The Everywhereist

You owe me one.

Because Tin City sucks ass. And now you know, so you will never, ever have to go there. Not that you would. But if you found yourself starving near Naples, Florida, and your husband innocently said, “Hey, that place looks interesting,” you could unwittingly end up spending the better part of an afternoon there. And it would be somewhat awful.

I know. It happened to me.

As you know, from my tedious and extensive but nevertheless sporadic coverage of it, we were in Florida a few weeks back. We covered a lot of the state. A lot of it. This was mostly due to miscommunication, and the fact that my cousin, while lovely, tends to make plans without actually consulting people first. So while we landed in Ft. Lauderdale (where he lives), he thought we were landing in Orlando, so he planned a trip to Disney with the kids.

The result? We ended up driving three hours in the middle of the night through Florida. I do not recommend this.

My husband at a Denny's in Plantation, Florida, at 10:45pm. He is unhappy.

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Rand and I headed to Florida last month, since he had some work to do there. Heading back there is always a strange experience: I lived in Florida from the middle of second grade to halfway through my freshman year of high-school. Formative years, to be sure, sandwiched between my life in Washington. The result is a strange one: I’m a Pacific Northwesterner, and I’m one of the few people in the city of Seattle who was actually born here (of our friends, I can think of three). But I missed some pretty quintessential Seattle experiences – including Kurt Cobain’s death, the closing of Pizza and Pipes, and the rise of Microsoft.

Still, I’m a Seattle girl at heart. I am able scoff at the current prices for Bumbershoot, remembering when it was $17  for a two-day ticket (and wondering, on my 16-year-old’s budget, how I would pay for it). I recognize Pat Cashman’s voice on the Taco Time commercials (and when I interned at King-5, I’d freak out if I ever saw him in the halls). And Joel McHale, now on NBC’s Community, will always be Joel from Mercer Island. He will forever be the co-host of Jus’ Pimpin, wearing overalls and a backwards baseball cap, representing the hardcore streets of Bellevue.

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