hyponychium: 1. the bit of thickened skin under the open end of the fingernail. 2. one of the words in the national spelling bee, which i watched the end of last week. (did you see it? was the kid who won not the cutest? those kids are so supercool under pressure, asking the usual questions "what's the definition" "can you use it in a sentence" "what's the etymology" "are there alternate pronunciations?" before they calmly, slowly agonizingly slowly sometimes, spell the word and wait to not hear the beep signaling a misspelled word.)

14: the number of mini-golf courses in the 15 miles between myrtle beach and the south carolina/north carolina border along route 17.

7: the number of food lion stores in the same distance.

3: the number of hooters restaurants.

2.5: the number of hours it took me and karl to break into our apartment upon returning to philly last night. fer cryin' out loud. we got home to find the second lock, which we never use, locked. of course, we don't have the key to it with us. first thoughts: fucking landlord! they must've come into our apartment last week for some reason (to fix the water damage?) and locked that second lock. grrrrrrrr! second thought: how are we going to get in?

plan A: go up the fire escape stairwell to our floor and in through the kitchen door, which uses the same key as the front door. fails because the fire escape stairwell is locked from the outside at the bottom.

plan B: go through the apartment above us, which is being renovated and which is unlocked, out their kitchen door, down the fire escape stairs to our kitchen door. plan B fails because there is a vagrant sleeping on the landing in the fire escape stairwell, and we don't want to wake him up because this is west philly after all and one never knows when the local vagrant will be armed and crazy and in need of crack money.

plan C: buzz the 3rd floor in the other half of the building, go out their fire escape and in through our kitchen door. fails because no one answers the buzzer.

meanwhile: we have called the police to deal with the sleeping vagrant. they show up, get the (complicated) story about how we found him and why we're trying to enter our apartment through our fire escape, and wake the guy up. get his (supposed) name, age, and serial number, make him put on his pants, gather his blanket, and lead him out down the fire escape and into their van. they tell him (and us) that if he shows up again, they'll lock him up. the unbelievably strong urine smell in the fire escape where he's been living answer the Mystery Of The Pee Smell In Our Kitchen, which i haven't told you about because even though i knew that it wasn't caused by us, it's still a bit embarrassing to tell people your kitchen smells like pee. anyway, our kitchen, over by the door, has been smelling like urine for a couple of months, and we could NOT figure out why. no urine-soaked (maybe from the mice?) towels in the drawer, no urine-soaked cardboard, nothing. turns out this guy, gary johnson he said his name was, was pissing into a hole in the wall of the stairwell that just happened to border our kitchen. ugh. so not only is the Mystery solved, but we now know that he's been living in the stairwell for 2 and a half months or so. jeezus.

plan D: call the emergency number for our building and get them to let us in. their fault anyway for locking us out, the bastards. i leave a message on what i assume is a pager. after 45 minutes, i call and leave another message. some emergency number, the fuckers.

plan E: break in. if we can get up onto our balcony (3rd floor), we can (hopefully) get in through the window. we may be able to get onto our balcony IF we can find a ladder and IF the family in the apartment below will let us use their balcony (there's actually a roof, covering part of the first floor porch, that adjoins their balcony, on which we could theoretically put a ladder and climb up to our balcony). we head down to the basement, which is right out of a horror movie, what with the crumbling concrete and the old bathtub and the maze of dark rooms littered with stuff to hide behind, looking for a ladder, and lo! and behold! something goes right for us and we find a step ladder. up to the 2nd floor apartment to ask for access to their roof. the husband says, on hearing what we want to do, that it's dangerous. when assured that we know, he mentions that there's an emergency number we can call. we say that we've called it and left a message, two actually, but that was over an hour ago and we haven't heard back. so he lets us in. karl climbs up the (very rickety) ladder and hoists himself up to our balcony, which is quite a feat and does look dangerous because the ladder is not *quite* high enough. he gets in, not even having to break the window screen, and the ordeal is over. i call the "emergency" pager number back again and leave another message saying thanks for all your help we really appreciate it but we've gotten in so no need to come to our aid.

so that fiasco was the end to a lovely week at the beach. we were in a house on a canal in ocean isle beach, north carolina. 4 bedrooms, 4 couples. we got the house for free because it belongs to n---'s (of b---- and n---) rich uncle. a week of pancakes in the mornings, cook-outs in the evenings, never-ending frozen margaritas and rocking on the porch. we grilled out corn, veggies, fish (salmon, sea bass, and catfish), scallops, shrimp, clams, oysters, and burgers. we drank beer, frozen margaritas, and baileys on the rocks. we played xbox (hello, poyo pop 2 addiction!) and boggle til our minds reeled (best boggle word: brothers. sadly, not found my me.) we lounged in the hammock, on the porch swing, in rocking chairs, and on the beach. we swam in the ocean (70� already!) and kayaked in the canal (well, i didn't personally kayak, but kayaking was done). we baked cookies and ate cheese and bread (goat gouda and double creme and port salut oh my!). we argued about the air conditioner (it was beautiful there, with a lovely sea breeze but Some One wanted to close the house up and turn on the air so that we all had to go around in sweaters. sweaters!) and whether to include abbreviated body parts (abs, delts, lats, gluts, nads) as words or not in boggle. we decided yes, because nads is funny and humor trumps everthing in word games. i collected some shells on the beach, finished (finally) a suitable boy and have added it to my list of favorite books, bought a floppy beach hat, and gained 5 pounds.

and THAT is a definition of a successful vacation.