8-26-12 Sunday (Rule Breaking)

This weekend we are going/went to Augusta.  Thursday night we did our typical night before Augusta stuff.  We packed.  We loaded what we could into the car, this way Friday after work I’d be ready to load up the last minute stuff and the dog and then head South to pick up Jim.

Every time we go to Augusta, we have the Mazda jam packed.  I hoping that eventually we won’t have as much to bring.  I’m glad the car is as big as it is.

Jim usually leaves his car at work which is great because his job is right off the interstate we have to travel on to get to Augusta.  This time he left the car at Plaza Fiesta with an upholstery place so they could replace the fabric on the A and C pillars.

We’ll pick up the car on Sunday.

We stopped at a rest area not very far from Jim’s office to eat dinner at the picnic table pavilions they offer.  We had salads.

Above: No Pets Allowed:  Breaking all the rules.

It was about 10pm when we arrived to the RV.  We had the usual electrical issues (dead batteries) and had to jump the RV so we could power the slide and steps.  We unloaded the car, organized everything real quick and then went to Boll Weevil Café for dessert.  We’ve been here once before but apparently I never mentioned it in the blog. They have a case of awesome cakes and we couldn’t remember what we’ve previously tried.  I tried looking it up and the blog and no luck.  We chose strawberry cake and banana chocolate chip cake.  Yum.  By the way, here’s their dessert menu.  Below is a picture from our last visit.

Huge cake.  Anyway, we took the cake to go.  We had a bench picnic on the downtown River Walk which is a block or two away from the café.  Maybe sometime we’ll get there during the day for some good photos.  For now, if you really want to see it, click here. 

Saturday Jim weed whacked and and organized some of the inside as well as vacuumed.  The sand being tracked into the RV is ridiculous.  We’ll just have to take off our shoes when we get into the RV. 

Jim said his arms took a beating by holding the weed eater for so long.  He said he was going to invent giant casters or something for it to rest on so he wouldn’t have to hold it airborne.

Lunch was awful.  We used a Living Social coupon for Sweet Lou’s Crab Shack.  We walked in and there were only 2 other tables in use.  One a large party and the other only 2 people.  We stood at the front door unsure of what to do.  Do we order at the counter?  Do we seat ourselves?  Do we wait to be seated?  The server standing at the counter area didn’t say anything so we walked up to him and confirmed it’s full service… if you want to call it that.  Drinks took forever.  Eventually we ordered the same meal, steak with onions, mushrooms and cheese.  It was listed with the sandwiches but we weren’t sure how it would come.  $11.  He asked what we’d like for a side.  He gave the choices with the last one being “or baked potato I think…”  He thinks?  We opted for the potato salad.   The steak had to have been 3-4oz at most.  Remembering my Weight Watchers days of estimating portions, the palm of your hand is 3oz.  It was smothered in the cheese, onion and mushrooms which was good but the steak was overcooked.   When we got the check, we were charged for side dishes.  Not knowing that something or nothing was included in our meal and just being disappointed overall, we didn’t argue or care, we just wanted out. 

Jim and I took turns going to the restroom while one of us sat at the table.  We had to walk through the kitchen and around the cook to the bathroom which was located in the kitchen.  We didn’t see any grill other than a consumer sized plug-in griddle.  A dorm room has a better equipped kitchen.  The back door stood open too.  How can people walk through your kitchen?  How is this place legal?  What if I cough or sneeze while I walk through?  Ewwwww.   I wished I had seen the kitchen before we had ordered/eaten.  The service was horrible, the restaurant was horrible.  I know, I know, tell you how I really feel?  Where’s the Health Department?  I looked up the reviews on this place from several different websites and most of them were pretty bad.  Some mimicking our thoughts to the T.

We strolled around the downtown shops.  There was a huge antique store complete with 3 stories.  The top floor was the “clerence” (that’s how the handwritten sign spelled it) area and pretty scary at that.  I took photos.  Of course.

Above: The elevator (I think it is) looks cool, the rest was trashy.

Above/Below: Credit card receipts from 2003 with full account numbers on them.  Shame on them.  Even deposit slips. 

Above: Old mattresses.  Really?  Who’s gonna buy them?

Above: The “try selling it now!” on the bar seemed creepy to me.

Back to the pool for more floating, swimming soaking and even a little impromptu volley ball.  No teams, no scores, just hitting a ball back and forth.  It was fun.

Eventually it was dinner time.  Jim suggested redeeming a restaurant.com certificate.  Learning from today’s earlier experience, I Googled the restaurant and found way too many negatives.  In fact, Urban Spoon had a summary of votes:

More than half the reviewers didn’t like it.  That’s enough for me.  We decided to go check out a country buffet instead.  When we arrived it was going to close in a half hour.  We don’t do buffets that are close to closing.  We drove and drove and saw a Chinese restaurant.  The sign said lunch buffet.  It didn’t say anything about dinner.  I thought that either way it would be good.  We confirmed that the buffet is only lunch time.  I was very pleased with that since it’s difficult to find a non-buffet Chinese restaurant these days.  The food was great.

Whether it was too much food or too much time in the sun today, by late evening we were very tired.  We skipped “going out” and opted for bed.

Sunday we didn’t even go to the pool.  We packed up and departed by 11am.  We stopped off to pick up the car.  The fabric replacement looks good.  They tried matching the color as best as possible.

While grocery shopping, Jim saw a device that attaches to the weed eater with the same premise as what he had said on Saturday.  Here’s Jim with The Big Balls.

Oh and the receipt description?  “Big Balls”.