Funny Ha-Ha Yes and Fuzzy Too

What a day! I'm still laughing out loud. Yes, it was a LOL-athon at Woodman's and at Crane Beach. Not surprisingly as I was still recovering from last week NYC Blogger Bash, I had not been heavily promoting this one and was also not sure the weather would be good, so it was a small crowd, which was perfect if you ask me -- just the usual Halley thing, two women, one man. :) Yes, it was me, Betsy Devine and Scott Johnson of Funny Ha-Ha Blog and Fuzzyblog.

I can't even begin to describe it. Me -- at a loss for words - imagine. It was just a terrificaly fun and funny and sunny day with Betsy and Scott and maybe I better let them tell it. No, I'll give it a try. Okay, Betsy for some reason goes into this wonderful thing about watching Russell Crowe in Gladiator chain mail doing a strip tease and if such a thing were to occur, and Russell was dropping one heavy metal garment after another, chain mail, breastplate, sword sheath, how hot would this be ... but wait, how NOISY would this be?! Very noisy. But of course I had to say that a naked Russell Crowe and a pile of chains to play with certainly wouldn't be the worst thing. Scott did the requisite rolling of his eyes back in his head at the two of us going on and on. Thank god he was there to bring us back to earth and talk RSS and Feedster with us. I took a little bow and curtsy after remembering exactly what RSS stood for. (Adoring fans may now clap, I say, "thank you, thank you and you guys in the bleachers, thank you.")

And don't be fooled into thinking Scott was much of a sobering influence -- he's as funny and charming and witty as anyone else there today -- and can be equally blamed for keeping me in stitches. So the conversation went from Russell Crowe to everywhere and anywhere else ... hard to reconstruct, but by the end of a terrific lunch I'd actually talked those guys into going to beach. I guess I'm more serious about the beach than I let on, because I just happened to have three folding beach chairs, a beach blanket, a towel, a pretty orange tulip bikini, a brown plastic bottle of Suntan Oil with SPF0 and another plastic blue bottle of waterproof sweatproof SPF48. I was much intrigued by the mathematics of SPF and wondered if I mixed the two you could get to SPF24. Scott rationally pointed out that one being oil and one being more creamy and water-based it would seem to be an issue of whether the mixtures would even mix, as opposed to the arithmetic considerations.

Off to the beach it was and what a great sunny day. Bit of a problem with that wind. I lathered on the SPF0 oil and proceeded to get sandblasted by a fine, relentless spray of sand for 2 hours. I told them I was fast turning into something resembling a breaded veal cutlet. Kite kids down the beach were equally sand-swirled I suppose, but they were happy to have such a powerful breeze. Later, when I pulled into a gas station to get gas, the money taking guy came to my car looked in, was rather mesmerized looking at my face, then says, "You're covered in sand, lady, it's all over your face." He found it rather amazing. He was grinning. I looked a lot like an emery board, or just an emery woman I guess you might say.

BTW, Betsy is so funny and I said to her, "Betsy, you're so funny." And then she reminded me that she writes joke books. Someone had told me that, but I actually thought they were pulling my leg, but they weren't. Betsy writes books of jokes and is terrifically funny. As I lay down in my bikini and undid the back string, she mused on a seagull making a rather malicious face my direction. I can't even tell you what she said, but it was too funny.

Being Halley isn't easy. Sometimes things just fall out of Halley's mind directly down a chute to Halley's mouth, there are no filters and no restraining devices. One of those things happened this afternoon. After the beach and after a visit to a great apple farm for cider and other treats -- Betsy stuffing us full of home-made donuts they make there -- and photos and then Scott missing the turn to Rt. 128, but then Betsy and I suggesting he go back and HE TOOK OUR ADVICE,, I suddenly hear Halley saying the most shocking thing. Halley's telling Scott, "See Scott, you just did it -- one of those things women love -- honestly, there are two things you can do to get any woman to just stop everything and fuck you and one of them is to admit you don't know which way you are going and actually listen to her advice and do it -- this gets them every time and the other, of course, is playing with young children, looking like a good dad. This also does us in, just makes us putty in your hands. Don't even have to have kids, just play with someone else's kids and women love watching men do this."

One more blogger meeting proving nothing beats the real meet and greet. Kindof sorry more people didn't show and kindof glad they didn't. I know the car thing's tough, so next time we'll do some carpooling and hope no one misses such a great day again. Thanks to Betsy and Scott.