"pure relaxation"

This was the label--"pure relaxation"--for the massage I received on the way home from Lake Meade on Sunday. We all stopped at a day-spa for a little bit of pre-home-arrival pampering. And it was worth it. The massage and the weekend getaway, I mean. Pure relaxation, indeed.

Besides hankering down for a weekend of boating, eating, drinking and talking with my gal pals, two other pleasantries came my way: my laptop served us well at the lakehouse for tunes of all sorts and reasons; I got to see two brief, wild, and woolly thunderstorms overtake Lake Meade. Interesting friends, interesting music, and interesting weather!?!?!? These things make me happy.

During the second storm on Saturday (the first only lasted 20 minutes before sunshine reappeared), we settled around the big dining table for "The 80s Game" brought into the mix by Kelly. Of course, I raced to the computer to throw on some 80s tunes, and several spontaneous sing-a-longs accompanied our attempts to remember trivia from our teenage years (yes, I'm dating myself. Hi ho.). Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce, Prince, Crowded House, AC/DC, Robert Plant, Pat Benatar, so on. I got stumped by a "music" question about the song ABC wrote about as a tribute to Smokey Robinson......anyone?......anyone? "When Smokey Sings" has been bouncing around the ol' noggin since. Damn! What threw me was hearing "ABC" and thinking it was the television station, not the English pop band also responsible for "Shoot that Poison Arrow" and "The Look of Love." Mon dieu!!!!

When I teach my Pop Music course to college students BORN in the 80s, I'm always amazed at how crazynutso that decade was--musically and otherwise. It was a very diverse and schizophrenic decade, IMHO. From The Grateful Dead to The Who to Rick Astley to Billy Ray Cyrus to The Cult to Madonna to Whitney to WHAM! to Aerosmith to Metallica.......head's a-spinnin.' My college undergrads are (usually) surprise and/or amused that this is the decade that I still hold dear to my aging heart. But you can't go back to high school (and, why would you want to) but there is something about the years of it and the soundtrack of it that make for a fun game of trivia during a thunderstorm at a magnificent lakehouse with pals. The "Me Decade," for real.

So, thanks girls for a great weekend and for those of you not there, it was the relaxation, contemplation and interaction that we all should make time for. One day left of Diss writing, and I'm back in the Chair, but much more energized and confident. Cheers to the Girls Weekend and reliving the tunes that got us there!