Back safely and soundly and totally unmotivated to write anything here after checking emails and returning phone calls and being on for the last two days.

We had a nice time in the Keys. We slept a lot. A lot a lot. A dark room and a good bed and a childless existence does wonders to your soul. The weather wasn't particularly warm, it rained a good deal of the time, there are no beaches, we don't have a boat or a fishing license, and the only other thing really to do down there is drink and we didn't do much of that, so we slept.

Friday night we stayed in Miami. We happy houred at Scotty's Landing and ate at Versailles. Our bartender at Scotty's was a Phillygirl by birth but she was way too young to know anyone that we know. She graduated from high school the same year I graduated from grad school so we probably don't even know any of her friend's big brothers or sisters. But she still carded us, so everything evens out in the end.

Miami was especially rough for Dave, who looks Cuban but can't speak a lick of the language. He was all like ¿como estwhat? any time someone spoke to him in Spanish. No one thought I spoke Spanish. If people think anything, people generally think I speak Dutch. Weird, right? Maybe it is because I kind of look like Hitler's Dreamgirl.
Versailles was good, but it was way too much food. I ate black beans and yellow rice until I almost puked. I fed my leftover fish to a little black kitten in someone's yard. I'm sure the cat's owners were really happy about old fish in their yard the next day but it was the humanitarian thought that counts, not the stinky aftermath of my generosity. We wanted to go back to the hotel promptly and sleep all that ethnic off, but not before a drive through Miami. Meh. Dave said it best when he said "if Philly is gritty, Miami is greasy, so I guess it counts as a real place and has a little bit of charm". Exactly.
You can go out to expensive bars and surround yourself with guys in striped shirts and girls in shiny minidresses and drink $14 vodka drinks in Miami, but you can do that in Philly too.
You can shop Prada and Gucci and LV in Miami, but we have that here and I already have gobs of the stuff bursting out of my closets. Who needs more Prada, really? Not me. I'm drowning in it because I'm so rich.
So, we slept.
And it was good.

Then we got up and drove down to Key Largo and checked into the Marriott (oh-ver-ray-ted) for a couple days to go to my only bigcousin's wedding. My mom was there, and her brother and sister and their families. And some boys I knew from high school but didn't know well. I meant to take pictures, but I only got one of the centerpiece and one of me and my only girlcousin, Aryn. I'll post them here when I get a chance (read: find the usb cord). I know I was in a few pictures, so maybe someone will email them to me.

Saturday night we took a drive down Route 1 and stopped to pee and drink at Wahoo's, where we watched the storm roll past over the marina and stuffed ourselves with fried conch and peel&eats dipped in butter until we gagged. We were sitting right next to some Phillykids, but they weren't friendly- probably because they were from the suburbs and not real citykids as they would have you believe. What is that? Why do people say they are from somewhere that they aren't? So weird. Except for the one girl, who accosted me outside of the bathroom to tell me all about the Eagles game, the Phillies Series, and the crazy Nakedness and Sexhaving down at Key West's Fantasy Fest. She was friendly. And drunk. And hadn't gotten used to the fact that she wasn't in Key West anymore and handsy behavior and in-yo-face talking wasn't necessary anymore. But she was cute, so it was all okay.

Dave and I drove down to Key West for the day on Monday, a day late for the Fest. It was adorable, and the weather was perfect, and we drank two vodka drinks apiece and had some lunch at Blue Heaven, which was the best part of the whole trip. I could have lived there amongst the stray cats and roaming chickens and really good food, but I only had so many dollars and my liver can only take so much so we paid our waiter (a Deptford, NJ native- see a trend?) and bummed around town until Dave's flip flops cut a hole between his big toe and the next.

We drove back to Islamorada where we had reservations at Holiday Isle, the world famous tiki bar that strangely happened to be completely deserted except for us and a few truckers. A few creepy truckers. We had a couple freezy rumdrinks there and decided that we have less of a chance to be viciously and anally raped if we just stopped down the road at the Winn*Dixie and pick up some snacks and watch the game from our fabulously porny hotel room. Then the now-famous rain delay happened and so we slept some more and we woke up and drove up to Lauderdale (don't say the "Fort' part or they will know you are a tourist) and hung out in Hollywood, Florida which is now the city of my dreams and where I will be retiring if I can't move there before I get old.
We walked the waterfront and stopped in for a beer and some most delicious lunch at Nick's and our bartender was just the sweetest girl ever and some guy who used to be a Florida local but is now a corn farmer in Illinois but stopped by to see the sweetest girl ever and he brought fresh picked corn for the waitstaff and they had no idea what to do with it because I guess Florida only sees corn in a can. It was so adorable that I almost asked for a job application. One girl told me how to make arepas, which I love. She told me it is the only thing she knows what to do with an ear of corn. I suggested boiling it in sugared water or grilling it and she said she would try it.

It's really hard to be us, isn't it? We are so incredibly underwhelmed with the Keys that we just had to lie around in expensive hotel rooms and had to give up the pedestrian exploration of our nation's Southernmost point due to a small irritation on the foot. Also, I had a huge moustache all weekend because I had that nasty cold and all the noseblowing made my upperlip raw and I didn't want to chance a giant scab by shaving over it. I learned that the hard way. Oh, and I couldn't bring my tweezers on the plane, so my eyebrows? They were everywhere. Sometimes the universe works in weird ways and I like to think that it was my facial hair that saved me from the truckers because no one likes to feel the awkward tickle of a nannygoatee.

There are a few pictures up at Oh, the Urbanity! if you want to see some of the crap we ran across down there.

And I promise to post about a few more things like how hard it is to be away from Jake for that long, and how it is really surreal to have your whole family together when you're grown up, and how vacations are nice but the older I get I feel like my problems stow away on the plane and tap me on the shoulder every ten minutes, and how I know I'm lame now because I kept thinking that the money we spent could have easily been new countertops or a new bedroom ceiling that doesn't include a family of pigeons. And oh, how about them Phils? I'll get to it as soon as I feel like I can pound out a good post. I am computerless at home again. And work is work. I also ran across a few things that I wrote a million years ago on paper (whaaa?) that I would like to post here, so we'll see what I come up with.