Vacationlet
Work gave me a day off on Friday. If felt like a particularly useless sort of day off, the kind in which I would likely wake up at my usual before-alarm time and would hover about the same couch (or deck, weather permitting) as every other day, sole difference being that my computer activities might involve theater work rather than work work.
Before I signed off for the weekend on Thursday I had a random piece of trivia to share with my boss, who decided to video-chat me, and we got talking.... and it suddenly occurred to me that there was a chance for me to have a place to be.
Boss's vacation property in Ocean City was available, and he was amenable to letting us stay there the weekend, and Friday morning we packed and hit the road.
The weather turned out lovely, and we decided to start by hitting the notorious boardwalk. During our previous visit in the summer one could not get without blocks of it without being stuck in traffic, and we'd avoided it. This time there were a few people there, but plenty of room to dodge them. Posted signs mandated masks if social distancing could not be achieved, which it mostly could be. Maybe a quarter of the people were masked anyway, us among them. Most of the ones who bothered wore the masks correctly.
It was as boardwalky as one would expect, with overpriced tourist restaurants and souvenir shops and cheesy attractions, just as it should be. It was reasonably fun to walk around, and may or may not be more fun in better times.
We retreated to our dwelling, ate the lunch we brought along, and ventured out to the beach. It wasn't very warm out, but warm enough to get in ankle-deep and splash around for a while.
We had brought one dinner's worth of food for the two nights, intending to order seafood the other evening. It turned out that in mid-October the options were quite limited. We had particular interest in revisiting BJ's On the Water, the nearby place we'd liked our previous trip, but it turned out to not offer takeout 5-9pm. Other options were either excessively pricy or did not pick up the phone. So, we ate what we brought, and I had a Macbeth rehearsal. I had a sudden splitting headache, and it was hard to focus, but the actors did well nonetheless, and the show is looking as good as I think it could given the format.
(Incidentally, the coming is the show I'm acting in, The Revengers Tragedy. My fellow actors are doing cool things in it, and it is endeavoring to take a cinematic approach to zoom as a medium, which I think will make it an interesting show to watch. My Macbeth will certainly be less adventurous in that regard, having quite little budget and significantly fewer rehearsals, but I feel like we're managing to be at least somewhat more interesting visually than your average staged reading.)
Afterwards we stepped onto the beach. During our previous visit the beach condos were full of people and lights, but only a few were illuminating the beach this time. Clouds hovered ominously. The waves roared. It was beautiful.
In the morning I woke up entirely too early and read a book on the balcony until it suddenly occurred to me that it was _warm_ out. My coat came off. My over-shirt was shed. I was comfortable in a t-shirt, and the ocean was right there.
Spouse was therefore woken with excessively cheerful exclamations, we breakfasted upon a lovely camembert on sourdough with grapes, and proceeded to get ourselves into the water.
Which was not as cold as I feared, but a whole lot more forceful than I had ever experienced. The waves were intimidatingly tall. Last time we managed to get past the point where they broke and into calmer water to swim, but this time it did not seem plausible. So we hung out where the water was no more than ankle-deep when the waves receded; when they advanced it was knee to hip deep and quite forceful, and it was quite a challenge not to be bowled over by the rushing water.
Spouse's knee decided to be extra cranky, so our vague plans to find some nature hikes were no-go. We went for a couple of drives instead, one to Assawoman Wildlife Area in Delaware (which was cute and reasonably nature-like but not much more exciting than the places we frequent back home) and another to Assateague Island (in which, unlike our previous trip, both the State and the National parks wanted us to pay money, so we didn't enter either, but we did see the horsies on the way.)
We did succeed in procuring the seafood lunch. My fried oysters appetizer was excellent, Spouse's rockfish fingers appetizer likewise. These were quite sufficient for a lunch; we also got a crabcake sandwich to split for a later meal. That was disappointing: the flavor profile was correct for Maryland, but the crab to binder ratio was unimpressive and lump crab content too sparse. (Since their appetizers were four for four successes, I expect it will remain our default for any future ventures, but I'd not go terribly far out of the way for the place, and we'd love to try more options in better days.)
I returned to the water and splashed about some more in the afternoon before it got too chilly. In the evening we parked ourselves on the balcony and streamed a movie.
We stepped onto the beach afterwards, to find that the sky - gorgeously clear through the day - had become entirely cloud-covered, so stars were not visible. We enjoyed the wind and the waves before the chill chased us indoors.
Sunday morning was grey and gloomy and grim, and cold enough that we did not even venture to the beach for one final goodbye to the ocean.
On the way back we had a planned stop and an online event to attend.
The stop was the Salisbury Zoo, which is a cute little free zoo about half hour inland from OC. The exhibits were nice, the route was laid out to minimize interactions and maximize social distancing, and I'm sure the chilly, drizzly weather helped as well.
The event was a funeral service for a friend's mother. Vvalkyri helped us by sending links in assorted formats until our phone consented to connect, and we were able to tune in to both the service and the graveside ceremony from the road.
