FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2023
These past few New Year's holidays, Brugger and I have gathered with
our regular partners in crime, Terry & Beth, and this year,
friends Joe & Suzy joined the mix. This year, we had decided
on Virginia Beach as our destination and made reservations at the
Dolphin Run
condos on the waterfront. Since we were all heading from different places — and
I had geocaches to stop for — each couple drove separately. Ms. B. and I left
about 11:00 a.m. Sure enough... there were some cool geocaches to snag along the
way. We hit a few spots of traffic, but overall, the trip turned out to be a
mostly pain-free six hours.
Once ensconced in our lodgings, we opened some wine for pre-dinner drinks.
Come the dinner hour, we saw a few nearby restaurants, so we walked up to an
appealing-looking place called
Waterman's Surfside Grill, but the wait time — about an hour — struck us as a bit much. So we ended up
walking another partial block and found
Mahi's at the nearby Hilton Hotel. They specialize in sushi, and I
ended up with some of the best dead fish I've had in ages... maybe ever.
Then we returned to our lodgings and — scandalous, I know — we opened some
wine. Our revels, debates, and mud-wrestling lasted fairly late. Brugger and I
took a nice, late-night walk on the beach. Then there was some heavy-duty
bed-crashing.
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|
The Dolphin Run Condos by night |
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2023
After plenty of coffee, I set out walking after geocaches. Found a few
physical hides and stages of several Adventure Lab (virtual) caches. I ended
up hoofing it about two and a half miles, which is fairly typical of my daily
walks back home. The wind behaved brutally for much of the distance, so I was
still rather glad when I made it back indoors.
For lunch, our gang decided to give Waterman's another try because the menu
had appeared appealing. This time, we were able to get seated quickly. One of
their daily specials was an Angus burger with brie and applewood-smoked bacon,
and it hollered at me. No drinks but water for me because I'm certain there
will be no shortage of such refreshments this evening. The burger was very
good, a bit shy of great. Still, it's been ages since I've had a burger, so it
hit the critical spot.
To my dismay, I discovered that our power back home had gone out. Apparently,
it was a widespread outage in Martinsville, as people all over the city were
posting about it. It lasted a couple of hours, and I don't know what caused
it, but at the moment, all seems well again. We certainly did not want the
cats and their sitter to get too cold!
Writer/editor/Crossroad Press CEO/good friend David Niall Wilson was
apparently in town, and we'd had an idea we might try to get together during
the afternoon, but circumstances didn't come together for it. However, come
April, we'll be seeing each other at the upcoming
AuthorCon III
in Williamsburg, so we'll have a good time there to anticipate.
There is a walkway along the beach that runs just below our eighth-floor
balcony — the "boardwalk," it's called, although it's not so much boards as
concrete. It's been all done up with a holiday light show, so, during the
evening, a huge parade of vehicles rolls by to go through the show. It doesn't
bother us at all, though now and again, we venture out to the balcony to hurl
insults at the crowd and look at some of the visible lights.
Several of the gang were out and about for the afternoon, so they picked up
vittles for dinner, including a couple of rotisserie chickens for the main
course. Joe made us a lovely Italian concoction of beans and escarole to go
with the bird, and so we were set. Once well-fed, we settled in for an evening
of wine, games, and generally acting up.
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| Crazy white people! |
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| The opening of the light show below our balcony: "Welcome to VA Beach!" |
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2023
I'd hoped the weather might be a bit less blustery this morning to go
walkies, but while the sun blazed brightly, that air remained frigid. So...
no. I got some writing done. Finally, at about 11:00 a.m., the temperature
pushed up to the 40-degree mark, and I decided to head on out. Joe &
Suzy had a lunch date with her sister, who lives nearby, and the rest of us
planned to eat leftovers, so I reckoned I could walk as far as I wanted to,
and we'd be on our own time until later this afternoon. I went a full two
miles outbound, grabbed a traditional cache and the stages of a couple of
Adventure Labs, and I had just reached my farthest goal when Ms. B. shot me
a message. Apparently, the gang had decided to check out lunch options than
leftovers, and could I please get back pretty soon? Hoo boy... long way....
