Myrtle Beach Vacation (still)

Ok, sorry for that interruption. Now, back to talking about my vacation. Cuz I know you just love to hear about the details of my life.

One day we went to Apache Pier ($2 to park, but it was free to walk the pier since I had free coupons) - normally they charge a $1 to walk the pier. It was very windy that day. While up on the pier, you could just see the sand storm happening below. I have no idea who these ladies are, but it was funny to watch them get caught up in the sand storm. They packed up soon after.



There was a small playground for us to use steps away from our condo:


Another pic taken from Apache Pier. On my message board someone jokingly referred to Myrtle Beach as the Redneck Riviera. I have no idea why they would say that. Just look at these fancy trailers and RVs parked at the campground at the beach.


A view of the condo from across the park/lake.


View of the condo from on top of a parking garage. Picture was taken during one of my morning walks with Jacob. What I really liked about our place was the large patio. As you see in the pic, most people's patios were tiny compared to ours.


The pier at Myrtle Beach State Park


Picture taken by Jacob. I have no idea who these people are but this gives me hope that Jacob's photography skills are improving. It's pretty ironic though, since I have the exact same outfit that that woman is wearing, but in a smaller size, of course.



This is what most of Jacob's pictures look like. I'm afraid he may have inherited the finger-in-the-picture gene from my mother.


Jacob on the large playground that was across the street in the park (a different playground than the one pictured above)


The park had a bunch of these exercise stations, which was cool for me to look at and read about.


In a candy store at Broadway at the Beach. The tubes are all filled with different colored M&Ms. Makes me wonder how old the candy is. I had Jacob hold the big lollipop for the picture. Of course since I am cheap, I did not buy him the lollipop. Just kidding. I bought it but now he has to do his own laundry for the rest of his life (hey, he agreed to it).



Jacob at the beach. As a helicopter parent, it killed me to be this far from him (DH was there and he told me to relax. yeah right. Vacations are for doing, not relaxing.) But Jacob only went up to his waist since the water was like 33 degrees.



In front of the condo. See the green lights? At night the colors would gradually change about every 5 seconds. I took the pic because of the full moon.


Another view of the complex. There were several fountains that were pretty.


On the last day I finally spotted the outdoor chess game.


One day we went bowling at Waccamaw Bowling. Never again. Although they had a special - bowling was only .25 a game, the place is very smoker-friendly. I guess I've just lived somewhere so long that is not smoker-friendly, that I've forgotten what it is like to be indoors at a public place that allows smoking. The below pic is proof that I can still beat my son at bowling.



Yet another view of our condo:


Just so you know I didn't spend the whole time taking pics of the condo, here are some other things we did: went outlet shopping at a Tanger Outlet There were 2 Tanger Outlets in Myrtle Beach but we only made it to one. Yes, you read that right, I shopped retail. Will show what I bought in another post. Bo Bice was going to be giving a free concert at the outlet, but we missed it by a day or two.

I did a little bit of shopping at the resort. Here is the website that shows a lot better pics than mine Market Common Myrtle Beach On my message board a while back, I posted a link to get a free tote bag from Victoria's Secret (the offer is now expired) - so I was able to get my totally free $19.50 Think Pink tote bag. I bought some crepe mix at Williams-Sonoma. I tried on $36 bras at the Soma store. Bought a cupcake at Barnes & Noble. Bought some Cold Stone Creamery. I think that was about it.

Went to Myrtle Beach State Park twice, using the free passes provided by the resort. Went to Toys R Us and bought up the 90% off Valentines Strawberry Shortcake bubblegum for .18 a package that Jacob likes. Also bought him two new PSP games. I have a Toys R Us Visa card that often sends me $10 gift cards based on how much money we've put on the account. I also had a coupon to save $5 off a $25 purchase. So it was good to use all that up, since our nearest Toys R Us is about 45 miles away and we don't get to it very often. Also did some Bed, Bath & Beyond shopping (with coupons of course). Strolled around Barefoot Landing and Broadway on the Beach. And of course did some mini-golfing and DH did some real golfing. I hit one Flea Market that was near the resort. We only had 4 full days there, and we were constantly busy so the time flew.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update - the end of the trip with my review of the Millenium Hotel Durham (don't let those swanky pics on their website fool ya, I have others....)

p.s. If it looks like I made Jacob wear the same green shirt all week...you are right. haha.

