Weekend at the beach

Well it was another exhausting weekend. Still pretty sleep deprived from the trip to New Orleans, I very reluctantly decided to go out for happy hour in midtown on Friday with promises from everyone involved that it would not turn into "one of those nights". And since "those nights" are pretty much the norm when hanging out with the folks that I do, I was skeptical to say the least. My fears were realized early on when the shots of patron started flowing only 15 minutes in. I made my friend, who shall remain nameless, promise me that we would leave no later than 10:00 since we had a big day at the beach planned for Saturday. Needless to say, that didnt happen and I finally got home around midnight.

I got up around 10 and started getting ready to go to the beach for the 23rd Annual AIA Sandcastle Competition. Learning my lesson from last year, I purchased some uber powerful SPF50 sun tan lotion to protect me from once again getting the worst sunburn of my life. This stuff was so powerful that Im pretty sure it gave the sun a mike burn. Anyway, after arriving in Galveston, I had to wait in line for nearly an hour to park. The crew that was working the lot were a bunch of yahoos, who wouldnt know a parking lot from a popsicle.

So I finally get out there with the sun blazing in all its glory. In case you are interested, here is how this thing works: each team has to build a sandcastle concoction of some type and then they are judged in several categories. One of the categories, apparently, is getting lots of people to come sign your sheet in a rudimentary election type thing. We used this to our advantage by soliciting bribes from the teams in exchange for our votes. In all, we probably got a few beers and several jello shots each for our efforts. I really got a sense of how awesome it must really be to be a politician.

Our teams theme was something to the effect of The Economy is in the Crapper. The idea was to have a conveyor belt of money bags being dropped into a toilet. The idea was brilliant, but the execution left a bit to be desired and we won no awards. Most of us were only there for the free beer and food anyway so we didnt particularly care. Some of the teams out there really did a spectacular job with their designs and I was genuinely amazed at some of them. If I can find a link to some of the pictures I will post them up here.

At some point during the day, people convinced me to go out into the ocean. Yes, the real ocean with all the sharks, jellyfish, undertow currents and vicious bacteria. I had to be gently coaxed out there but eventually just accepted the fact that I would probably be eaten alive.

At the end of the day, it was time to clean up our site. We had this kind of canopy that someone brought that needed to be taken down. Now there were 5 or 6 of us involved in this undertaking. All of us educated, relatively smart people and 2 of whom were engineers. I kid you not that it took the better part of half an hour to figure out how to fold the damn thing up. Defeated, I left for home before the task was completed. I later learned that it took a bit longer to discover a couple of latches that were holding the whole thing together. I am just going to chalk that one up to being in the sun too long.

All in all it was a blast and would really recommend everyone coming out next year. The SPF50 sunscreen was a life saver and I appear to only have been sunburned around my eyes where I didnt put lotion on because I assumed the hat I was wearing would be sufficient. Looking forward to next weekend where I have exactly nothing planned. Sitting on my ass will be a welcome change of pace.

Quote of the day on Saturday: "You'd be able to eat that watermelon a lot quicker if you took your shirt off." - One of my friends