What do you do on the last day of vacation, when you've been to all the parks and attractions you can handle in a week and you face the reality of a foot of snow back home in 36 hours? Why, you spend the day out by the pool, of course. (And you bring your journal because you haven't written in it in three days.)

I watched the Circle of Hotel Life: New arrivals wander through the pool area in street clothes and I feel like a long-time resident. Those checking out trudge slowly through the parking lot or sit forlornly with their luggage and I think, Poor Them. But that will be me tomorrow and someone will look at me that way, only to go through it themselves a few days later.

But even on the last day the pool loses its appeal and we leave the patio around 2:30 � just as the clouds move in to stay. We're off to Celebration, the town that Disney built to freak people out. I mean, it looks like Pleasantville, like it didn't have color until Tobey Maguire came along. It's like walking through the Universal backlot, or maybe it's that town in that episode of The Twilight Zone where the one guy is convinced aliens are coming (or maybe they're already there) and it turns out that everyone in town is an extraterrestrial; he's the only human. Despite all Disney's efforts, however � even Muzak piped through speakers out onto the streets � they have the same trouble with gum and bird shit stains on the sidewalks of Celebration as they do in New York, Chicago and everywhere else in between. Celebrate that, you freaks!

Following our dinner at Portofino, where we can hear Sugar Ray's concert at Universal across the lagoon, we walked along the rain-slicked piazzas near the "harbor" and off the hotel lobby. It was just a chance to spend a few last minutes out in the soft air of Florida, to take advantage of shorts weather, to prepare ourselves for tomorrow and the flights back to Philadelphia and Baltimore, to be followed by drives north to Cliffside and Johnstown.

While the vacation may be ending tomorrow, the fun and enjoyment of life, of each other, will continue wherever we go.