John’s Ramblings

We’re back from our little excursion to Ocean Shores. A high school classmate of mine lives out there, and we stayed with her for the night after hitting the town.

We started with a trip to the IGA for breakfast supplies. The stormy weather made itself known with a power outage as we perused potatoes in produce. The store went pitch dark, and it took about 5 minutes to restore the lights. A young family (dad, mom, 1 and 3 year olds) were near us when the blackout occurred,and the kids were pretty scared. Terri and I got out our cell phones, using the display screens as crude lights to help calm the kiddies until lights-on.

We then headed to our favorite food-and-watering hole on the coast, the Galway Bay pub. Terri and I had Guinness with Shepherd’s Pie and Forfar Bridies, respectively, while our hostess Liane had a Tipperary steak. I’ve never seen a tipperary on the hoof, but she said it was quite good.

Liane is a karaoke diva and D.J., so we agreed to “go native” and go to our first karaoke event, at the Ocean Shores Eagles Lodge. It was interesting, to say the least. Some of these folks can sing pretty well, whilst others would scare the water back in the tap if they sang in the shower. 3 martinis makes it all work out as a fairly entertaining evening on the coast.

The total surprise of the trip was meeting a fellow that worked with Terri’s father 15 or 20 years ago. Terri and this man did not know each other, but when he was talking about having worked at a boat building company in Tacoma, I inquired and sure enough, he had worked with her father Larry, and spoke very highly of him. Terri’s dad passed away over a dozen years ago, so meeting this fellow and being able to hear his stories about her dad was a great moment indeed. A testament to the fact that it is indeed a small world, and that we live on through our acts and the lives we touch.

After a couple of hours of this frivolity we headed back to Liane’s for some much needed sleep. We were treated to a long and rather violent thunderstorm through the night, which woke us up a few times with the nearby lightning and thunder. It wasn’t the most restful sleep, but tonight we’re home and we can curl up in our own bed after we catch the new episode of Dexter.

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