We got home entirely exhausted, and spent the rest of the Sunday as semi-conscious cartoon-watching zombies. Originally posted at https://leiacat.dreamwidth.org/343694.html. Please comment either there using OpenID or right here. I read both with the same distracted semi-frequency.
Before I signed off for the weekend on Thursday I had a random piece of trivia to share with my boss, who decided to video-chat me, and we got talking.... and it suddenly occurred to me that there was a chance for me to have a place to be.
Boss's vacation property in Ocean City was available, and he was amenable to letting us stay there the weekend, and Friday morning we packed and hit the road.
The weather turned out lovely, and we decided to start by hitting the notorious boardwalk. During our previous visit in the summer one could not get without blocks of it without being stuck in traffic, and we'd avoided it. This time there were a few people there, but plenty of room to dodge them. Posted signs mandated masks if social distancing could not be achieved, which it mostly could be. Maybe a quarter of the people were masked anyway, us among them. Most of the ones who bothered wore the masks correctly.
It was as boardwalky as one would expect, with overpriced tourist restaurants and souvenir shops and cheesy attractions, just as it should be. It was reasonably fun to walk around, and may or may not be more fun in better times.
We retreated to our dwelling, ate the lunch we brought along, and ventured out to the beach. It wasn't very warm out, but warm enough to get in ankle-deep and splash around for a while.
We had brought one dinner's worth of food for the two nights, intending to order seafood the other evening. It turned out that in mid-October the options were quite limited. We had particular interest in revisiting BJ's On the Water, the nearby place we'd liked our previous trip, but it turned out to not offer takeout 5-9pm. Other options were either excessively pricy or did not pick up the phone. So, we ate what we brought, and I had a Macbeth rehearsal. I had a sudden splitting headache, and it was hard to focus, but the actors did well nonetheless, and the show is looking as good as I think it could given the format.
(Incidentally, the coming is the show I'm acting in, The Revengers Tragedy. My fellow actors are doing cool things in it, and it is endeavoring to take a cinematic approach to zoom as a medium, which I think will make it an interesting show to watch. My Macbeth will certainly be less adventurous in that regard, having quite little budget and significantly fewer rehearsals, but I feel like we're managing to be at least somewhat more interesting visually than your average staged reading.)
Afterwards we stepped onto the beach. During our previous visit the beach condos were full of people and lights, but only a few were illuminating the beach this time. Clouds hovered ominously. The waves roared. It was beautiful.
In the morning I woke up entirely too early and read a book on the balcony until it suddenly occurred to me that it was _warm_ out. My coat came off. My over-shirt was shed. I was comfortable in a t-shirt, and the ocean was right there.
Spouse was therefore woken with excessively cheerful exclamations, we breakfasted upon a lovely camembert on sourdough with grapes, and proceeded to get ourselves into the water.
Which was not as cold as I feared, but a whole lot more forceful than I had ever experienced. The waves were intimidatingly tall. Last time we managed to get past the point where they broke and into calmer water to swim, but this time it did not seem plausible. So we hung out where the water was no more than ankle-deep when the waves receded; when they advanced it was knee to hip deep and quite forceful, and it was quite a challenge not to be bowled over by the rushing water.
Spouse's knee decided to be extra cranky, so our vague plans to find some nature hikes were no-go. We went for a couple of drives instead, one to Assawoman Wildlife Area in Delaware (which was cute and reasonably nature-like but not much more exciting than the places we frequent back home) and another to Assateague Island (in which, unlike our previous trip, both the State and the National parks wanted us to pay money, so we didn't enter either, but we did see the horsies on the way.)
We did succeed in procuring the seafood lunch. My fried oysters appetizer was excellent, Spouse's rockfish fingers appetizer likewise. These were quite sufficient for a lunch; we also got a crabcake sandwich to split for a later meal. That was disappointing: the flavor profile was correct for Maryland, but the crab to binder ratio was unimpressive and lump crab content too sparse. (Since their appetizers were four for four successes, I expect it will remain our default for any future ventures, but I'd not go terribly far out of the way for the place, and we'd love to try more options in better days.)
I returned to the water and splashed about some more in the afternoon before it got too chilly. In the evening we parked ourselves on the balcony and streamed a movie.
We stepped onto the beach afterwards, to find that the sky - gorgeously clear through the day - had become entirely cloud-covered, so stars were not visible. We enjoyed the wind and the waves before the chill chased us indoors.
Sunday morning was grey and gloomy and grim, and cold enough that we did not even venture to the beach for one final goodbye to the ocean.
On the way back we had a planned stop and an online event to attend.
The stop was the Salisbury Zoo, which is a cute little free zoo about half hour inland from OC. The exhibits were nice, the route was laid out to minimize interactions and maximize social distancing, and I'm sure the chilly, drizzly weather helped as well.
The event was a funeral service for a friend's mother. Vvalkyri helped us by sending links in assorted formats until our phone consented to connect, and we were able to tune in to both the service and the graveside ceremony from the road.
We got home entirely exhausted, and spent the rest of the Sunday as semi-conscious cartoon-watching zombies. Originally posted at https://leiacat.dreamwidth.org/343694.html. Please comment either there using OpenID or right here. I read both with the same distracted semi-frequency.