I am such an old lady…

I was in Barnes and Noble a couple days ago exchanging a book I had purchased and the following conversation occurred…

Sales associate: You know, if you had a Nook, you could just do this online. It would be super convenient!

Me: Oh, I know. But I will never own an e-reader. I will cling to the printed page until the day that I die (Yes. I literally said this).

SA: Well…okay…I mean, IF there are still bookstores around then.
Me: (gritting my teeth) There will be.

SA: I don’t know…lots and lots of bookstores are going out of business.

Me: (a little louder than necessary) There will always be books.

SA: Well, Half-Price Books will be probably still be around.

Me: (trying not to shoot lasers into this woman’s head with my eyeballs) If it’s just me, stock-piling books in my basement, there will still be books.

SA: That’s so funny. It’s usually not the younger ones that say that – it’s usually the older people!

Me: …..

Okay. So I think she just called me an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddy. Which is fine. I mean, I’m mostly an eighty-five year-old lady trapped in the body of a twenty-four year-old. I’m aware.

But I think I’m pretty hip. Pretty with it. Pretty down with the kidz. I mean, I listen to my iPod. I use a cell phone. I have a Facebook profile and a Twitter. I have a BLOG, okay? But I just…I just can’t get behind this.

    is not the same as


Honestly, if I didn’t think one was going to try and eradicate the other, I wouldn’t be so annoyed.

I do not think ill of the many, many Nook and Kindle readers of the world. Some of you I even call my friends and my family. I do not begrudge you your life choice. You have your free downloadable classics and your lower book costs and smaller carbon footprint and compact library and chic e-Reader covers. Get on with your bad selves! Not that you needed my permission.

I’ll just be over dog-earing pages and bending book spines and writing notes in the margins. Oh, yeah, and if I spill my coffee? My book probably won’t die.

Here’s what I’m reading now. I love Ree Drummond. If I had been born with an older sister around, this is what I imagine she would be like. Her love story, though…sigh. A city girl and a rancher. So good. Oh, yeah, and I'm aware of the irony of insisting on a printed book written by a blogger.



What about you? What thing are you sad to see being replaced by new technology?

love, elizabeth

Vacation Day Five: Photographing Strangers

Mom and I spent our last day of vacation in Myrtle Beach.
We had amazing crab salads at the pier.





I wrote a bunch of postcards (and then actually sent them which is sort of a vacation miracle for me).




We rode the Sky Wheel. Apparently, its very fancy name constitutes a very fancy ticket price but I’m a sucker for a ferris wheel. 







I was walking down to Ripley’s Believe It or Not and these guys offered to pose for a picture. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to be a photo journalist who can walk up to strangers and ask to take their picture all the time.





The Gay Dolphin is supposedly the largest gift shop on the East Coast and it’s been a landmark spot on Ocean Boulevard since 1946. It was seriously enormous and had absolutely everything you could possibly imagine buying in Myrtle Beach.



Mom indulged my curiosity about the other big draw in Myrtle Beach, the never-ending seafood buffets. This place, The Original Benjamin’s Kalabash Seafood, had 170 buffet items. 170. I can’t even think of that many different kinds of dishes. We both tried to be adventurous and I can now tell you that Oysters Rockefeller is as awesome as its name. Really awesome.




Also, I had fresh crab legs for the first time. I love crab but I’ve never been brave enough to order it in the shell. It’s a lot of work to eat but it makes an excellent moustache.

Thanks for letting me share all these pictures with you. And now back to regularly scheduled programming…

love, elizabeth

Vacation Day Four: Things I’m embarrassed to admit

We left Cape Hatteras really early on Sunday and drove down to Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach makes me feel like I’m in Every Spring Break Movie Ever Made. Along the boardwalk, which is pretty much where we spent all of our time this trip, there are endless hotels and ice cream shops and souvenir shops selling basically anything and everything with MYRTLE BEACH stamped on it. One of my favorite signs said, “We have everything for your spring break needs: sunscreen, beach towels, glow sticks, shot glasses, henna tattoos, body glitter, stun guns, and swords.” You know…because when I get to my hotel and realize that I have forgotten to pack my sword…well, spring break is pretty much ruined!

We got a pretty cool bonus this trip because our friend Andy was able to meet us in M.B. for the afternoon. For full disclosure’s sake, almost ten years ago…Andy had the great distinction of being my first boyfriend (and first kiss, ahem). He’s got a very cool, very G.I. Joe job in the Army now and is very busy with that so I really, really doubt he’ll ever read this but…just in case…Andy, thanks for being such a great guy and such a gentleman. You have always treated me with respect and kindness and I am so thankful for you. Ughhhh…I really hope he doesn’t see this post. Because now I’m embarrassed for admitting that.

It was so fun to see Andy and Ben together! They hadn’t hung out since before Benjamin enlisted a couple years ago. I have pictures somewhere of the two of them when Ben was like…11 or 12. It’s amazing to get such a visual reminder of the passage of time.

My mom continued to insist that we do everything she wanted to do all weekend because “it was her birthday.” In case you were wondering, it was her birthday for about five days.

Myrtle Beach is the miniature golf capitol of the world. So who is seriously going to pass THAT up?  Also, Mom’s adorable red sneakers.

 

The boys both had to drive back to their respective duty stations so we said good-bye after mini-golf and Mom and I went to our hotel. We stayed at The Breakers which I highly, highly recommend to anyone visiting. I can take zero credit for finding it because it was all Mom. She just let me stay there. Which was very nice of her.

This was the view from our balcony. I could not stop staring at the ocean the entire time we were there.

