Reminder - the whole trip was based around the Key West Kid Show's Harry Potter lookalike contest. I'm apparently the only radio employee in all of South Florida who has read the books, so they've been creatively paying me extra to emcee these contests around the Keys and on the mainland. My payment for doing this show was a free hotel room Friday and Saturday in Key West.

Friday afternoon: Neal actually arrives home from work before I'm finished. I watch him drive by the station while talking to him on the phone, then run home and start to pack.

I go the store to pick up some supplies: cigarettes, magazines and nectarines for the trip, and champagne for us to pop open in the hotel that night, because I have to be up early for the Kids Show, so we're taking it easy and staying in.

When I get to the cash register, I can't find my ID, and they won't sell me the bubbly. This is fine - I could be 20, you know? I mean, they see me in there every damn day, but whatever. I really don't mind, but DAMN.

Why the fuck does everyone have to make a big deal about it? Instead of making me feel better, they made me feel like a sneaky 19-year-old. First, the cashier asks for my ID. I shuffle around in my purse for a while, then realize I probably left it in my going-out bag from Ladies' Night Wednesday.

"I don't have it with me. Sorry."

"You don't have any ID?"

"No."

"You don't have any ID?"

"NO."

Cashier then stares at me blankly. For like, a minute.

Me (finally): "Um, you can just take the alcohol off the total."

Cashier: "..."

Me: "Really. I'm in a hurry."

Now we begin the whole production, with the cashier shaking her head and apologizing over and over and taking a damn decade to just remove the two bottles of champagne from the bill.

Then she has to call the manager over to sign off on the corrected total. Fine. But she tells him why, and he proceeds to launch into this diatribe about the nature of IDs and how they almost got in trouble LAST WEEK, and man, they just have to be careful, you know? It's nothing personal or anything. They just don't want to get into trouble. (Repeat the last three sentences twice.) When he finally shuts up, I just stare at him and say in my best monotone, "THAT's interesting."

Finally, I was free to get the hell out of there. Next on the agenda are stressful phone calls to the bars I'd made an appearance at Wednesday night, enhanced by a sweaty, stressed-out search of the house and every purse I own. (Fortunately, that's like, three.)

Long story short (TOO LATE!), my license had slid down between my stick column and the driver's side seat.

Neal and I [i]finally[/i] began our drive down.

Friday Night: Just like I said. Lots of relaxing. Drank the champagne Neal ended up buying. Watched some bad TV. Enjoyed nice clean room that we didn't have to keep neat.

Saturday morning: Got up and did Kid's Show. Had good turnout. Neal sat in the corner and read the entire time, keeping his distance from the living, breathing birth control with legs that were running all around.

Saturday afternoon: Went shopping. I repeat: WENT SHOPPING. Had a great time, but we burned some cash and a debit card. I can't talk about it anymore, or I'm going to feel guilty. But I've been gleefully checking out my gorgeous new stuff since we've been home, and I'm wearing new pants. OK, and a new necklace. Shut up.

After we spent Monty Burns' net worth, we went swimming. Neal ordered a Lime Daiquiri. This may very well be the most horrid drink in the entire world. It looks like someone blended Oscar the Grouch with some ice, and that's pretty much how it tastes, too.

Saturday evening: We hang out in the room for a while (!), grab a shower, then meet my boss for a fabulous dinner. You can say what you want about the Keys, but no one can ever claim there's no where to get decent food. Sure, there are crappy restaurants - but they're far outnumbered by yumminess.

Boss tips us off on a band playing downtown, and damn, they were great. Wild cover band that played everything from Violent Femmes to The Doors to The Turtles. We barely talk, they're so much fun to watch.

We run around to a couple of bars after that, but it's a pretty quiet Saturday night. We do get tired after a while, so Neal pays one of those guys who drags a little bench around with his bicycle. That is a surprisingly enjoyable experience. Nice and smooth, with a gentle breeze. I wish I had a guy on a bike to drag me around from my meetings to my lunch to back home. Then he could get a smaller bike and drag me from room to room. God, I'm embarrassed to write that.

Sunday morning: I wake up at about 7 a.m. to the light still on with with a very sharp rectangular pain in my back. It takes me a couple of minutes to realize that I wam sleeping on Neal's Tom Clancy novel. You know when you're woken up out of a sleep, and you don't want to move or think or do [i]anything[/i]? Well, there iss actually a minute where I lie there thinking that I'll just go back to sleep without moving the novel. Fortunately, I snap out of it and remove the spine from my spine. (Get it?)

The next time I wake up iss 11:51 a.m. I roll over and whisper, "Baby, we've overslept past our checkout time by an hour."

Neal: "Oh, shit. Mmmm. Zzzzz..."

He calls the front desk and gets checkout extended so we can shower and pack up, but I have to send a maid away who doesn't speak English. I stand in the doorway in my underwear and just keep repeating, "We got it extended until 12:30!" While she gives me the stink-eye and insists, "Eleven! Eleven 0' clock!"

I finally just smile brightly, say, "Thanks!" and shut the door.

We pack up and do a little more(!) shopping.

I try on an absolutely beautiful bias-cut black skirt that was Moulin Rouge without the skank factor, but decide I don't need it.

So we hit the road. We talk and sweat the whole way home. We get a mile from our house, and THEN there's traffic. As we are trying to circumvent the line of cars, Neal notices two little girls selling lemonade. Neal says he's incredibly hot and thirsty and he simply must have some lemonade. We give them a five-dollar bill for two 50-cent cups of lemonade, and tell them to keep the change. Neal and I both smile at their screams of joy as we pulled away.

First sip.

Neal: "Aaaugh! So sweet!"

Me: "Dude, those little girls sold us lemon-scented glucose."

We drink it up anyway and head home, tired and happy. I think we've told each other 783 times what a good time we had this past weekend.

Oh, one more thing. Neal did a clich�! When we get home, he says, "Hey, why don't we both look at all the stuff we bought!"

As I'm unwrapping garments from the first shopping bag, I suddenly realize I'm unwrapping that Moulin Rouge skirt. He had bought it for me and had the saleswoman slip it in the bag.

I know, it's the oldest one in the book. But no one had ever done it for me before, and it felt so amazing.

Hmm. Kind of like Neal.