"One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." ~ Animal Crackers, 1930

Though my birthday party was a few months ago, I never got to tell you about it. Here goes.....

My birthday beach expedition extravaganza was a complete and total success. It couldn’t have been any better. I was happy as many people were able to come as did. I think the girls not coming may have been for the best. I and the rest of the troupe were guys and thus easy to please. I don’t mind eating leftovers. We may not have even had enough room, we were already pushing it to get Kory’s massive rolling duffle bag up there without having to sacrifice a ceremonial calf. Also, a number of people would have been forced to sleep on the floor which is slightly uncom-comfortable and slightly degrading, but I was willing to take one for the team if need be. I also don’t know how much fun watching Thomas catch crabs with his bare hands is to someone of the opposite sex. I think it’s quite amusing, but then again, I have much more testosterone pumped into my body than most women. I could be wrong. But let’s get off the topic of what could have happened to what actually did happen.

We crammed 7 guys 3 parents and my token little sister into two vehicles along with 5 months of provisions. When we arrived, we unloaded all of our stuff into the condo, cranked up the storm shutters and plugged in the Gamecube for a pretty mellow evening. The only amusing thing that happened was Kory and Ryan S. getting lost on the beach for 30 minutes. We technically went to bed about 1:00, but every now and then one of us would emerge from the cavernous back rooms to loll about on the furniture and occasionally Ryan Young. It was bizarre.

The next day we ate our breakfast (I had an Otis Spunkmeyer muffin) played some Cube and gad about the pool with a modicum of tennis somewhere in there. Right as we were sitting down to a long game of Mario Party (50 turns to be exact), the Ryan and Maxey entourage had to leave. This was quite upsetting. We bid our comrades good bye and proceeded to knock off the Mario party turns. After about 30 turns we decided there was something better to do. We proceeded to the beach and Andy was introduced to his newest foe…THE CRAB OF DOOM. After trying in vain to subdue this pinchy opponent for quite some time we continued back to the pool where we marinated until dinner. We had a reservation at, possibly, my favorite restaurant, The Columbia. Following a speedy browse about the amusing stores in St. Augustine we advanced on the place of dining. When our waitress finally materialized from the dim recess of the kitchen my companions and I were assaulted with a thick Eastern European accent. She was initially somewhat rude as she dropped off our bread but after we asked her questions about her nationality she warmed up quickly.

It turned out she was an immigrant from Romania (my guess thank you very much) and was more than ready to tell us about her country. It was…enlightening…She informed us how much she hates when people associate her with vampires and Dracula.
Andy had the misfortune to mention Dracula and was rewarded with a Romanian tongue lashing. I won’t go into too much detail about our little history lesson, but it won’t be something I will soon forget. When she was finished we were given a copious amount of dinner mints as a thank you for not leaving.

The next day we hit the beach pretty early. We were determined to catch a crab. After about 2 hours of this silliness, we started to head back, but not until Thomas finally caught a crab. I caught a dead jellyfish. By the time we got to the condo it was time to go and so ended our beach adventure. I hope next time I take a group up to the beach we will be able to stay longer and be able to do more stuff. Hopefully this will be the first of many fun weekends spent at the beach with my friends.