Back when we were in New York, (Like how I constantly refer to the one interesting thing that's happened to me over the past three months? Like how it seems we were in New York for weeks when in actually, it was only a little over forty-eight hours? One of the rules to traveling with Monica and I is that it doesn't matter how tired you are or how much sleep you missed out on by taking the 4:00 am bus we scheduled to get four more hours out of the outing, you must be willing to squeeze as much entertainment as you possibly can into every single minute you are there. You must not stop moving. You must not complain. You will walk from the Upper East Side to Lower Manhattan and you will like it because it's better to walk around exploring than take a cab. You will also make no mention of the fact that we've stopped and eaten at seven different restaurants since breakfast and it's only 2:00 pm. You will just enjoy the chance to sit down for a minute and eat your third fifth seventh cupcake of the day. Also: Like how I drag these posts about New York out to make it seem like I have a waaaay more interesting life than I really do? That's because it beats the hey Interweb, I picked up my kids' dirty underwear off the floor again today kinds of posts and that's pretty much all I have once you take away the couple of you-are-not-a-mother-today days I get each year. And one more thing: Like how this entire paragraph is parenthetical, pretty much one, undeveloped thought and now you can't even remember the sentence I started way back up there at the beginning of this post? Me too.)

Anyway, back when we were in New York, we stumbled across the Times Square Kiss-In, held to commemorate V-J day and this photo, taken in Times Square in 1945.

On the anniversary of the end of World War II, the Times Square Alliance invited couples from all generations and of all types to celebrate again in Times Square, in honor of the US Armed Forces and in celebration of the universal ideals of peace, love and hope.

A special invitation was extended to couples whose kisses bridge boundaries, be they religious, political, racial, national or otherwise, as well as veterans of WWII, returning veterans from the Iraq War, and couples in costumes commemorating the original 1945 kiss.

I'm not a big fan of the Times Square area. There are so many interesting, unusual, un-experienced restaurants and business in New York, why would you want to travel all the way there and then eat at Applebee's, look at an ad for Coke, and then go shop for sporting goods at Modell's? I want to do something I can't do in, oh, EVERY OTHER CITY IN AMERICA. (Although we did stop by the new Pop-Tart store and the 50th anniversary Hello Kitty store. Those don't exist in D.C... and they were pretty unimpressive.)

Times Square is, however, on the way to Broadway... and I am a big fan of Broadway. So it wasn't too far out of our way to stop by the Kiss-In and see what was up.

Unconditional Surrender, by John Seward Johnson