Pardon me for the Travel Blog interruption.....

I need to interrupt this wonderful and entertaining travel blog of Myrtle Beach to do a quick post on what I bought at Smile today.

$1 Wilton tool box. I guess it's for cake making supplies but I'm going to make it into a tool box. Because I can never find anything on DH's workbench, I started my own tool box for around the house. Currently I'm just using a tote bag to contain everything and stuff sinks to the bottom. There is some sort of spash of paint or something on the front, but I know I can clean it up.

$4.50 (a little high but hey, my son is worth it) - a big new package of surfer dudes wall stickers/decorations. Original price from Bed, Bath & Beyond was $29.99 Seeing that my son just turned 9, I know in about 6 or 7 years, I'll have to begin thinking that he is starting to grow up so I'll have to consider taking down his Toy Story wall decorations and doing something different. So I will put this away until then.

.50 each - two plastic mini crates (you know, since I love storage)

.25 each - two educational booklets - Know Your USA (learn facts about your state and all 47 other states) and the other is a Star Wars book about space.

Resort Quest Myrtle Beach Vacation

We stayed the bulk of our vacation at Resort Quest Myrtle Beach When DH said he wanted to go somewhere on vacation in April, I just started looking on the net for possible places to go and I found the resort. I knew I wanted to stay somewhere that had 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, was within driving distance, and the fact that the resort was running an awesome special made it a no brainer. The condo we stayed at normally $149/night plus taxes plus a linen fee. Because of the special, we paid $95 a night including all taxes/linen fees.

The place was gorgeous - it's in a new (less than a year old) planned shopping/entertaining/living community. The place I booked had a HUGE patio that Jacob really enjoyed. Free Wifi, washer & dryer, full kitchen, 3 flat screen tvs. Ginormous closets. Matter of fact, the first night, Jacob woke up at 4am and went out to the patio to check if Piggly Wiggly was closed (it was within view of our patio) and when he wouldn't go back to sleep in the bed, I told him to lay down in the closet - and he did. It was not on the beach, but included was unlimited free passes to go to the nearby state park which had a great beach/bathrooms etc etc.

Patio view of park (and PF Changs is there on the left)


Other side of patio view:


Another patio view:


The closest thing to camping that Jacob will probably ever experience (The Queen doesn't do camping)



Master bedroom (hutch has flat screen tv)


View of the lobby area. The nice thing was that we didn't have to use keys the entire time (so it was nice not worrying about losing/misplacing keys.) To get to the lobby from the sidewalk, you type in a code in a keypad by the door. That let you into the lobby area (below) then you could use the elevator to get to your condo (which also uses a keypad entry). Our condo was above a jewelry store. And there was a webcam near the keypad, so you could tune to a particular tv channel and watch who is coming into the building. Having that locked lobby was a good security measure, since it helped to keep my paparazzi away.



Kitchen/living room:



Kitchen island. I wish I had taken pics when we first walked in, before we junked it all up with our stuff.


Two lazy-boy type chairs with a red couch (which was a sofa bed too) Besides the 3 tvs, there was also a DVD player and stereo.


Jacob's room



Jacob's closet. Look at all that empty space! All I needed was a spare $20, a week at some good thrifts/yardsales, and I could fill that sucker up!


View of *our* building. More pics to come later.


View of the PF Changs (where I spent $27 on 2 dinners for us and DH was still hungry afterwards)


View of the Piggly Wiggly from the patio (where I bought myself a souvenir $5 "Get Your Pig On" t-shirt)


Picture at night from patio. The Grand 14 - is a movie theatre. It was next to a Cold Stone Creamery.


DH was very happy with the place too. The first day, he says to me "HOW much did we pay for this??" I know he was expecting me to say a lot more. It was bigger than our first apartment when we lived in Charleston. And heck, even the bathrooms and closets are bigger than what we have now!

Day 2 -Wilmington NC - USS North Carolina

On the morning of the second day we left Goldsboro and drove about an hour to Wilmington and toured the USS North Carolina I was so mad at myself because I know somewhere in my house is a coupon to save $1 off adult admissions, but I couldn't find it before we left. I had requested tourist info on Myrtle Beach and the coupon was in one of the books. The booklet got swallowed up by my clutter - it will probably resurface 5 years from now. And wouldn't you know, none of the pamphlets/booklets they give out in NC have that coupon. For some reason, they only advertise in the Myrtle Beach booklets.

