Stuart Yahoo Florida State Legislature Weather Forecast Current Weather Hurricane Info Walt Disney World My Main Page Wedding Wedding Advice Long Island Rook Princeton WPI Grab Bag Thesis Don'ts Friends Bottom 95 Pool Party '98 Peter A. Dutton, Jr. dutton@adapco.com November 5, 1997

Florida! In April 1995, I was transferred to Stuart, Florida, to work yet again for Northrop Grumman Corporation. I had worked for Grumman for six summers while I was in college, started working for them full time after grad school, and was laid off eight months later in June 1994. It was nice to have a job again, but it's also nice to be back up north now - I started work for Adapco on Long Island in January 1996. Stuart is on the Atlantic Ocean about 40 miles north of West Palm Beach (remember kids, Palm Beach is the place with lousy beaches but beautiful mansions and way-upscale shopping, and West Palm Beach is simply awful); it's kind of Northeast South Florida or Southeast Central Florida (or as the locals descibe it, the heart of the "Treasure Coast"), and not really near anything in particular. It's a nice enough town, but not very exciting, I'm afraid. I did find a fun spot to hang out, meet people, and to rent good movies at Groovy Movies (which is near Confusion Corner). I hope it's still there. If so, go and get a movie and tell Zane I said hello! The weather in Florida sucked. Sunshine State, my butt! It rained almost every day for six months, including 25 inches on one spectacular October day. Granted, it usually rained (gallon-sized raindrops) for only half an hour in the afternoon, but it was enough to make everything even more humid and miserable that evening. The forecast (at least from April through November) was always high in the 90's with a 90% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. You can see for yourself at the Florida weather forecast or current Florida weather conditions pages. Hurricanes were also a constant threat; the Florida State University hurricane information page was the most popular page at work. And what would central Florida be without Walt Disney World? (Answer: Not much). It was only two-and-a-half hours away, so I got a Florida Resident Premium Annual Pass and visited often. Great place to people-watch. The English bar at Epcot is also a great place for a pint of Guinness. Anyway, next time you visit, see if you can pick out some of these hidden Mickeys scattered around the park. By the way - hats off to the only people to visit me from elsewhere while I was there: Sue (my then-fiancée, now wife), Danny (my brother), and Rob Marks (who really came for the golf). Rob wanted me to mention him more on my pages, so there you go. Yay Rob. My Macarena Story While the Macarena for most people conjures up images of tacky weddings, for me and my wife it evokes our trip to the Keys over Labor Day Weekend 1995, way before almost anyone in the United States had ever heard of it. Certainly way before any other English-speaking resident. We were at the Comfort Inn in Florida City (a pit of a town south of Miami - the motel was fine, though) and I was flipping through cable, when my eye was caught by a video playing on a Spanish channel. The tune was bouncy and moderately catchy, and so I left it on, much to Sue's dismay. She hated it then and there. Still, I left it on, assuming that once it was over, we'd never hear it again. The next day, on our way to Key West, I was flipping through the radio, when we heard the same song on a Spanish-language station. Finding this a rather funny coincidence, I decided to leave it on, but if I remember correctly, Sue whined until I changed it. And there we thought we'd heard the last of it. Fast-forward six months. A bastardized half-English version of the song is starting to sweep the country. By summer, *everyone* will have heard it. It will become the biggest-selling song in the world. It will spawn the stupidest most popular dance imaginable. It will enter the pop culture unlike any song in recent memory. The Vice-President will joke about it. But on the bridges to Key West back in 1995, we thought we would no way in hell ever hear the song again. We couldn't have possibly been more wrong. It's one thing to say a song won't be a hit and then have it reach #1. But saying a song will never be heard ever again and having it go on to be the most popular song in history is a whole other level of wrongness. We have a phrase for it: That wasn't just wrong, it was "Macarena wrong". And no, we didn't have it played at our wedding.