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| My Wife With Her Spoils |
Monday was the day my wife
and I were supposed to be heading home but Hurricane Sandy had other
ideas. I picked up the rental car this
morning and shuttled one of the other roothugger couples to the airport. We
talked to our stalwart friend back home who was spending time with the
increasingly frantic Buddy as the storm blew through. Power went out at the house late in the day
so I felt even worse about placing this burden on him while I was enjoying
myself down here. I will owe him a
considerable debt for the foreseeable future.
I experienced a feeling of
profound sadness all day as I walked by the places where we all had so much fun
this past weekend. It was similar to feelings
I had as a kid when I spent a week with a favorite cousin or my grandmother’s
house – I didn’t want the good time to end.
The place just seemed extra empty without the other roothuggers around.
If I can recall correctly
through the beer soaked fog of my memory I have to print a retraction on my
earlier recitation of where the term roothugger came from. One of our group volunteered that he brought
it back from a tour at the National
Training Center. It would get so cold there that troops would
hug the roots of trees to try and stay warm.
It represented the tough life of a combat soldier. Since most of the group arrived at CGSC from
tough assignments we readily accepted the term with a great deal of pride.
One of the other roothuggers
got as far as Atlanta
before his flight was canceled. He used
that time to research the term “roothugger” and learned that it has some rather
disturbing meanings in the urban culture.
Suspicion immediately fell on the friend that coined the phrase who is
known for and perversely proud of his somewhat dubious sense of humor.
On a less disturbing milieu my
wife used the extra day in Florida
to make another run at the outlet mall where she executed an extensive
reconnaissance on Day 2. I spent the day
reading my kindle and exploring the depths of the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant.
This was again a reminder of a place I passed some time with my friends
earlier in the weekend so I had some mixed emotions.
My wife and I enjoyed a fun
evening in the midst of all these competing emotions. Despite the brisk weather we invaded the pool (supposedly heated) and then jumped into the hotel hot tub which was awesome! We walked down to a restaurant that I noticed
earlier in the weekend while out running.
It was an old time place called The Magnolia Grill and was an old Florida type house with
memorabilia tacked to every conceivable surface and even a Wurlitzer juke
box. The food was fantastic and the
company even better.
We then walked down the
quiet Main Street
and found a couple of treasures that we missed over the weekend. There was a sports bar with a balcony that showed
Monday Night Football projected onto a neighboring building’s wall to create a
thirty foot screen, viewable from the balcony.
Right next to that was a beach bar, complete with sand, right along Main Street. We walked into what we thought was a movie
theater where they were showing The Expendables 2. It turned out to be one of those theaters
that serve food and drink so we had that going for us amid all the middle aged
mayhem up on the screen (all for $2 a ticket). It was a fun day with my wife
even in the face of the emotional vacuum created by the departed roothuggers.
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| My Ride Today - If This was Economy Size - I Fear what a Compact would Be |
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| I had a Cheeseburger in Paradise! |
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| My Brief Foray into the Semi-Heated Pool |
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| Much Nicer |
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| Couldn't Beat the View |
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| Nearby Treasure Discovered |
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| Inside the Magnolia Grill - Very Cool |
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