DH wanted to tour the ship - he likes watching the History Channel. I thought I would be bored silly, but it was pretty interesting.





It's a self-guided tour, and there are quotes from the sailors all over the ship telling their experiences. In the operating/medical room, this one caught my eye:





Here is a self-portrait of me at the ship. It's a shadow/reflection of the ship in the murky alligator infested water below:



We spent about 2 hours at the ship and then drove another couple of hours to our resort in Myrtle Beach for the 3pm check-in. I will add pics of our resort in another post. It was nice. A 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo in a planned shopping/dining/living community. Back in January when DH said he wanted to go on vacation in April, I just happened to stumble upon the resort's website that said they were having a special that if you booked by Feb. 1, it was 55% off.

By the time we settled in, unpacked and walked around the area, it was getting late and we were getting hungry. I didn't want to go back out for dinner with Jacob, since it was already after 8pm, so I walked over to the PF Changs that was only steps away and got take-out. It smelled wonderful from our patio. I've never eaten at a PF Changs before and wanted to try it. Yes, the interior of the restaurant looked nice. I guess that is what you are paying for - the atmosphere - because I really don't think the food tasted any better than my local Chinese take-out place where I can get a General Tso chicken with a soda for $5.95

It seemed to be a trend on this vacation, eating at places that I probably won't eat at again. End of day 2.

Vacation Re-cap Day 1 - North Carolina Wilber's Barbecue Review Goldsboro NC

I'll try not to drag my vacation re-cap out too long. So I will just write about one day at a time. haha.

First day - we drove to a town called Goldsboro, North Carolina to spend the night. It was about a 5 hour drive. We stopped at the NC Visitor's Center and got some information on the town. DH had made reservations at a Country Inn & Suites - I had never stayed at this particular chain before and I liked it. I have a theory that the more expensive the hotel, the less they offer. It wasn't cheap cheap, but it wasn't extremely expensive either. I think we paid about $94 including taxes. Nice, clean room with microwave & fridge, warm free cookies in the lobby, bookcase in the lobby with new books to read and keep if you didn't finish (then you are supposed to return them to a different Country Inn & Suites in the future). Free hot chocolate & coffee 24 hrs a day, and a free breakfast in the morning. It wasn't a "hot" breakfast, but they had plenty of fruit, cereals, yogurt, juice, breads, Otis Spunkmeyer packaged muffins and a fridge full of pre-packaged breakfast sandwiches to microwave. And free computer in the lobby for anyone to use.



Here Jacob is playing some Jigzone in the lobby while I read my new book on Clutter that I got courtesy of Country Inn & Suites, which of course, I did not finish so I had to take with me.

Since we got there at around 3pm, we had some time to do something before dinner. In looking at the info on the town, I told DH we could either go to a local park that had train rides for kids, or go to the largest all pork retail displayer in the eastern United States (Nahunta Pork Center) Although seeing the largest retail pork display sounded tempting, I made the decision to go ride the train for $1 per person. DH took the above pic, Jacob and I are in the back.



Then time for dinner - and since North Carolina is known for BBQ, we went to the local famous BBQ place called Wilber's Barbecue The meal started off great, with a big free basket of fresh, hot, delicious hushpuppies. I ordered a pork sandwich/fries/cole slaw. When I think of BBQ, I think of pork shredded in regular ole red/brown bbq sauce. North Carolina BBQ is different, they have some sort of vinegary sauce with spices - not regular bbq sauce. The fries were luke-warm and no one - in my book - makes better cole slaw than Kentucky Fried Chicken. Anyhow I ate most of the sandwich until I bit down on a big fatty rubbery piece. Gag. Wilber's website says they use the whole hog, and I guess that means the fatty part too. I woke up at 3:50am with indigestion.

