happy friday!

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Happy long weekend!  And a very very happy birthday weekend to my two favorite Elizabeths:

It breaks my heart to not spend birthdays with two girls who have made my own birth celebrations so special - case in point:

23 years, no tears.

quarter-century-club

Hopefully they will forgive me my absence as I travel to Charlotte to get some pre-moving-things taken care of, and then Holden Beach to celebrate the birth of Our Great Nation. 

I can get all lefty-lib with the best of 'em, but I am extremely proud and grateful to have grown up with the freedoms and rights afforded to Americans, and to live in a country where citizens are free to voice their opinions and make real change when they disagree with the status quo.  Plus, we murked bin laden. 'murica.

With that said, I wish all both of you a happy and relaxing weekend, replete with illegal colored explosives, grilled meats, and BEER.

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the chairman, checking in

Joe Cool

Oh, herro there.  Have we met?  I'm Maui, the best creature to ever live.  Officially, I belong to the author of this blog contraption, but considering who picks up whose poops, we all know who's really the boss.

Taylor took me to her parents' house for a long weekend, a six-hour journey that involved a little of this:

leash: worst. invention. ever.

...buutttt mostly this:

Taylor thinks that the yoga mat will keep her new car clean and hair-free.  Taylor is dumb.

While I went comatose in the car, Taylor LOLed the whole way there listening to Tina Fey narrate her book:

editor's note: STOP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND DOWNLOAD THIS TO YOUR IPOD.  I imagine that the traditional reading experience is cool too, but listening to The Fey herself narrate it is pretty freakin amazing.

When we arrived, my Mean Aunt Maggie expressed her displeasure at my presence by barking all the time. Every time she saw, heard or smelled me.  All the time.  Nonstop.  But she's a crotchety old lady of like 84 dog years, so I let her have her space.

deathstare

I mastered several new skills on this trip.  Such as:

Getting As Sandy As Possible

 Deck-Lounging

Being Generally Awesome

although let's be honest, I had that one down from the day I was born

I also got to go to a bar named after a Jersey Shore character and demonstrate my sneaky ability to open all kinds of doors.  Grandpa gave me the nickname "stealth" and then made some military reference to suggest that I should have been named something that means "stealth" in navy-speak.  Yeah, that would have been cool.  Unfortunately for my street-cred, Atlanta Lab Rescue named me Maui Jim and I am super-awesome-extra-genius so by the time Taylor got a hold of me I knew that someone yelling "MAUI!!" meant that I was supposed to run full-speed into that person's crotch, which is apparently impressive to humans, so Maui stuck.

That's all for now, bitches.

wicked fun

Sorry for the lack of posts this week!  I spent the weekend and Monday in Boston watching my bestie and her dad murder the Boston Marathon with lots of wonderful friends, including my fabulous hostess / originator of the blog-inspiring "if the band plays Night Moves, this is heaven" quote! 

Now I'm super busy readying myself for a long weekend in Holden Beach with my family, so the posts might be sporadic for the next few days, but I'll cook up something real good for all both of you soon!

al fresco, part 2 - Provision Company

Warning: this one has quite a back-story.

When my parents sold our beach house in Bethany Beach, DE in 2005 my sister and I were more than a little disappointed.  That beach is where we had grown into ocean-fearless kiddos, where my dad invented the Wave Chicken game, where we learned to boogie board and which arcade games produced the most tickets for the fewest tokens, and, eventually, where we learned to flirt, create humidity-resistant hairstyles, and the finer points of "borrowing" parental alcohol.  Whooolllle lotta memories from that house on 4th street and the rentals that preceded it, and and when it was replaced with a house in Holden Beach, NC, we were WAY more than a little bratty about it.  See, to us, "Beach" meant this...

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(please note crowds, boardwalk, seaside eating/shopping establishments, etc.)

...but our maiden voyage to Holden Beach (which, to be fair, occurred in the wintertime, which wouldn't be a very exciting time to show Bethany to a newcomer either) taught us that "beach," in the south, meant something like this:

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Beautiful? Yes. Peaceful? Yes. Extended beach season? Yes. Boardwalk-equipped and boasting a plethora of cute/tan laxers-turned-wannabe-surfers, Dickey's Frozen Custard franchises, lifeguards and Phillies fans?  Not so much.  In fact, Holden Beach doesn't really boast a plethora of anything (besides baby endangered sea turtles), much less the kinds of amenities that attract 17-to-19-year-old girls.

Fast forward a few years, and I believe to this day that the turning point in our relationship with Holden Beach was a little restaurant/bar on stilts bordering the Intracoastal Waterway called Provision Company.

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This place is just...fun.  Cold beer, live music, ocean air, dock access, no pretense, pay-at-the-counter, and one of the finest delicacies of Brunswick County, if not all of North Carolina, the shrimp burger:

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 just trust me, it's amazing.

Having gone to college in North Carolina only 3.5 hours from Holden and having parents who can tolerate hosting a house full of sorority girls and some straggling man-friends, my sister and I have been lucky enough to introduce many friends to Provision Company, and it never disappoints:

 my dad's such a ladies man

i just noticed that the above two images were taken one year apart and I am wearing the same top in both.  neat.

I think we commandeered 90% of the inside tables to make this happen.

My apologies for the phone pic, but in case you were wondering, Provision Company does indeed carry Smirnoff Ice.

SO, if you're ever anywhere near the Brunswick County beaches in North Carolina, I INSIST that you stop for a shrimp burger and a beer at proco.