Oh, Oh, Oh-O-Oh

No, it's not what you're thinking. If you read that with a musical intonation, you might have conjured up an image of a late 80s boy band - that's right - none other than New Kids on the Block. Oh, sorry, NKOTB - their "Grown Man" name.

Catie, Lee, and I had our first ever Sister's Weekend last weekend which culminated in a shameless NKOTB concert. We met up on Saturday in Tampa and drove over to Clearwater to stay at a hotel on the beach (courtesy of Gabe). I am proud to say that I did not bring my laptop, and although I had my i-phone, my work's internet server happened to be down over the weekend, so I could not check emails or worry too much about work - even if I wanted to. It was such a welcomed coincidence. We got to our hotel around sunset and sat on the balcony overlooking the water catching up over wine and cheese (or cheese and crackers;)) that had been packed tidily in the picnic backpack Gabe and I got as a wedding gift. How easily the conversation turns to topics only discussed amongst sisters. (I'll spare the details here). As luck would have it, The Columbia Restaurant was right next door, so we walked over and settled in at our waterside table on the patio - not normally a place I would choose to sit fearing outdoor hazards such as pollen, fresh air (who knows what it contains?!), and the general "elements". But this night it was a perfect 75 degrees with a slight breeze. In true Spanish cuisine style, we all ordered salads. After our waiter made some elementary customer service mistakes, we felt free to openly trade stories of our own naive or blatantly stupid errors we made serving our time in the restaurant industry. Who doesn't like burnt french toast, melty ice cream, or 30 second, hand made grits? After we consumed as much rich bread pudding and chocolate tres leches as we could take, we headed back to the hotel and into the hot tub. Again, more stories that only occur between sisters (and girlfriends), perhaps much to the embarrassment or dismay of our intermittent guests in the hot tub. Afterwards, we all promised we'd stay up for Saturday Night Live, but alas, none of us did.

The next morning Lee and I woke up early and attempted to run on the beach, but after being deceived by many false paths through a hotel to the beach, we decided to just run along the road. We were close enough to the water. Luckily there were mile markers along the way (and a steep bridge we didn't expect!), so we pushed ourselves a bit and ended up running about a 5k. Not bad for a Saturday morning.

The three of us then packed up and found a cheap breakfast place next door. Nothing really to recall about that.

We headed to our next destination - a one night stay at a lovely Marriott hotel in Downtown Tampa (Waterside, of course, and again, courtesy of Gabe). The purpose of this was to position ourselves as close to the St. Pete Times Forum as possible so that we did not have to worry about driving in crowds and parking. This is not to say there were no obstacles. Some slight tension came upon us for a bit before we got there (perhaps due to my extreme introversion?), and since we switched to separate cars on the way there, somehow Lee ran into the unfortunate luck of running over a sharp piece of metal which rapidly deflated her tire. This was happening at the same time that Catie was following me in her car in an unspoken (and undesired) tour of downtown Tampa. After passing our hotel and circling around once more, we finally arrived! This was to my benefit though, because as I went to rescue Lee (from her apartment complex), I knew where I was going for sure this time.

Being the spunky party girls we are, we decided to lay down and take a nap until the latest moment possible to leave, at which point we would muster up enough energy to drag ourselves across the street to the long-awaited concert. Oh, we were hard core alright.

Despite our best efforts, we still made it there in time to see the opening performance (Natasha Beddingfield), which turned out to be not too painful. But it was nothing compared to the long anticipation of once again seeing our childhood teen idols, somehow almost exactly as they were 15 years ago. But we didn't care. Once they came on, we were screaming like 13-year-olds as all the ludicrous excitement and easily exploited energy took over. It was at the same time completely ridiculous and completely freeing. I reveled in the 2.5 hours of not over analyzing something, not inhibiting myself, not worrying about what anyone was thinking, and not caring about how my words or actions (or lack thereof) would impact anyone else. Wasn't this the essential spirit of adolescence - throwing oneself completely into an intangible, yet somehow realistic, fantasy? I digress. Although we did not study up or prepare ourselves like proper concert-goers, we needed little reminder of the words of each cheesy, sentimental, and simplistic (yet sometimes oddly soulful) song the 35-40 year old teen idols sang (and for the words we forgot, we just spewed out similar sounding words, yet with just as much enthusiasm). On a more thoughtful note, I did feel a bit of pity for these grown men who were reliving teenage idolhood, yet somehow believing it was real. To most of the women in the concert, while it was easy to become engrossed in the moment, I'm pretty sure we all knew it was a vicarious time warp that we were grateful to have, but that we knew was not "real". I'm not sure NKOTB thought the same, as they spoke of this not being their only tour. There were a few gratuitous announcements and plugs, half-way about social concerns, but really more about saying the popular thing. But as the hours wound down, and we heard all the songs we hoped to, we left with a sense of short-lived exhilaration and completion. We conveniently walked back to our hotel and dozed off until the next morning, when we gently eased ourselves back into reality and parted ways from our very first Sisters Weekend.