I went away for a week. Pookie Bear thought it would be fun to drive to Orlando. He decided this right after the David Cassidy concert. The next morning found me running around stuffing clothes into my suitcase and wondering if I was past due on an oil change. We spent 12 hours in the car. Maybe more than that. Virginia was a real bitch. I’ve never seen such gridlock… and for apparently no reason other than too many cars on the road. The jam stretched from DC to past Richmond. I think it was past 11 when we found a hotel just outside of Myrtle Beach. The next morning we decided to drive to Myrtle Beach and spend a little time on the beach before taking off for Orlando. As soon as we sunk our feet into the sand, Orlando became a distant memory. Yeah, we never got to Orlando. We spent our mini-vacation boogie boarding the waters of Myrtle Beach. It was really relaxing. The people there were so different from the people you meet at the Jersey Shore…. they were really nice and pleasant and polite. We were really blown away! The other thing that differed from the north was the sheer number of stores that specialized in fireworks. They do love their firecrackers down there. As soon as the sun went down the fireworks would start. I was surprised there weren’t more people missing digits.

On the ride home, we stopped at the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, NC. It was a crazy coincidence seeing the billboard for the museum since I had just watched her in Mogambo a couple days before. The museum was a real treat. I loved seeing her costumes and they had a room full of beautiful portraits of Ava done by a Dutch painter. As much as I enjoyed the museum, I left feeling that she was celebrated simply because she was beautiful. Other than movies, she really didn’t accomplish anything of any real meaning. But I think she said it best, “I am just an old broad who gets her picture taken for a living.”