Lesson 1: All-Inclusive Is The Same Thing As All You Can Eat.

Let me tell ya, doesn't matter how many stars a hotel is sporting and how pretty to view from your room, three weeks is a long time to spend in a resort.  While it is nice to have someone make your bed, do your laundry,  and draw your bath every day, it is an inordinate amount of time to spend eating 3 meals a day in a restaurant - even with 12 restaurants and room service to choose from. 

Nearly every hotel these days has a buffet and in places like Vegas, they are legendary.  But even epic buffets with never ending displays of foods, mountains of baked goods, and platters of meats and cheeses can get old after a week.  By the end of week 2 of our Jamaican odyssey my friend Carol was referring to each and every meal at the buffet as "bellying up to the trough." 

Not all travelers are as jaded as Carol and I who have, over the last 15 years lived, off hotel food for weeks at a time in 4 and 5 star resorts in at least 5 different countries.  One morning at breakfast last week we bumped in a couple of wide eyed buffet loving guests who actually brought Tupperware containers to each meal so they could take food back up to their room.  No, seriously, these people packed in their suitcases, amongst their Speedos and Hawaiian shirts a full set of airtight food containers expressly for the purpose of porting food from the buffet to their suite. That is dedication to getting "bang for your buck."

Lesson 2: You Don't Need X-Ray Vision To See The Truth

One of the other interesting things about resort living is how people dress for different meals. While working at an event, I only dress for dinner during one of our cocktail parties or gala dinners.  The rest of the time I show up for meals in what I wore to work that day, and often find myself slurping my spaghetti next to a couple decked out in sequined evening wear.  The other night Carol and I found ourselves once again dining in the buffet when a pair of honeymooners came in for dinner. It was clear that they had spent most of the afternoon at the beach bar and hadn't taken the time to go up to their room to change for dinner.  Fair enough, this happens when you're caught in the throws of vacationing and post-wedding bliss. However, there are limits. The husband was wearing a swimsuit and a t-shirt, while his bride was wearing a sheer hot pink beach cover up over her black bikini - which might have been passable, had her bikini not been a ruffled thong with half of the ruffles firmly wedged between her buttocks.  The poor maître d' nearly strained his neck muscles trying to turn his head to look away as he held her chair out for her, and I'm pretty sure every diner in the restaurant wanted to reach over and pull her suit out of her ass as she strutted past their table.  I would have done it myself if Carol had not needed me to perform the Heimlich on her has she nearly choked to death on her laughter.

 Lesson 3: Getting Your Tubes Tied Won't Stop You From Lactating

 I am an artificial sweetener junkie and I won't deny it.  I am the person who goes to Starbucks and orders a venti non-fat latte with 4 Splendas mixed in.  I sprinkle it on my cereal and in the summer I dip my strawberries in it instead of sugar.  So you can well imagine my horror when one morning over a much needed cup of coffee with Carol, our friend Carlos, another artificial sweetener addict,  announced that during a recent visit to the Mayo Clinic for some tests his doctor informed him that one of the documented side effects of excessive consumption of these  pseudo-sugars is lactation in elderly women.  No. Seriously. Until this conversation I had been happy to run the risk of cancer from saccharin even when Tab was killing lab rats in the 80's, and have long been bragging that I am already preserved and will not need to be embalmed upon my death.  I'm good with the idea of dying from my addictions but I am not prepared to be a lactating septuagenarian.

Lesson 4: It's Awkward When You Find Out Your Husband Is Dating Your Best Friend's Fiancé

While Carol and I have been the best of friends for about 15 years, we only ever see each other when we're working on one of these events.  We have lived in different states and different countries with mountains and oceans between us.  So while we've shared intimate details of our lives over the years, this was the first time I have actually met one of her beaus.  So I was very excited to be meeting her fiancé, Lou.  One night Carol, Lou, my husband Dave and I went for a nice dinner at the hotel's steakhouse on the beach.  It was a nice candlelit dinner for four in which Carol and I downed the better part of two bottles of wine as we sat side-by-side watching Dave and Lou engage in what I can only describe as a bromance. Carol, who kept looking at me as if the whole thing was my fault, was muttering "Shut the fuck up!" at Lou as he and Dave spouted lines from Caddyshack and The Big Lebowski at each other.

Imagine if you will Dave, in his best Ted Knight baritone  "Dannnny!"  to which Lou responds "You're a lot of woman, you know that? Yeah, wanna make 14 dollars the hard way?"  As Carol leans over to me and snidely remarks "I'm so glad we could join Dave and Lou on their date." Dave slaps the table top and shouts "Shomer Shabbas Dude" to a doe eyed and blushing Lou who responds with "You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I'll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger 'til it goes 'click.' " Oh to be in Jamaica when the bromance is in bloom.

Ya learn something new every day boys and girls.