my south Florida adventure

so I am attending a conference in south Florida this weekend. I am thinking of you, Scott, as I pass the Del Webb billboard. I drove down Thursday in a brand-new Camry of the city's which was very cool--it has tempted me to consider replacing the sensible Sentra. However that cannot happen anytime soon, let's be real, people. Anyway I went shopping at the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens; let's chat about the people-watching there, shall we? The number of hoochie-mamas pushing around babies in fancy strollers while wearing hooker-ish outfits was entertaining. The fact that there were no clothes in Ann Taylor greater than a size six was also pretty funny.

I then went over to the Downtown area, which I had assumed was a downtown. No, it's a big old mall thing that is a fake downtown but not really urban but big and boxy. I walked around the Whole Foods store (OMG if we had one of these I would spend a million dollars in there!) and even went to the Purrticular Paws Pet Boutique which had four dogs (three golden retrievers and a Rottweiler, just milling around the store) and ridiculous stuff for sale. I checked out a chilling cushion thing for the dogs to hang out on but the price tag was $84.99 so I controlled myself. I had a very nice sushi meal at RA Sushi.

While driving to my hotel, I saw somebody driving in reverse on the off-ramp from I-95. Yes, someone had changed his mind about getting off at that exit and then just went in reverse to try to get back onto the interstate. this, my friends, sums up all south Florida has to offer.

I am the youngest person at my meeting; of the 36 attendees, only 6 are women and there are only 5 native Floridians. Several of the attendees are retired Jersey police officers who moved to various south Florida communities.

For dinner tonight, we went to JB's on the Beach and I had a dozen oysters (from Massachusetts!) and steamed clams and a margarita and then berries with chambord over vanilla ice cream. I don't think I'll be presenting that receipt for reimbursement, I am a little embarrassed. While walking out of the restaurant, one of my fellow conference-goers says to me, "you know who you remind me of? Rachael Ray. Do you know who she is?"