Quod in obscurum, sileo.

This year's edition of The Birthday Weekend was spent much the same as last year's: a land cruise down to Ft. Lauderdale, where the weekend was spent sunning by the pool, shopping, eating, sleeping, consuming adult beverages, and watching folks in town for Miami's Winter Party. The weekend was made even more festive by the presence of two different gay-focused cruise companies arriving and departing... providing four shiploads worth of guys either on pre- or post-cruise nights in the area hotels. This meant that Ft. Lauderdale's existing men-not-kids population was enhanced with, literally, boatloads of tourists.

On the Arts side of the trip, we managed to take in the Las Olas Art Festival, as well as the touring "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age Of the Pharaohs" exhibit. In between destinations, we took a nice leisurely stroll along the New River on a sunny, breezy 78° day.

On the shopping side, we discovered a Crate & Barrel Outlet, mere miles from the presumed location of the Miami IKEA, due to open sometime next year. If IKEA manages to open by my 36th birthday, we'll need to equip Dan's Jeep Liberty with a trailer hitch.

At our hotel, we made a poolside discovery: diet Coke and vanilla rum. We've been threatening to try this for years, and consumed half the rum bottle over the course of 2-1/2 days.

Of course, a stay in an all-gay hotel never seems to be without its drama. I received two, well, kindasorta indecent proposals — not that there's anything wrong with that, we'll blame it on birthday generosity — both of which I politely declined. I don't know if you can call it "irony," but I did discover that zero-degrees-of-separation isn't just an Orlando phenomenon: indecent proposer #1 ended up being, well, kindasorta indecent with the husband of indecent proposer #2 that evening. To each their own. Ahem.

When I first moved out here, I was apprehensive about going to Disney's Mannequins dance club on the so-called "gay night," much less going to a real, honest-to-goodness gay bar. Oh, how I've changed: This weekend, we spent enjoyable evenings at dark, rough-looking bars with names like "Jackhammer" and "Ramrod." Good times.

Sitting in (or, when overheating, sitting by) the hot tub at night, staring up at the darkened night sky, I alternated between being in the moment and being pensive. My thoughts ranged from, "this is as good as my life is going to get," to, "just be and take things as they come, come what may." I was doing my best to just be there and be still, and not worry. (Lather, rinse, repeat.) Maybe this pensiveness is just an annual birthday-time thing...