Generation Gap

This was too funny!

I was sitting on my balcony this evening, toasting marshmallows for s'mores over the dying coals of my little grill (yeah, I know, grilling on our balcony--gasp!! But we're extremely careful about it...) when I heard the kids next door talking and laughing. This is nothing unusual; if the weather's decent, they're outside for hours in the early evening, riding bikes and socializing with the kids on the block.

What made this evening different is that they started singing along to a music player one of them brought out. The first song was something I didn't know, but the second song was... "We Are the World"!

Yeah, that's right--one of the defining songs from the Eighties, a song that raised funds for the children in Africa and brought together such artists as Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes, Huey Lewis, Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper, among others. To anyone who was a child of the Eighties: does it bring back a couple memories of the era?

What I found so funny was not the song itself, though that brought out a couple of grins, remembering Cyndi's New-Yawk accent, singing "Wehll, wehll, wehll, let's realize..." 

No, what had me nearly in tears laughing was that these kids were playing it and knew the words to it!!! They couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 years old. They weren't even a gleam in their parents' eyes when that song came out!

It all left me with two reactions: 1.) shaking my head in disbelief, that this song continues to pop up even today, and 2.) laughing myself silly, that kids in the online iTunes era are singing the words to a song by a number of singers whose careers peaked before these kids were even born... :)

Yes, cuz, the smile paired with narrowed eyes usually means "Don't go there."

Family weddings... love them AND hate them!

Tampa was great, and as seen in the Florida Tourism Industry advertisement I just wrote, it's definitely worth going back. Even seeing family was great, since that side of the family has people in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, NYC (me), Tampa and Key West in Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts, California, and Washington State. Pretty much everyone but my elderly grandmother (who was too frail to make the trip south) and one relative living out west made it into Tampa for the wedding and at least part of the week.

It was good to see everyone in one place again. We usually see most of the family for Thanksgiving (the reason I'm never in town that day), but the ones who live farther away don't often come to the holiday get-together. It takes a family wedding to get the whole crew in one place. However, as no fewer than four different cousins reminded me, we're running out of cousins to get married!

*Note to all: if you attend a family wedding anytime soon, DO NOT ask The Question of your unmarried female family members or refer to it in any way. I'm in no hurry to get married anytime soon, but by the time the fourth person asked me, "So, when are YOU getting married?" I wanted to smack somebody!!!

I think I need to start developing some flip answers to The Question, such as these:

• "When you realize your question is utterly offensive to any modern, feminist, career-oriented woman."
  
• "When my psychic gives me the okay. She's recommended I delay getting married until the moon is in Saturn's house and Mars is in retrograde."

Any other ideas?

And now, for an advertisement from the Florida tourism industry...

Well, I'm back from Florida. Man, the weather could not have been any nicer down there... mid-80s, dry and breezy all week long. It was fantastic!!!

I took a shuttle from the airport to my hotel in Clearwater Beach, where we were on the Clearwater Harbor side of Sand Key; the Gulf of Mexico was across the street. As I was in the shuttle, I was smiling at all the palm trees everywhere, and also struck by all the space!! A clear sign I live in a compact city like NYC: I was amazed by how far apart things are and all the single-level buildings. And parking lots! I almost didn't recognize what they were! ;)

Normally I tune out a chatty shuttle driver or give the "I'm not really listening to you" answers ("Uh-huh, hmmm... that's nice."), but for some reason, I was paying attention to this chatty driver. Good thing--he gave me some good tips about how to get around the area, good restaurants to try, and times to avoid traffic snarls or tourist-y areas. He was totally right about everything, including this great seafood restaurant (ohhhhh... fresh seafood!!) that specialized in several "just caught it a couple hours ago" Catches-of-the-Day. My cousin asked what I was getting, and before I could even answer, my dad and sister piped up with "crab legs" (and they were right-- apparently I am just that predictable when it comes to seafood!).

By the way, if anyone's planning a trip down to Clearwater Beach or the Tampa area, I'd recommend the Marriott on Sand Key. They had everything we needed except the beach, and that was just across the street. And Clearwater Beach has got to be one of the nicest beaches along the U.S. coast-- the finest powder/sand I've ever felt, a shallowly sloping shelf and moderate surf that doesn't pound you to death.

I even saw several dolphins while I was there. One evening when my sister, brother-in-law, little niece and I walked back over Sand Key's causeway, we caught sight of three dolphins in the channel from the harbor to the Gulf and stopped to watch them swim under the bridge. And the day before I left, there was a whole pod of them in the harbor during lunch... According to the locals, the dolphins are a fairly common sight in and around Old Tampa Bay at that time of year.