and while I wanted to keep up, I had to focus for a few months. But things are settling into a weird, Twilight Zone kind of routine. The Things get up when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, there are no fights over the bathroom or what to pack for lunch, homework is completed with little or no whining and we've been to school on time every day this month. I keep waiting for Rod Serling to pop out of a closet and narrate these strange occurrences 'cause its too good to be true.

While I'm excited about my favorite season - FALL - starting in just a couple of days, I'm truly sad to see summer go. King Thing and I are already trying to figure out where we could live so that we'd have access to eternal summer ((((sigh)))). When I have a spare moment (which aren't too plentiful these days), I'll post pictures and regale you with stories of sun and fun. And of course, there's plenty of knitting peppered in there too. I need your help though. Here's the deal:

* I have 101 things to share about Summer 2006 and they're numbered from 1-101 in a spreadsheet in random order (not by order of my favorite to least favorite).

* I'll tell you about 2 activities in each post

* The first two people to post in the comments section for that day with their requested number gets to choose what I post about in the next post.

Why bother, you ask? Well, you get to hear me blither on and on (hey, you guys asked me to start posting again) and I don't have to think about what order to tell my little summer stories. Any questions? Good. Let me pick one to start off with...

# 57 - Went to a Violent Femmes concert in Virginia Beach with Thing 1


So Thing 1 thought that it would be fun to go to a big concert on the beach. As luck would have it, The Violent Femmes were playing at the East Coast Surfing Championships while we were in town. A quick trek to the VA Beach Oceanfront and we were set. The opening band - Jackmove - was kickass awesome. We were stoked for the Femmes and even maneuvered to the front of the stage. That was where it all ended. A word to the wise - If you're an aging, self proclaimed "Grandfather of Folk Punk", perhaps you should consider playing better, not louder. Other than "Blister in the Sun", the rest of their performance was very, very sad. They tried to over compensate by cranking the volume up seemingly after each song. Also sad were the drunk 40 and 50 somethings in the crowd, trying desperately to act hip and cool. Falling over drunk on little kids and innocent bystanders is not cool, people. I got a great clip on my phone of the woman Thing 1 and I dubbed "Skinny Drunk Lady" but can't figure out how to post it to the web. This drunk chick tried many times to weasel her way behind the stage, into the VIP section, wherever she wasn't supposed to be. She finally ended up next to us (yippie), flailing her cigarette and beer everywhere before nearly passing out on about eight of us. After 40 minutes and eardrums throbbing from standing in front of the speakers, we hightailed it outta there. All, Thing 1 could say is "man, I'm glad that you didn't have to pay for us to go to that concert"." Huh? Wha?" Is all I could say for two days thanks to the ringing in my ears.

Sounds like I didn't have fun, doesn't it? But really I had a blast. It was great to spend the day doing something that Thing 1 wanted to do. We ate lunch together, people watched (and laughed - especially at the drunk girl who ran into a telephone pole on her bike. Don't worry, she was okay otherwise we wouldn't have laughed at her) for hours and just "hung out." Even Skinny Drunk Girl couldn't ruin our fun. This summer, I reconnect with my boy first the first time in years. Maybe next time, we'll go see a good band of aging rockers like Metallica.

PS. In case you were wondering, like a dumbass I did take some knitting with me 'cause I thought that I could sit on the beach, watch the sunset and knit while Thing 1 wandered around at the surfing/skateboarding competition. I cowered in fear that one of the many drunk people would spill beer all over me and my knitting as they stumbled all around me. In their defense, I didn't realize until later that I'd plopped down in the middle of the beer/wine garden area. So no knitting pictures but the good news is that my knitting escaped without injury.

PSS - It may sound like everyone at the VA Beach oceanfront is drunk. That's NOT the case. Unfortunately, this event had a huge beer and wine garden and it seemed like people were determined to drink up every last drop. That's not usually the case as VB is VERY family friendly, there are lots of police on hand keeping the peace and we've rarely encountered intoxicated people down there in the past. Just my little tourism plug for my hometown.