Reality hits again Monday morning when I return to work after a week-long break, but reality has to wait because Sunday is the last hurrah.
First thing I do is join my daughter and her entourage for breakfast at a popular diner just over the border in New Hampshire. The music is pure fifties and sixties and I know most of the song lyrics, so I embarrass my kid by singing along while we are waiting in line on the sidewalk. It's a bit of a wait, so I get to run through a gamut of songs.
Next is a trip to the coast for a birthday celebration for a friend at Throwback Brewery. The brewery is about four miles in from the coast, so we make a side trip to my favorite beach. It's my second trip to this beach in the last few days. As a matter of fact, it is the eighth beach stop of my week off. Amazing how tempting the coast is when the weather cooperates.
The brewery is surprisingly busy considering it opened less than an hour earlier. Great beer, great ambiance, great appetizers, and games. Yes, there is a cabinet full of games, so I grab a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards, and our tables begins a heated round of trivia questions for fun while we sample different beers. Best of all, we have a KISS bobble-head as our table marker.
I'm not going to lie: I usually drink very light beers and am more of a pilsner drinker, but my two favorites today are both dark beers and both considered experimental beers. The first runner-up is the Nitro Vanilla Irish Stout (and I even think it could use a touch more vanilla). The winner today, though, is El Chupbrewcabra, a Mexican chocolate porter.
After a lot of trivia and a lot of beer samples, the ride home is just as the sun sets. The sky, like the previous week, is spectacular. I am a passenger in my daughter's car, and I snap four pictures, trying to get one that's just right before the colors fade away. It's tough, but, like the pictures I have taken all week, I manage to capture the exact sentiment so I can hold on to the day just a little bit longer.
It's starting to get dark when I arrive home. I need to finish up what I started this morning before leaving for breakfast and the final day of adventure. There's laundry to fold and a stripped bed to re-make, plans to type up for work, and lunches to pack for tomorrow. Now, back to Monday, back to work, and back to reality.
