Our geek gals weekend was quite a memorable one! We had an email thread going around discussing all of our excitement that culminated in:

Road Trip Retrospective

Liked

• Beginning new friendships and rekindling old ones
• WaHo, or Waffle House for you non-Southerners, is a road trip staple
• Seeing the sights: art gallery, street musician, architecture walk, shopping
• Active pursuits: plantation tour, petting zoo, bodysurfing
• Keeping it mellow: drip castles, collecting shells, yoga, sunbathing
• Team-building through cooking indoors & grilling out
• Kitsch juxtaposed with refinement: deep fried peanuts and formal high tea
• Bizarre medical poster discovery
• Conversation: discussions of literature, science, and life
• Creative outlets: lanyards, scrapbooking, board games, magnetic nail polish

Learned

• Having pricing/rental agreements in writing is essential – but at least one of us was overcharged and our deposit wasn’t fully refunded
• Foodie friends should always pick the restaurant
• Crafting doesn’t come as naturally to everyone – but collaborative art is more fun!
• Twilight is hilarious when read aloud with expression and voice acting
• About 1 in 10 photographs come out the way I’d expect
• Vintage gold lamé will cover you in glitter
• I can disassemble a grill to light it when the starter is broken – but I didn’t expect a fireball when I opened the lid!

Lacked

• Roadside attractions
• Strange food venues
• Pest control (huge roaches landing in my hair? unacceptable!)
• Respect from the rental agent who told me I was a b*tch on the phone (keepin’ it classy!)
• Support from the rental agent to operate the hot tub that we were forbidden to adjust when it was tepid

Longed For

• Working internet connection (seriously, who cuts a bunch of geek girls off?)
• Privacy: long term renter walked his dog through our space each day
• Functional bathrooms: inconsistent water pressure, toilets constantly running or clogged and leaking, shower door jammed, scalding hot water hurt a couple of us, and what’s with the toilet installed in the linen closet?!?
• Stable floors: I fell through the deck once and nearly fell through another part of the deck a second time, squishy kitchen floor
• Sturdy roofs: bedroom ceiling collapsed
• Nighttime lighting out on the uneven decks
• Ovens/grills that heated evenly and to the designated temperature
• Cleaning crew: moldy air conditioning unit, dust, dirt, bug parts, expired cleaning supplies
• Maintenance crew to shore up the framing and carpentry

So how did our product turn out? Our execution wasn’t flawless, but we have very fond memories of creativity, conversation, and survival. Nothing like a few disasters to remind us how fortunate we are.