And then, like true spring breakers, we walked to a mini-mart and bought a $7 bottle of wine. We drank it on the balcony and listened to the waves. Mom told me about the first time she met my dad. It was a pretty wonderful night.

love, elizabeth

Vacation Day Three: My Dream House

I have never been to heaven so I can’t exactly verify this but…I have it on good authority that it looks a lot like the Outerbanks. If you’ve never been, I want you to drop whatever you’re doing right now, get in your car, and head east. Or west. Or…whatever direction gets you closer to Cape Hatteras because it literally might be my favorite place in the entire universe. What am I saying?? Uh, forget about Hatteras. It’s mine. GO AWAY. When Kyle and I move there, we will live in a house that looks like this.



And I will do nothing but float around in gauzy white linen with a glass of chardonnay in my hand and voice-over narrate my life story with a Fray song playing in the background. It will be a simpler life.



Please just appreciate this sign with me. I kept looking for Richard Gere.



The tallest lighthouse in North America. Bam.





Ladies and gentlemen…my brother, the American Eagle model.




My beach love-note to Kyle.





Mom and Ben practically had to carry me off the OBX (oh yeah, I call it the OBX now. Because I’m cool like that). I am not even a little bit kidding when I say that I looked up available rentals for about half an hour before I remembered that I have to finish graduate school in Ohio. So…way to squash THAT dream, universe.

Where would you live if you could live anywhere?

Check out this chance for some free blog advertising, if you're interested.

love, elizabeth

Sponsor for Free

Are you interested in some ad space for a button or shop in the months of April and May? I am offering button-swapping and guest-posting opportunities…I will also offer one to two free shared posts featuring your blog if you are interested in participating in that.

The only requirements: I need a 200 X 200 size button to post on the sidebar. You can snag mine on the sidebar, as well (email me if you need a different size).

Email me here if you’re interested in either trading buttons or guest-posting!

Who, I ask you, doesn’t love free blog advertising?

More vacation pictures from Hatteras Island tomorrow…

love, elizabeth

Vacation Day Two: At Ease, Marine

So day two of the trip, we drove from Wilmington to Jacksonville where my brother is stationed. But not without our morning coffee…



Ben has been deployed for the last year and I have missed him so, so much. So nice to see him back on U.S. soil.



The day was particularly special because it was Mom’s birthday. Look how pretty she is…



After a few excruciating hours at the DMV switching titles and registration for Benjamin’s car, we took a local recommendation for a little Caribbean restaurant called Elsa’s.



The food was saltier than I’m used to but I loved all the fresh vegetables and rice!



Ben escorted us on base and we got a peek inside his barracks. I realize Marines are pretty much required to be neat and orderly but it was still a shock to see his room so clean. He played and sang a few songs for us, too, and it made me pretty nostalgic for our childhood. Sometimes I just stare at him and can’t believe how grown up he is.



But then I see his dirty combat boots and I remember that not only is he an adult now but he’s in a dangerous and demanding line of work. Not going to lie…I got a little choked up when I saw these.



And his dress cover which I think is just so pretty. He rolled his eyes at me but I got him to put it on for about thirty seconds that afternoon.



It was about a four hour drive to Cape Hatteras that night but soooo worth it. Can’t wait to show you THOSE pictures on Monday!

If you have siblings, are you ever just blown away by their talents and abilities? Ben never ceases to amaze me.

love, elizabeth

The Hunger Games

Thought I'd take a quick break from sharing my vacation with you to join in the collective eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee(!!!) of the blogosphere.

Hunger Games. It's happening.



I'll probably have more thoughts after I see it tonight but as of now, I am expecting to be totally  cinematically amazed. So...don't let me down, Lionsgate.

What about you? Do you have Hunger Games plans?

love, elizabeth

Vacation, Day One

So since the main purpose of this vacation was really to drive my brother’s car to North Carolina, we spent the majority of last Thursday doing exactly that. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am obsessed with road trips. They’re on my list of most awesome things about being alive. But I’m one of those annoying people that wants to stop at every historical marker or oddball museum to take a picture. Call it a by-product of being homeschooled for 11 years. Everything is a field trip. Fortunately, I got this quality from my mom so she wasn’t too terribly annoyed that I wanted to field trip our way through a few states. Before we left Columbus, I’d visited my favorite travel website, Roadside America, aka: “Your Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions.”

Roadside is great because I can always count on them to recommend some sightseeing just a little (or a lot) on the side of weird. And that’s where Körner's Folly comes in. This is a destination I’d had my eye on since last March when we drove to North Carolina.

Sometimes billed as the “strangest house in the world,” Körner's Folly was built essentially as a model home by interior designer Jule Körner. As a result, none of the rooms or doors are the same size or style. Because Jule’s wife was so in love with the house, they eventually remodeled and extended the home. It’s now a walk-through museum. Some of the rooms are tiny and the doorways can be difficult to get through but it was well-worth getting side-tracked from the main highway.

Walking up the path to the house…

It felt like there were mirrors in every single room in the house. It got a little horror-movie creepy after awhile.

More mirrors and doors and stairways…the middle photo is of Körner's design and it’s called a “kissing corner.” It was for engaged and married couples who wanted to sneak away during a party or reception and spend some time alone. I thought this was especially sweet.



In the children’s nursery, the ceiling is only 5’ 6” high as Mom is demonstrating.



The other significant thing about the house is that it holds the first domestic theatre (stage in a private home) built in the United States. The little theatre was used for the Körner's children and other local kids to put on theatrical productions for the community.



Fortunately, no one else was in the museum so I could get away with stuff like this.




And they say a PhD in theatre is an impractical degree…

So there you have it. Körner's Folly. If you’re ever in Kernersville, North Carolina, be sure to stop and see it. This fulfills something on my bucket list for 2012.

What about you? What’s the weirdest museum you’ve ever visited?

love, elizabeth