What a nice day it was. I got lots of exercise, enjoyed scenery, watched football, hung out with my “sisters,” and met fellow birders. Not bad at all. Living in the moment!
Juvenile Little Blue HetonCute turtle PrettyAzaleaMuscadineSumacBeautiful sights
I enjoyed dinner with my lovely relatives. I just love eating the little oysters at Hudson’s. And the view. Ahh. I’ll hang out with the relatives more this week. They brought me stuff from my dad to go through.
SunsetMe at delicious dinner spitPelicansLaughing gullsSeagullBeautiful scenerySights from dinner
After I got back from our early dinner (time changed) I watched football on TV at the good ole resort bar. I met a very nice couple originally from the part of England where my family came from and discovered we were all birders. I sure enjoyed that conversation!
Random camellia photo.
We all talked to the Gullah bartender. She was an interesting woman, and I appreciated the opportunity to learn more from someone who’d lived their life here. This island is fascinating. I’m happy to be here.
And today is Tuesday! I didn’t manage to get a blog post up yesterday, because I was just, as my mom used to say, “too pooped to pop” in the evening. It’s not that I did anything all that exciting, but I did the part of my work that takes a lot of mental energy, training.
Stormy beach with few people
Now, I’m both a technical writer and a technical trainer, so I have the skills. And I love to do training. It’s so rewarding to get people up and running with software, hardware, or heck, even knitting. I enjoy interacting with people, getting them to relax, and helping them individually. It’s just that it takes a lot out of an introvert to actually DO it. Thus, after two classes and a couple of individual sessions yesterday, I just needed to stare at a wall and go to sleep.
Or I could stare at the ocean, which for much of today looked like a gray curtain.
I feel way better today and have already been writing and getting stuff done while Lee packs up to drive back to Texas. It’s been stormy this morning, so he’s waiting a bit to start driving. He just loves doing this, so I’m wishing him well, while at the same time looking forward to flying home (if planes aren’t as weird on me as they have been for so many folks this year).
It’s been stormy, cloudy, and sunny so far today, and that was all before 10 am.
In between training sessions, Lee and I drove up to the first town in North Carolina, Calabash, where we’ve been before. It is an extra-cute little town that still has a lot of fishing boats, so you get very fresh seafood in its restaurants. The one I like best doesn’t open until 4pm on Mondays, so we ate at the one with the most annoying (but fun, in a way) birds, instead.
Boat-tailed grackles (the one on the right is a female)
We got enough food that I’ll have lots of leftover shrimp that I’ll peel the breading from and add to my highly creative solo meals for the next week or so. We gamely fought off the grackles and seagulls, while sort of enjoying their antics at the same time. At least I got to look at a marsh and some boats, so I was happy. The whole outing only took two hours, which was fine, since I had to teach a class from 5-6 pm anyway (it was scheduled for Central Time). All was well.
Laughing gulls waiting for us to leave so they could inspect our plates.
It’s back to my “normal” working from a condo schedule for a while now. I do my best to fit in working out in the gym (treadmill) and sitting in the sun a little while every day, with a visit to the sports bar to chat with the friendly bartenders and customers in the evening. And oh yeah…I can watch streaming television to my heart’s content. I don’t even know what shows I’ll watch,
The Hermits' Rest 