This is my story, this is my song: Destination Hawaii

February. Despite the longer hours of daylight (yea!), this is the time of year when winter gets long, and kind of ugly. If you have a tropical vacation planned, maybe you are sustained by the anticipation . . .but if not, you might just need to have a spring break party.

This idea came about with my roommates in my senior year of college . . . in February. . . in Milwaukee. I think that our spring break plans were to travel to exotic destinations like Madison, Minneapolis, and suburban Chicago. Awesome. On a particularly gray, gloomy, greasy-skied day, we decided to turn up the heat, turn on all the lights, play Jimmy Buffet, drink Corona, and escape. Since then, some version of a spring break party has been a part of every dreary winter season. One year it was a progressive dinner, one year it was in a co-worker's basement that he nearly filled with sand (until his wife drew the line), and one year we traveled from North Cambridge to East Cambridge to eat poke and have a fruity cocktail. A few times we have been lucky enough to actually go somewhere, but in the off years, this is necessary therapy.

Today we initiated Elsa and Clara into this tradition as we traveled to Hawaii, put on some Hawaiian music, broke out our Hawaii t-shirts, and ate pineapple, avocado, Hawaiian fried rice, and coconut pudding. That's about as far as we got this time around . . . I had visions of paper leis and little umbrellas in our glasses, but it's too cold to go hunting this stuff down. BUT, anything involving a picnic in the living room and dessert qualifies as a special occasion, so it was a hit.