Oops, I'm jumping the gun a little, I forgot to mention that another stop along the way before getting into Goldsboro, was that we stopped at a big JR Cigar Store The name is misleading, since they sell a ton of discounted stuff besides cigars - wedding dresses, cosmetics, household items, tools, yadda yadda. We just bought some snacks. I don't have a need to buy a discounted wedding dress or another Beware of Attack Crab sign. Oh I forgot, DH did buy a few cigars to smoke on the golf course. GROSSSSS....




End of Day 1. Just 6 more vacation days to blog about.....

Happy Easter

Click on the pic for it to be animated.

Not a Typical Saturday

Today was definitely not a typical Saturday. At 7:30am instead of gathering up my list of yardsale addresses and wearing my fanny pack full of quarters, Jacob and I were in an indoor swimming pool in Durham, North Carolina. (DH was back in the hotel room playing PSP (Playstation Portable). He woke up at 6am because he couldn't sleep and thought that playing the PSP wouldn't give off too much light in a dark hotel room. He thought wrong. And nothing about the little damn clicking sounds that thing makes. Not a good sleeping situation for me. So....Jacob and I got up and went swimming. The irony in all this was that part of the hotel was inaccessible since part is used for Duke University's Sleep Disorder Clinic. DH should have asked if they take walk-ins.

Last Saturday (uggh, a SATURDAY of all days) we began our Easter vacation week (personally, I voted to start it on Sunday, but I was denied. I know I missed a lot of great yardsales last Saturday). Schools here are off the week before Easter and the Monday after. The Monday after is a local tradition - since it's when the annual Easter egg roll on the grounds of the White House takes place. As if all the kids around here go. Not.

So here is a quick synopis of our vacation. I will go in depth later, cuz I have a lot to say (and complain - haha - about.)

Saturday - drove to Goldsboro NC and spent the night in a Country Inn & Suites. Had famous North Carolina BBQ for dinner. Had famous North Carolina indigestion at 3:50am.

Sunday - drove to Wilmington NC and toured the USS North Carolina (something DH wanted to do), Afterward we drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where we stayed in 2 bedroom 2 bath condo rental. It was larger than our first apartment when we lived in Charleston, SC. Which I wanted to make a day trip to, but again I was denied. But on the positive side, that means I didn't have to put up with an additional 4 hours of listening to DH call every other driver on the road a &?!^#{@ or a $#@?%!! or even a &?!^#{@ - $#@?%!!.
.

Monday, Tues, Wed, Thurs - spent a total of 5 nights at our luxury condominium vacation rental surrounded by the finest shopping and dining options in Myrtle Beach. Upscale, urban and cool, it is Myrtle Beach's newest shopping, dining & lodging destination. That is how the brochure described the rental. They were right - it was the perfect destination for someone as urban, upscale and cool as moi. Even though Myrtle Beach has a lot of nice resorts and nice golf courses, DH still calls it a white trash capitol. There are lots of tacky, not upscale, places in Myrtle Beach too. Speaking of which, I never made it to The Yard Sale Store. I am bummed.

We checked out Friday morning and drove to Durham, North Carolina to spend the night at a hotel. We could make the drive to and from Myrtle Beach in one day, but we were not in a rush. I don't think I'll ever go back to the hotel we stayed at. They claimed to offer impeccable facilities and standards of service (according to their website). I was not impressed. I saw several long stringy black hairs stuck to the ceiling of the bathroom. The toilet seat looked like it was much older than Jacob. Pics to follow.....yes, I took pics.

So long story short, we left Durham this morning around 9am and got home around 2pm.

And I was glad to see that it was raining here in Maryland, so that means most of the yardsales that were scheduled for today were probably postponed.

I took a ton of of pics, which I have not transferred to my computer yet. Will post more about our trip at a later date.

Whiskey was cared for by his other adopted family that lives in the neighborhood. That was my reason in all the vet visits lately. I wanted to make sure he wasn't about to kick the dog bowl.

coming soon...the queen's road trip vacation experience. ugh..

I know you all have been lost without me, but I will do a bloggy update shortly.

An obscured business proposal

I got an interesting email today from a Mr. Wang who has an obscured business proposal for me. He is the Chief Disciplinary Officer - what a coincidence, that is MY title too.

============
Hello,
I am Mr.Wang HongZhang, Chief Disciplinary Officer, People's Bank of China (PBC).I have an obscured business proposal for you. Please reply if interested.
Kind Regards,
Wang HongZhang