Fortunately, I walk pretty fast.
Our lunch destination was
Firebrew Bar & Grill
down by
Oceana Naval Air Station, where Terry and Joe had been stationed back in our nation's earliest
days. Terry and I started with a couple of bloody marys (quite good)
and ye women opted for wine. Possibly the wrong thing to do because we're
having a big New Year's Eve dinner, but I went for a half-rack of baby back
ribs, and damn... they were delicious. There was a cache nearby, so I
grabbed it... and ran into a local geocacher in the process. We had a brief,
enjoyable conversation.
From there, ye women went shopping, and Terry and I headed down to Oceana to
meander around his old stomping grounds. For me, the real treat was getting
to view a fair number of "antique" Navy aircraft up close and personal. Due
largely to my model-building days, which ranged from my wee childhood until
post-college, I recalled the names and types of the majority of the jets.
Fun stuff!
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| F4 Phantom |
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| F2H Banshee |
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| F14 Tomcat |
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| The Lunch Bunch |
For New Year's Eve dinner, we had reservations at Mermaid Winery. It was a three-course dinner with choices of pork belly, scallops, crabmeat-stuff lobster, filet mignon, and various sweets for dessert. They served really good wine with dinner — not their own, which turned out to be fortunate because Kim and Terry sampled some of theirs and came away with expressions that were not at all pretty. Regardless, the atmosphere, service, and food made the overall experience a great finish for the year.
Back at the condo, we sat up playing tunes and making merry. Brugger
entertained us with nonstop dancing from the time we arrived until we
crashed, well after midnight.
2023 has left the building...
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| Our Gang at Mermaid Winery for dinner |
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| The final moonrise of 2023 |
A LOOK BACK...
Without question, 2023 has been one of the most eventful years of my life.
It was my first full year of retirement and included a major move back to
my old homeplace in Virginia. In Greensboro, Ms. B. and I went through
some of the worst household issues ever, first and foremost being the
downright monstrous expense of replacing our sewer line ("Ain't That the Shit!"). Once we decided to move to Martinsville, we simultaneously went
through the processes of upgrading our Greensboro house to sell and
upgrading Pleasant Hill to move. What a long, expensive, labor-intensive
job ("I'm Getting Too Old for This Shit!"). Fortunately, we got a good price on the Greensboro place, and while
there are still some things we need (and want) to do in Martinsville, the
house and town have turned out to be — unlike Greensboro has become — a
comfortable, peaceful place to settle.
Early in the year and into the summer, along with all the physical labor, I
was immersed in editing
Deathrealm: Spirits, which came out in October from
Shortwave Publishing. As with any anthology, it was an involved process, but overall, I reckon
things came together as smoothly as I could have hoped. It's a beautiful
book that includes superb work from many of the biggest and best names in
the business. I hope you'll avail yourselves to it if you haven't already.
One of the hardest events to deal with this past year was the death of my
good friend and regular geocaching partner, Rob Isenhour. We had well
over a decade of experiences together, and whenever our (mostly) weekend
geocaching group, The No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, manages to get
together (sadly, not as frequently these days, since we are far more spread
apart), the gap that Rob left behind seems massive. We do so miss him.
Having turned fairly old, this year has hit me with a few health challenges
— none all that severe, but numerous and just serious enough to become real,
if mostly temporary impediments. This last round of dental difficulty ("Fun & Games with Tooth Extractions") was the icing on the medical cake for this year. I can't say I approve,
but at least I've mostly mended.
All in all, I can safely say this year has been another positive, if bumpy
step forward in the walk into the unknown. I suppose, to put it in the
immortal words of
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, it's better (at least sometimes) than being slapped in the belly with a
wet trout.