All I Ever Wanted

Mr. Muscato and I have heeded the good advice of Misses Caffey, Carlisle, Schock, Valentine, and Weidlin and are making the most of this President's Day weekend.  We've hied off to Dubai (just up the road, don't you know) to our favorite Big Silly Resort Hotel.

Fortunately, it's a place that is pretty much what Biosphere could have been had it been decorated by Messrs. Waldorf and Astoria (and, yes, I know there are no such people.  On the other hand, I firmly believe that had they existed, they wouldn't have sired anything as trashy as Paris Hilton, but we're heading very far off topic here).  It's lavishly over-the-top and entirely self-contained, from the dozen or so restaurants to the vast and highly environmentally suspect mini-rainforest that graces the multi-acre lobby.  It's a great place to be this weekend, as Dubai has been hit by what today seemed just about the worst sandstorm we've seen in our six-plus years out in these parts.

So here in our own little world (as the sand howls by outside and the view is reduced to what looks vaguely like a scene from Miss Gish's great epic The Wind), we've done what we like doing best on minibreaks:  nothing at all.  Breakfast, spa, lunch, spa, cocktails, dinner, collapse in room.  If we're terribly ambitious tomorrow, we'll mix it up a little bit and maybe throw in a massage or sit in the rainforest for an hour or two.  And you know what?  We've earned it, we need it, and on Sunday we'll drive back home (presuming it's possible to see more than a car-length by then) all the better for it.  God knows what mischief those damn dogs will have been up to, though...