By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea

Okay, so Google ads is churning out such losers as "Aberdeen mom cures wrinkle problem" and "Aberdeen mom whitens yellow teeth." In Aberdeen, the obvious solution to these problems is not to remove the wrinkles and yellowness as it appears but to take preventative measures by not smoking (meth). Since the Aberdonian solver is a mother, I can only assume she is inculcating anti-drug messages into her children. And since I don't smoke anything, I think I am ahead of the curve there, too. So Google ads, you can stop that.

So Ray and I headed out to Seaside for a weekend of relaxation and adventure and engagement pics, which I will post when Sara sends some my way but it was just last night people. We biked at Fort Stevens, did a hike there, walked the promenade and it was chilly and because it has been so nice here, I hadn't packed long sleeved anything. Still, there were plenty of people out in shorts/tanks/flip flops.

To get there, we headed through Astoria, where we ate at the Silver Salmon Grill, a really nice restaurant with the added bonus of having a magician performing at tables. His name was, no kidding, Dale Dvorak. A carpenter "up at the college," Dvorak's passion is magic, and although he has performed for 8,000 ppl at the Tacoma Dome (he says) he likes to keep the close-in stuff as part of his repetoire. That's the tough stuff, really. He did a mentalist trick with me, where he set out five cards with different symbols and he produced a card with the same symbol from a little wallet in his pocket. I have a pretty good idea how this trick is done, and the same with the card tricks he did.

Ray mentioned to DD that I am a former member of my high school magic club, so DD realized he had to step up his game. I apologized for being a tough audience, but knowing some of what to look for has spoiled me for magic. DD understood that, and said as a magician, he was onto other magicians all the time. So when he saw a magician do a trick that he couldn't draw a bead on, he would have his mind blown. And possibly because I mentioned I was bad at prestidigitation, he did such a trick for us, with an English penny and a half dollar that involved alternately dropping them into his pocket and making them reappear in his hand or vice versa. Very smooth. It was very impressive, especially when, apparently without moving his outstretched hand with a half-dollar in it, he made it disappear. Excellent misdirection and prestidigitation skills, Dale Dvorak. He is at the very least a 9th level mage with a dexterity score of 16.

We made it to Seaside in time for a walk on the chilly promenade.

The next morning at Fort Stevens we avoided making eye contact with some reenactors, who were waiting until 11 to set off a small cannon and were dressed in Civil War regalia. What, you ask, was Oregon's role in the Civil War? Small. Incredibly, incredibly small. A man filled with "sessecionist feeling" (i.e. booze and redneckery) walked down the street in Eugene, Ore. in 1865 saying "Praise Jefferson Davis, and damn the man who won't," and was arrested so as to quell pro-sessecionist feelings. It apparently worked.

While the Union worried about sessecionist feelings breaking out in Oregon territory, it must have been apparent from the start that it would not make a great slave state, so although there was Fort Stevens, the Civil War aspect is so small, that you can read this in the Oregon Blue Book: "For many of the soldiers the Civil War in Oregon was a monotonous, numbing assignment. In their monthly post returns, officers recorded desertions, suicides, and bouts in the brig because of drunkenness and misbehavior. The Indians were quiet on the Siletz and Grand Ronde Reservations. The rain was predictable and depressing. 'Nothing transpired of importance,' recorded Royal A. Bensell, a soldier at Fort Yamhill. Too many days brought that refrain in his Civil War diary."

Mostly the forts were used to quell Indians and do the Manifest Destiny thing. Fort Stevens was also set up in WWII to fight the Japanese.

At any rate, Fort Stevens is now a pretty big state park with a lot of bike trails, hiking spots and a beach with a shipwreck on it, which seemed more sunken into the sand than the last time we were there. It's a nice place. I highly recommend it. I saw a vole, too.

Back at Seaside, we did more promenade walking. While doing that, we saw three teens on skateboards, two of whom were having an argument while balancing. It went like this:

Girl: You don't ever contact me.

Boy: THAT'S NOT TRUE I text you like every second day!

Girl: THAT'S NOT TRUE I check my Yahoo every day!

Etc. while balancing. Jeez, what is with the texting? I wanted to applaud the young man for refraining from texting every hour on the hour, as some kids apparently do. Now that they've finally managed to hang out, why is this even an issue?

We also saw a guy who may have been busking or possibly hired by the ginormous condo complex to sing on the street backed up by CD. He was a very suave-looking older black guy in breezy cruisewear and his songs were jazz standards sung in the swing style. I heard him tell some dude he'd "love to sing at Branson." I don't think Jazz is a thing there, bro. A grungy emo kid with a guitar and a neck tattoo was set up far too close to the dude and he was playing his own crappy songs until he realized nobody cared, I guess, because when we came back he was playing along with Suavitay's CD. I appreciated his musicality in that he figured out the key and the chords he'd need. Cheers, emo kid.

Another guy who sounded neither suave nor emo was playing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" further down the promenade. Ray and I seriously need to consider busking next time we hit the shore.

Possibly the worst thing we overheard was a non-stop real estate conversation while eating lunch at the Pacific Way Cafe in Gearhart. It's a great place to eat, but these two phony-looking people were talking about waterfront property, investment properties, yard redos, inside redos, "Have you been in Jerome's place?" how much stuff costed ad nauseum. Because Ray and I were hungry, we basically were kind of forced to listen in. Ironically, the woman, who started off at the cafe ON HER CELLPHONE got all antsy with the waitress, telling her she wanted to move because she felt "confined" in that spot. Oh, please. WE were the ones who were confined. Like animals.

Gearhart is a precious little place. So precious, it must be on a hellmouth or something. Honestly, I defy you to travel through Gearhart and not feel that there must be something vile under all those pleasant shake facades and well-manicured yards and precious commercial corner (no center in Gearhart, it's that small). There simply must be a zombie problem there. I refuse to believe there is a place that idyllic without a dark underbelly on this earth. That said, I bet their city council meetings are fraught with tension and self-righteous entitlement. Which is as good as a dark side to me.