New York, New York!

As a young boy growing up on the east coast of the most northern section of South Florida, I was still somehow brought up Southern. This naturally had to do with my parents, both of whom were raised as good Southerners themselves in turn by their good Southerner parents. A part of this upbringing is learning to hate all things that fall north of the Mason-Dixon line, which, of course, is a rather ambiguous line that I couldn't begin to tell you where it lies. I could tell you, though, that New York City and all things surrounding it (Boston, Connecticut, etc.), was "Yankee" territory, and as such wasn't even worth thinking about.

Of course, then I married a girl whose family raised her like a good Ohio family would, and she naturally grew to like most anywhere, so long as it has somewhere for one to take an inexplicably long walk. New York easily falls into that category.

She spent a little over a month in the city this past summer training for her job and living in a dorm in Harlem. I visited her up there towards the end of her tenure and had a great time exploring the city despite my upbringing. I came to realize that the yankee folk weren't all that bad, although I'm sure some deep-seeded part of me cringed here and there. Anyway, it was a good enough experience to know that we'd enjoy coming back there someday.

So, we put a plan together, saved some money, shopped around, and found the best deal possible for a New York vacation. Christmas was right out because of costs and our collective desire to spend it with our family, even though she really wanted to see the Rockefeller Christmas tree, and New Years quickly followed suit, simply because nobody likes to be around that many people at once, even "woo girls." (you know, the kind that shout out "woo!" whenever anything remotely exciting happens: their round of drinks arriving, spotting Mr. Handsome across the dance floor, piling into a cab like their playing sardines, etc.) We settled on Valentine's Day weekend, which just so happened to coincide with President's Day weekend, giving us an extra, free day off from work.

IT WAS GREAT. We stayed in a hotel that we could have never afforded without the shopping around and experimenting with different packages on different websites, and the rest of the rather uppity crowd staying there could tell. I think it had something to do with us strolling in carrying a "thank you!" bag from a random drug store/candy distributor wearing our GAP and Express clothes while they lounged around in the lobby sipping $18 martinis in their 9-piece suits and Rolex watches. Whatever, we have character. I was always taught that was more important than money any day of the week (expect maybe Saturdays... I can't remember).

We did the usual site-seeing and restaurant hopping. We looked out over the city from the Empire State Building's 86-floor observatory (where the wind was whipping at about 35 degrees), we spent a couple hours looking at things we couldn't understand in the Museum of Modern Art (including some rather provocative pieces that even I blushed at), I lit up like I was six years old again when walking through the massive halls of dinosaur bones at the Museum of Natural History (the highlight came when Meghan and I sat down to rest our legs, and I overheard the woman on her other side claiming that a certain bone collection was a stegosaurus when it was CLEARLY a brontosaurus; I begged Megs to scold her, but all I got was a look that told me to quit nerding out), and we spent a couple afternoons in a row walking around Columbus Circle and Central Park. We ate barbecue, Italian, pizza, hot dogs, cupcakes, muffins, chocolate chip pancakes, "carrot hash," a B.E.L.T. sandwich, and I discovered a new love for the "cafe au lait," a half-coffee, half-steam milk creation that's half as expensive as my traditional latte and gives me about the same kick. Overall, we probably did more eating than site-seeing, but it was all awesome.

The best part, though, was just getting away together. For the past week or two, I was sick and then she was sick. Her parents were here for her birthday, I had to take a trip to Tallahassee, I had to take a trip to Orlando, I had to stay up late working on presentations, she had to stay late at work to finish weighing people in, and on and on it went. Our lives just started to take over our time together, and we both needed to push the reset button and just take a step back to catch our breath. To have a few days that were unplanned and unscheduled, to unplug and unwind, to hold hands and take a walk together, to sit on a bench and simply watch God's nature flowing, it was what we needed. She said it best when she pointed out how nice it was that there was this big, beautiful park in the middle of this always-moving, always-busy metropolis for people to take a step back and breathe. It was almost a metaphor for the way the past couple weeks had been for us, and it really tied the whole trip together.

Of course, on the way back, I manned up and took the middle seat, only to have the sneezing/coughing/sniffling teenage boy with the overgrown hair and a severe lack of couth sitting next to me. That's how much I love my wife. Lucky for her, the connecting flight to Tampa didn't have a middle seat, or she'd have shown how much she loves me too, believe that.

But now we're back, and it's back to work. I don't dread that so much, I just dread the laundry that we'll have to do tonight. NO THANKS! Of course, if we were still in NYC, we'd have to drag it down to the corner coin laundry and wait for a spot behind all those loud-mouthed, opinionated, liberal city-folk. Damn yankees.