Back From Paradise

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks. I was on vacation last week at my home-away-from-home, Captiva Island. Since then I have been fighting a nasty case of Post Vacation Laziness Disorder. Captiva Island is a quiet little island off the coast of Ft. Myers, Florida. We were trapped under Tropical Depression #5 for a majority of the time, so all there was to do was shop, eat like pigs, and drink ourselves stupid. I was cool with that. On our last day there, the weather finally cleared up and there were some awesome waves on the normally tranquil beach. My drunk ass waddled out there, got tossed all over the place, and carried a few hundred yards down the beach by the current. After about 15 minutes, I gave up my futile attempt to swim. Even sober I had no shot against those waves without a board, but it was still crazy fun to play in.

I have a ton of sunny pics with white sand and blue water, but those are no fun. These are the waves left behind from the tropical depression. This picture really doesn’t do justice to how big these things were, especially for the west coast of Florida.

Other than that, we went to the coolest antique store in the world on Sanibel Island. I have about 200 photos to go through before I can write anything about that. If you’re ever in the Ft. Myers area and love random stuff from the 1980’s and earlier, then you have to make a pilgrimage to this Mecca of nostalgia.

More to come from this amazing little store.

We also hit Chocolate Expressions, a great candy store that featured chocolate covered EVERYTHING. We bought a box filled with delights such as chocolate covered potato chips, chocolate covered orange peels (similar to what I wrote about before), and the worst tasting shit that has ever touched my tongue: chocolate covered ginger. It tastes exactly how it sounds except that candied ginger is a hundred times more potent than normal ginger. The flavor is so strong that it scratches at the back of your throat like you're trying to eat a live rat, V style. The candy also wields an evil superpower: it fuses the awful sugared ginger flavor to your mouth for all eternity. Nothing gets rid of it.

A box of chocolates. On top you see the chocolate covered Ruffles. Hidden in the depths of the box lurks chocolate covered ginger.

Chocolate covered ginger is poison. Eating that candy may have ruined ginger for me forever. I tried to eat sushi the other day and a few pieces had ginger in them. As I ate them, a feeling grew in the pit of my stomach, a stern warning that the formerly edible tuber was no longer welcome there.

It’s like rum runners. Back in college, I got really sick off of them. Before you call me a sissy, the rum runners topped off a night of binge drinking beer, vodka, rum, and who knows what else. My last memory of that night was grabbing a blender filled with rum runner and laughing maniacally. I woke up laying in, well, I'm sure you can figure out the rest, but it was definitely rum runner. Since then, anytime I smell a rum runner, I immediately start gagging as I recall the hangover—a day filled with puking and wallowing in pure misery. Eating that sushi evoked the fresh memory of my desperate attempts to rid my mouth of the ginger candy and I had to stop. I hate you, chocolate covered ginger.

Chocolate covered ginger looks like shit and tastes even worse, so I gave the uneaten half a fitting execution.

I leave you with a fruity drink from the poolside bar of Tween Waters Inn, our simple paradise at Captiva Island.