So perhaps you've gathered that I like me some celebrities. Young ones, old ones, it girls, out girls, actors, musicians, newscasters from the seventies, I don't care. If you're more famous than I am, I would like to watch you drink your latte.

An US Weekly from 1996 is better than no US Weekly. That's my motto.

And, as my husband says, a woman's obsession with celebrities is no different than a man's obsession with sports.

Except that celebrities are about a thousand times more interesting.

So, this little vacation I was on, it was very good. And it was good for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it occurred about 1,180 miles away from my office.

Before we left Nashville, my mother informed me that we couldn't get cell service because the house they were renting was across the street from Walker's Point, where George and Barbara Bush and their merry band of Bushlets spend their summers. Her theory involved the secret service scrambling the airwaves for security reasons. (This is the same woman who reported that Angelina Jolie was having her twins in Connecticut, so you know. Grain of salt.)

Actually, you can't really blame my mother for throwing me these celebrity breadcrumbs. If you could see how excited I get over even the tiniest scrap, you'd start feeding me bum leads, too. I'm an animal.

Shortly after our arrival, my father informed me that there was a pair of Field Glasses in a leather case on the sun porch.

"Did he just say field glasses?" my husband asked, as I ran inside to grab the binoculars.

"He did. Spying on former presidents with binoculars is uncouth; whereas spying on former presidents with field glasses is sporty and upscale. Like bird watching."

And I was hardly alone as I conducted my field research.

Throughout the day, carloads of people would stop in front of our house with their cameras and binoculars, trying to catch a glimpse of the Bushes across the way. Meanwhile, my younger brother, who is more evolved than the rest of us, and wouldn't be caught dead with binoculars OR field glasses, kept muttering words like "Ugly Americans", "This is sick," and "What's wrong with you people?"

There's nothing wrong with US or People!

(Or InTouch or Star, for that matter. Okay, Star is out of control, but ...)

We're just having fun. Really.

Good, old, ugly American fun.