where's my free tar ball?

greetings, Cage Free Fans, from beautiful san destin, florida! forget what you've heard, nobody's giving away free tar balls.  apparently these cats are all over cleaning up the beaches, what with the tourism and all.  too bad the Louisiana marshes aren't a money-making machine like these beaches, or they'd be squeaky clean too.  kinda says a lot about the gulf coast hierarchy, doesn't it?
alright! enough with the soap box.  
vacation with my family is always a treat.  i was afraid my job search might not allow me to go on this trip, but thankfully, i'm still unemployed and my schedule was wide open. 
our trips to the beach actually consist of very little time on the beach.  sure, we'll go sit in the blinding sun for a couple hours, mostly out of guilt.  said blinding sun caused me to purchase these bad boys:

yes, they fit over my actual glasses.  yes, they're polarized.  yeah, i bought them at a grocery store.  and yeah, they are awesome.  i feel like i could weld in these.  or pilot a space ship.  or at the very least, kick some folks around in the matrix.

we really come down to san destin for the golf and the putt-putt.  boy do we love some putt- putt golf.  there's nothing like sinking a hole-in-one after you bounce it off a brick wall, around a water hazard and through a dog leg.  the other side of that coin:  there are few feelings worse than losing to your mother on a putt-putt golf course.  it was one of the darkest days of my life.  
onwards and upwards, right? today on our customary trip to the beach, i saw not one, but two pigeons trudging through the sand.  what?? 

crazy, right? but it brought up a great memory.  mom reminded me about mine and brooks' first trip to the beach.  it was in october, and we were wearing mud boots and jackets.  we added credit to the gulf coast's nickname, the Redneck Riviera, when we mistook sea gulls for chickens.  that kind of memory is what i want to preserve. so, i sketched this one out today:

its a rough sketch, but its a start.  and i feel really good about this one.

on a similar note, i'm also working on  sketches for a piece about the helmet my mother made me wear in coach pitch baseball.  in my mom's opinion, there were two kinds of kids who played little league: her kids and kids with lice.  so i had my very own red helmet, complete with a face shield.  

she didn't really make me wear it in the outfield, but that certainly makes for a better story.

so that's what i've got going on right now at the beach.

but more importantly! check out this bad ass dessert we had today at Mitchell's Fish Market.

it's called a Shark Fin and it's the most incredible dessert on this planet.  it's what a drumstick wants to be when it grows up. this alone is worth the trip.

it's basically a huge ice cream pie. it has an oreo crust, several inches of vanilla ice cream with a chocolate swirl, then a thin layer of peanut butter and chocolate, followed by several more inches of ice cream. all of which is covered in peanuts and whipped cream.

our waiter told us that people who don't finish the whole thing have it turned into a milkshake. the whole family went glassy eyed as we envisioned our very own shark fin milkshake. unfortunately we finished the whole thing before that dream could become a reality.

further posts as events warrant.  for now, i gotta get out there and destroy some folks at putt-putt. word up.