Taylor, Rained

Living and working in the tourist corridor can be a blessing and a curse. The curse most often comes in the form of clueless drivers and traffic, and in a lack of dining options. We generally have to choose between pizza, Chinese (all-you-can eat buffets or deli-style take-out places) or chain restaurants — that's about it. And so it was that our ninth-anniversary dinner was at Red Lobster. (I succumbed to the Endless Shrimp ads, and Dan humored me.)

Overstuffed (even without ordering a dessert), we decided to walk off dinner by taking advantage of one of the blessings: free entry into theme parks. One such place is hosting a food-and-wine festival and concert series; last night's featured artist was Taylor Dayne. This gave us the opportunity for a pleasant 30-minute stroll from car to stage, followed by a free concert.

I felt bad for Ms. Dayne, in the "this is what my career has come to?" vein. We saw her third, 45-minute show of the evening, on her fourth of five nights, and the outdoor venue (which can probably hold over 1,000 people) was seating fewer than 200 theme park visitors.

Then, two songs into her set, it started raining. Not a typical Florida rain, mind you, but rather a slow, sprinkling, misting kind of thing. The stage, as well as the first five rows of benches, is under a roof, so I'm not sure she knew why suddenly people scrambled either for the exits or for the remaining front-row seats. We chose the latter, and enjoyed a worthy concert, complete with the sappy Taylor Dayne love songs we both remembered from the 80's, which made our anniversary evening quite complete. (I think our closeness managed to turn off a couple of nearby folk, including the fellow who seemed to have been cruising me all evening...!)

Just before the concert ended, so did the rain. Strolling through the park, we decided to hang out for the nightly fireworks show. (We can hear the biggest explosions every night from home; it seemed novel to watch the show with a soundtrack.) Unfortunately, it turned out the sprinkling rain during the concert was only the prelude to the real storm. We ended up joining the crowds in a mass exodus as the final moments of the fireworks show lit up the rainy skies behind us. What had been a 30-minute stroll in became a 15-minute power-walk out.

I find myself tempted to delve into awful puns, such as saying, the evening wasn't a wash-out, and our spirits weren't really dampened. I'd best stop before you want to call me all wet.