jere7my | Jun. 23rd, 2005

And again my human memory fails me: Friday night also saw my late-night beach trek. When other people were off at Star Wars, I shuffled all the Nick Cave on my iPod and walked south for an hour, slipping and staggering in the unseen sand, watched by wary crabs. My goal was the strange blue light I'd seen far down the beach every night; I reached it, though it was farther than I'd thought, and learned that it was the neon sign outside the Nags Head Inn. I returned along the beach road, stomping along to Papa Won't Leave You, Henry. I saw a young man spinning on his porch, arms flung wide as he precessed across the deck, wheeling so madly and so out of control that I was half-convinced I was watching some sort of mechanical animation. I've never seen anything like it, not off the Olympic ice. Just afterward, I saw two teenage boys chasing each other silently outside a closed store, with such exaggerated reactions and skulkings that they might have been enacting a farcical pantomime for me. Strange night; strange state of mind.

But this is Saturday's post. I finally made it to the beach—I spread my towel beside OFIH's and helped her find a new mole crab while trying to control the eye-wander problem her little blue bikini was causing me. The mole-crab hunt gave me the excuse I needed to Dig A Big Ol' Hole, which is my favorite beach activity. Elliott and

eclectic_boy were having such fun body-surfing that I braved the chilly water for a while, but I was too much of a wuss to throw myself into it (so to speak) the way they were.

There was folk dancing in Red Drum, which I thought might require my services as musician, but since

stowaway_geek had departed yesterday morning, taking his fiddle with him, there wasn't enough of a band. Instead, I organized our second minigolf trip, since

zorblak and

uncleamos had missed the first one. It was Jurassic Putt, dominated by huge and moderately mislabeled fiberglass dinosaurs ("Funny, that ankylosaurus looks a lot like an iguanadon"), but again lacking any animated elements. Humf. I got a hole in one on hole one, then proceeded to choke my way to third place.

tapas organized a splendid picnic dinner at Above It All that evening, a dinner with the fairly blatant subtext of "Stuff yourselves to bursting, because we have pounds upon pounds of leftovers and we're leaving tomorrow!" I arrived late, thereby missing the three cheers for the organizers, but Chris C. reenacted it for me—in sort of a sad-eyed and tired sort of way, granted, but it was appreciated. I sat on the octagodeck with my guitar while the sun set and people wandered in and out, some stopping to listen, some singing along a bit; it was a wonderfully peaceful evening. I managed to have a very nice cell phone conversation that smoothed over much of the Thursday unpleasantness, as well, which helped me breathe easier.

The night devolved into video games, then Apples to Apples while Secretary played on the TV behind us (made rather interesting by the company I was keeping). I went back to Red Drum to pack and clean a bit, then went to sleep early (alone for the third night in a row, as K. was...ah...occupied elsewhere), pausing only briefly to kick some

irilyth ass in Soul Calibur 2 after the double-headed Outpost games were over.

( Git yer last-but-one OBX vacation pix here! )

A note on pictures: if anyone sees any they'd like full-size versions of, let me know and I'll happily email them. All of these will probably disappear soon, as I'm moving and changing my ISP; grab them now if you want them.