With a little help from my friends...

I'm not really a religious person. But lately I think someone is watching out for my sanity.

You all know how much I post about my work, travels, and well, I guess that's really it. Hmm, in retrospect, that's a little dry. Man, come to think of it, there's probably no way I'd read this blog if I didn't write it. Anyway, just when stress levels begin to soar, I got a phone call.

My old pals at my former employer have decided to trek down to Ocean City this weekend and they informed me that I was welcomed to join them. They told me one of them owned a condo on the beach and they were all getting together.

I had planned on trying to catch up on some work but that little voice in my head said "GO". And it was right. I needed a break.

So for the first time in I can't tell you how long, I separated myself from the laptop and just relaxed. The condo was right on the beach. And I mean feel-the-mist close. Both of the pictures above are from the private balcony. Some of my friends were all fired up to go and party and they looked at me a little strange when I just sat down in the sand and stared out in to the ocean.

There's something unique that happens to man when he comes face to face with the edge of his natural environment. The beach is the line in the sand (pun intended) that separates two worlds. I can stare at it forever. Just listening to waves crashing and wind blowing. I didn't need to go get trashed to make the most of this trip in my eyes. In fact, I slept outside, on the balcony and woke up to the sun rise and crashing waves. And I was, for a day, stress-free.

So here's some more photos. This one I took because the moon was extremely clear as I slept outside. I need to start taking my good camera to these places. The night capabilities of my little 4 megapixel just doesn't capture it.

Here's a shot of the front of our building, the Oceana II. It was so nice and quiet because it's still off-season and no one was home. As you can see, the majority of the storm shields are closed. Our place is the only one on the 2nd floor with the balcony shield up. You can see the dune line and how close to the water it is.

I got a little curious about how much it would cost if I wanted to invest in one of these places, so I took a little walk and found this just in front of our place.

Upon further investigation, that price was for a single bedroom, single bathroom. Our place was two full bedrooms, two full baths, full W/D, etc... :) I don't even want to know what they paid for it and I wasn't about to ask.

The view of our building from Coastal Highway...

Everyone relaxes in different ways...

This trip really hit the spot. But I was quickly slammed back in to the real world when I got home and had 28 emails on my laptop. TWENTY-EIGHT emails on Mother's Day weekend from Friday after 5pm through Sunday morning! Can you imagine what would happen if I took a real vacation during a full work week?

It never ends.