Byoofert Excursion

We got a hankering for ice cream at one point and traipsed our way into lovely Beaufort. Pretty typical tourist town, and the main little strip was not even picturesque enough to warrant, um, pictures. The ice cream that we grabbed was not all that, either. Boo-urns. But they did have a nice little boardwalk where Ali and I chilled while the rest of our nerdy companions (minus Beck, who took advantage of her schedule-less vacation and read, napped, chilled at the beach-house) took in a Civil War museum of some kind. Ali and I shared stories of life's directions - she sounds pretty ready to be done with her internship but glad for the experience, and I'm pretty psyched about being done with explaining algebra every day. Good times ahead! The rest of the crew eventually joined us out on the boardwalk (boardwalk!) man we'll be having some fun. I naturally snapped a bunch of pics that turned out pretty well, methinks:

And here's a rather great picture of the non-NyetBeck 4.3:

I believe this was the day we came home and had hot dogs for dinner. What wine goes with hot dogs, you ask? Red and/or white.

I should comment that I had a great time just conversing with peeps - lots of good talk. AS I think I mentioned, we've all got pretty different aims / backgrounds / personalities, so it makes for a good meshing of ideas. I particularly enjoyed chatting up 'Stophe about politics and with Ben about his trusty Geekonomics and my program. I was reading a book called Knowledge and Civilization - part of my "...and Civilization" series, reviews pending - and it provided a bit of fodder for the weekend. Beach novels are for chumps.

(I should insert that by far the funniest thing that happened all weekend, even funnier than "can i get a what the," was when Sarah cracked some joke about "yay for being supported by your spouse." I, starving grad student to be, gave a half-hearted "woohoo." That was not significant. What was significant was BOTH Ben and Ali yelled "YEAH!" and then looked at one another with a "uh-oh, we need to have a conversation later" look that brought the house down. Good times).

One more major thing to post from the trip, our excursion to Hunting Island. But that little ditty will get its own post, full of evidence (Exhibit 1A!) that supports our general incompetence and the existence of Ewoks in the jungles of South Carolina. Stay tuned! In the meantime, enjoy these flower pics from a bush that we passed every time we went to the beach: