"We Have To Meet Again"

More tips of the day... left over from yesteray!

Tip Three: Dealing with loud drunks in the next room who stumble in after closing time and disturb your sleep: At daybreak, start calling their room every fifteen minutes. Hangovers will take it from there.

Tip Four: Best travel tool: those twelve-foot-long telescoping letter-grabbers that hospitality employees use to change messages on tall marquees. Got one in my trunk. Guests at the last place I stayed woke up this morning to: “Welcome Hotel Emergency Delousing Team.” The fun ship never docks!

Closing word for the day: Postcards! Don’t forget about the loved ones back home who missed the love-cutoff to come with you. And don’t be trite by purchasing the usual cards from spinning metal racks. Instead, schedule a virtual postcard. What’s that, you ask? I’ll tell you! E-mail those second-tier relatives with a preordained time and Internet site. Then, when they log in, they’ll find one of the many live Web cams positioned around the state. And they’ll see you standing in streaming-video splendor, holding up a personalized greeting sign. The key is finding the right cam. The long-range skyline jobs atop Doppler radar towers aren’t good unless you want to hold up a billboard. But there are plenty others: Sloppy Joe’s, the Cocowalk and Pier 60. Let’s pull one up now! Here’s the sidewalk cam from A1A in Fort Lauderdale, showing happy visitors walking the beach and cool convertibles in the background cruising the strip and . . . hold it, what’s this?

A man in a rumpled fedora has stepped into my view and is holding up a sign:
Serge, We Have To Meet Again.