We left the house today around 10:45 to drop my daughter and her boyfriend off at the Warped Tour concert up in West Palm Beach and figured we'd take a ride and see where we ended up. We headed east first, into the high-walled, opulent, "we don't really want you sightseeing here" seaside charm of Palm Beach. It's gorgeous. As you're riding past the gated driveways overhung with lush tropical foliage, you can catch glimpses of the kind of fantasy life huge amounts of money can buy. We're talking mansions and villas of every shape and size - mostly BIG. Lots of them. When I jokingly asked my husband if we'd ever live there, he said even with the smallest house we couldn't afford the taxes. I said, "Taxes? Are you kidding? We couldn't even afford to keep our hedges trimmed the way these people do." I'm talking scultped walls of greenery with not a leaf out of place. Wow.

Figuring we couldn't afford to split an order of French Fries on Palm Beach's trendy Worth Avenue, we headed south to Delray Beach, to the much more reasonable - and REAL - Atlantic Ave. Here, I needn't be ashamed of the really cute maxi dress I bought recently at Target. Honestly, I think if you mentioned Target in Palm Beach people would just stare at you like you were speaking Chinese or you had some rare but potentially dangerous infectuous disease.

Anyway, after strolling up and down Atlantic Ave. and peeking into shop windows, we lunched in a Japanese-Thai restaurant. I ordered the Massaman Curry with tofu instead of meat. Yeah, I know. Shoulda gone with the chicken, but I thought I'd to the virtuous thing and go cholestral-free. Not doing that again. But whatever kind of Zinfandel I had was really, really good. I wished I had paid more attention to that.

Driving another 30 minutes or so south, we came to the northern reaches of Fort Lauderdale, where we stopped in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea for another glass of wine (or beer, in hubby's case) at a restaurant called Aruba, which is right on the beach. The views of the ocean are spectacular, although did I mention that it's pretty much been raining all day, or threatening to rain? Not a beach day, or we would have done that too. I suggested we should keep going south and have dinner in Miami and dessert in Key West, but hubby wasn't having any of that.

We're home now. The kids are getting a ride home, so we don't have to worry about that. It's still gray and drizzly, but we're off to buy some salmon to grill with dijon mustard and veggies. Then maybe we'll watch some of those Jon Stewarts and Two & A Half Men we have stored up on the TiVo. Don't you just love Saturdays?