Another trip to the DIRTY South successfully navigated! This time it only lasted 10 days with technically only three business days of work actually accomplished! AWESOME! Gotta love to get paid to do a whole lot of nothing, oh wait, am I getting paid for that trip?! Can't remember!
So, we hit the ground running on a late Monday night (27th of August), grabbed up the rental car because our company refused to hook us up with one. A little change out of our pockets but well worth it! We decided it wasn't even worth it to head to FBNC so we got a hotel. Fast forward to the next day, checked with 1st TNG BDE (the most worthless group of people to ever walk the face of the earth if you ask me) and then to the MUIC. "Go over here, get this signed, then go over there, then come back, then I'll send you over there, but then you'll have to come back after you drive across Bragg for another signature....BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!" After three hours of imitating a bouncy ball in a dryer on spin-we accomplished our tasks for the day. Oh and about that day, 95 degrees with oh, about 75% humidity! HOT HOT HOT and sweaty-eww! Work day done. We get our housing set up and check out our rooms only to get slapped in the face by that nasty, gross smell of mold and old socks! Yeah, that's how my room smelled. And my co-worker, her ceiling tiles were absolutely covered in mold! I was SO PISSED! We almost decided to forego the free housing and just pay for a hotel the entire time-but that gets spendy! Luckily they had air conditioning in that joint! Otherwise I would have been OUT! I think that night was a Sharky's night, which slowly progressed into a Secret's night-over all, not impressed.
The next day hooked up with Tamayo for lunch and then onto the one and only task for the day-a briefing at 1:00PM. Ooops, sorry that was for tomorrow-turns out the whole day was a free-bee! Would have been nice to know that before! Guess it pays to look at your schedule with attention to detail?! Dinner at some Italian place-you know I just love Calimari! I don't know why but it is just friggen good!
Okay, after another evening in the unsanitary living conditions it was now time to have a briefing. Three hours later, some more signatures and worthless paper to fill out, we were done! Yay! More time to do what WE want! Drinks, good food, movies, shopping, overall a good time!
As you can see our days were packed with a whole lot of nothing! But the next day was a big medical/dental day. Our LNO didn't show up half an hour early like he made us do! What a dick, but go figure, government employees - aka LAZY *SS F%CK&RS! Within an hour I was back in bed catching up on some ZZZZs! Why get up at 6:00AM, when your body still feels like 3:00AM, to work for half an hour or so?! I hate that crap, so I rebelled and went back to bed! However, this day was different, it was Friday before Labor Day weekend....what to do?! Rental car, nothing to do for the next four days, hmmmmm?! By midnight that night we were cruising the strip in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina soaking up all the craziness! Oh my gosh, that place is NUTS! Never seen people on vacation pull up a lawn chair on the sidewalk of the strip with the family and just LOOK! So many stretched out bikes with riders throwing all caution to the wind and not wearing any helmets or anything. Girls walking up and down the street in those short shorts we love so much! Old white women with their husbands wearing 10 gallon cowboy hats trying to maneuver around the groups of brothas taking up the entire sidewalk-for no apparent reason other than they were bored! Fancy cars and stuck up blondes riding in the passenger seats-no hotel rooms at a decent place for less than $200 per night and no guarentee to have vacancy all weekend....so it was to the roach motel for us! But it worked out just fine, $80 per night, vacancy all weekend, A/C with a beach side view! PERFECT, we'll take it!
Sleep in, good eats, iPod going crazy, good times! For dinner the next night we hit up one of my co-workers favorite spots, well from what she remembered last time she was there cause apparently she was "in love," and doesn't remember much past where she bought the booze! But she remembered this place, and go figure they serve mixed drinks by the pitcher! Hmmmm, wonder why this place stuck out in her memory?! We ordered up some Buffalo Wings, Oysters Rockafella, and fries...three pitchers later we are awarded with a T-Shirt for every pitcher we put away! Wow, not only are we reaping the benefits of racing down the last pitcher, final count 3, they are congratulating us with free shirts! GREAT! My co-worker turned out on her charm and pumped the waiter for inteligence on the best places to go near the strip, cab/walking distance. Dierrier was named, it was one of the establishments where the women who work there have Clothing Phobias or what we like to call "naturalists," only thing is that they like to paid in $1 increments to start and love RAP Music! Nice place. But it cost me $20 to get in, she of course was free and when we get to the bar-they don't even serve any alcohol! WTF?! Luckily, we were tipped off prior. I showed the bar tender, if you can call him that, my package of 12 Joy Filled Silver Bullets and he happily provided me with a cooler filled with ice! How nice! It was so wierd to be at a place like that, down right trashy-but kinda cool too, in a dirty south kinda way! Of course, Joe made friends and showed some of the new guys, those who are unsure of themselves in places such as that, how to really get your money worth! They laughed, I thought to myself that I was just being normal-guess not! Long night to say the least, I don't think that place ever closed! But my internal clock shut down at about 3:00AM...not to mention my brain couldn't remember getting back to the hotel anyways!
Needless to say I slept in like a Champion after winning the Gold in DRINKING WAY TOO MUCH! Dinner the next day was "her" idea as we attended one of those shows/dinners events-like Midevil Times from The Cable Guy except it was driven by the south - it was called '........ Stampede' I cannot even remember the damn name! But it was fun, horses, buffalos, wagons, blah blah blah....good times! Then off to another club, Secrets for some more $1 payments! But that sucked so we bounced. Then to the Beach on Broadway and watched some alcohol driven people think they were super starts on stage trying to keep up with the bouncy ball on the screen while screaming out the lyrics to every imaginable song from Lynrd Skynrd to Rhianna to 2Pac...hilarious! Best part of the night was the Taxi that we called to drive us around....not only was it a trashy taxi from South Carolina but it was a LIMO! My co-worker had never been in a limo before and it was just too bad that her first time was in this junky, beat up, clunky limo! Oh well, par for the course!
Next day, drive home. Lucky for me the drive home took 1/3 as long and I didn't lose my patience and be a total jerk - like the annoying 12 hour drive down there the first time! But nobody likes not knowing where you are going, expecially as the navigator only navigates with their emotions, "oh look, hotels are over there, quick turn here (after the turn of course)..." "look, I've only been here once, blah blah blah, fine you decide where we are going!" WTF...I don't know where the hell we are! NAVIGATE, navigator...or get in the back and shut up!
Work time. Finished work on Tuesday, flight home set up for Thursday morning. Done by 2:00PM....maybe hotel then to the bar?! YEP! That's when I "Fell in Love with a Stripper!" Yeah, Sharky's is the best! Good times. Up until the plane ride to Atlanta when 10 min before landing I awoke dripping wet with sweat and that feeling of, "in 2 seconds I'm gonna totally throw up!" Luckily I didn't but I almost threw my co-worker out of her seat, it was either than or throw up on her lap, I think she appreciated the latter! I guess I was whiter than white when we got off the plane. I felt like crap and couldn't figure it out. Must have been the hangover catching up with me and it didn't like all that cheap vodka from the bar! Landed in PDX, picked up with Acura, drove home and SLEPT! Woke up for dinner, and SLEPT some more! Good times, love FBNC!
