Brit Chick Runs

Before I went to HLS, I purrr-chased a new bra.

Not just any bra – a ‘boosts you TWO cup sizes bra’!

And I needed it – I have not been blessed with a big chest (or any chest at all, really). Never have been, never will. I could weigh 200 pounds and still have the boobage of a 9 year old boy.

BUT, with my fake 2 cups added on? Well, it’s like being a real live WOMAN! Howevz, I have a newfound sympathy for those of you that don’t need some gel in your holders – doing Gillians’ 30 Day Shred Level 3 was twice as difficult with boobs! I was doing the arm-swing-across-chest-warm-up-thing, and kept hitting myself. It was so weird, and really quite irritating. Maybe having a flat chest is a blessing in disguise…

Tofu I made last night – marinated and roasted in soy sauce, EVOO, liquid smoke, garlic, mirin and rosemary. H.o.l.y.c.o.w. Twas amaze!

Since I’m on the subject of getting personal – here’s some more random titbits that I don’t regularly bring up on here:

I LOVE seeing muscles in my legs! My Gillian 30 Day Shred DVD only plays on my laptop, so when I do it, the TV is off and I can see my leg reflection in it – I get immense satisfaction out of seeing my calf muscles working!

Have you been reading Lisa’s blog / her ‘Floating‘ series? I was getting caught up on it today, and ooohmygosh. Literally, I had shivers! The whole story is so ROMANTIC! I want what she’s got!! So badly..maybe I need to start finding some men online to fall in crazy love with

A banana-raspberry smoothie, made with raspberries from my granneh – I took a picture cos the thing was SO thick (thank you, Mr Xanthan Gum) but the pic hardly does it justice. In fact, it’s just a crappy picture of a boring looking smoothie. #fail

Here’s a secret: There was a blogger I was dying to meet at HLS, who I’d never met before. I was fairly new to her blog before I went, and I thought she was perfect – you know, stunning, writes well, beautiful husband, lovely perfect life etc etc. I literally couldn’t believe a person could be so Perfect, with a capital P. Then I met her. (hehe, this sounds worse than it is :-p) She was nice.. but she seemed real unfriendly – it was almost like I wasn’t worth bothering with, because I wasn’t a part of her ‘clique’. Of course, that was my perception, and she may well have been in a rush / I was just feeling negative etc etc, but from my point of view, it was almost … nice (?) to see that she wasn’t as Perfect as I thought she was – she just seemed unfriendly. It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you compare yourself to perfection, yannae, so it was kinda a relief!

Did you know, the second I sat down to eat my lunch, I spilt my first mouthful of chickpeas all down my front? Then dropped my fork? Twasn’t a good start.

Those chickpeas were coated in a peanut flour sauce – and before y’all get your knickers in a twist about my not eating enough, eating too much, eating fibre, only eating pale foods, only eating round foods, eating *insert ‘problem’ here*, I’ll point out that there was an un-photogged banana-chia smoothie on the side. It was scrumful, tyvm.

Thankfully, the meal itself was darn scrummy

My name is Freya, and I like old man food.

Bran crispbreads? Dry, boring looking, and fibre-y – yet I LOVE them. I like them because they’re so dry, in the same way that I like dry cereal and dry toast. I’m sure they’d be equally nice with jam or something spread on them too – like cereal is also delish with milch – but dry foods still hold a chamber in my heart Call me weird, call me an old man – it’s how I roll.

Cappuccinos are one of my favourite foods (yes, they are a food). They make me feel like a business woman, and a grown up! And when I go to order one (like today) at my regular shop, I feel an immense smugness that the barristers know my order. I also have highly bitter and angry thoughts if anyone other than my favourite two barristers make my cappuccino, cos I believe they’re the only two that make it just right – I once had this skinny new boy make it, and it was so wrong. The [soya] milk wasn’t frothy enough, the coffee too bitter, and the whole drink too cold. Cappuccino make is an art, people!

I wish I could rename myself Darla, Portia, or Freja.

My gran grows tomatoes like mad, and she saved up a MASSIVE haul for me – but errck, they’re starting to go soft! I’m eating them as fast as I can, without getting heartburn :/

I’ve loved the name Darla since the Buffy-days, Portia since I read it in a book at age 10 (although my passion has just been reignited – I’m reading Portia de Rossi’s book atm), and Freja because a) it reads cooler IMHO, b) my favourite supermodel is called Freja, and c) if I were ever to become a world famous dressage rider (likely story), Freja sounds more Dutch. And the Dutch kick ass at dressage. Paired with my mum’s maiden name (which actually IS Dutch), I’d sound immensely cool :-p

Oh my, I am so shallow.

I have never read Harry Potter. I got through oNE page of the first book, before realising I would hate every last second, and so I gave up. I don’t ever plan on reading them – In an odd way, I’m proud that I have resisted the craze that is Potter!

I am currently part-way through making these:

And therefore must abruptly end this post!

Question: Um…I don’t know..last book you read? Random fact about you? Last thing you baked? What you’d like to change your name to? All of the above?

PS – Kovac misses his brother, and would really quite like him to come home now

Hey ho!

I have some sad news – very sad news.

My Carter cat is missing! He disappeared on Saturday afternoon, and hasn’t been seen since. Carter never, ever leaves for more than a couple of hours at a time, he never ventures as far as the road (we have a long driveway), and he’s happy as happy can be. He adores Kovac (his brother), adores us, loves sleeping on our sofas, sneezing in our faces, lying by the warm Aga, and getting his food.

The fact that he’s been gone so long is seriously distressing; we’ve searched every nook and cranny in the house, and have spent hours and hours looking up trees and all through the woods and fields that surround our house. Nothing. I’ve been up and down the road looking on the verge, we’ve phoned all the vets in the area, and we’ve asked at our [two!] neighbours houses if they’ve seen him. Nothing.

He’s microchipped, which is something, but we have a big fear: that he’s been shot. There are a lot of gamekeepers in our area who shoot at the end of the garden and around our fields, and they breed pheasants for shooting on the other side of our fields. It seems harsh to shoot a cat – BUT, if Carter was going after their pheasant chicks (which are kept in a big pen near our fields), then they may well shoot him; the gamekeepers can charge big bucks to take people shooting and one pheasant is worth about £20! IF he was shot – which happens – it’s unlikely the gamekeepers would tell us.

Which sucks.

A lot!

It’s really tough not knowing what’s happened to him – my worst fear is that he’s stuck somewhere, and is cold and hungry and hurt, and we won’t be able to find him. Gah. Carter is our Perfect Cat – cuddly, goofy, friendly, beautiful, wonderful – we’ve never had a Perfect Cat til him, and he’s only 18months old!

—–

Anyway.

I’ll try and move onto brighter things in the post..which is tough, cos the mood in my house at the moment is pretty crum-licious, to say the least. WE MISS CARTER!

Hmm…let’s try this again…

FEET. They’re a ‘brighter thing’, right? Especially ones with a redic. tanline…

Onto brighter things!

Liiiike this lil lady!

When I got back from the airport, the first thing I did (despite feeling like I was about to wet myself, for realz) was go and poke her and give her a kiss in her stable. And you know what? She looked thrilled to see me! She just could. not. stop. being all groomy and doe-eyed and sweet – she genuinely missed me and my Hitler-style schooling sessions. Nothin’ like a Chika face to get you out of a jetlag-gloom.

Next furry blob on my hitlist was a cat – Kovac had packed his briefcase and left for the day, cos we had a bloke building shelves in (he doesn’t like strange men), but Carter was chilling on the sofa, sunning himself:

*Yes, that’s Chika again – but I already played my Carter-photo card at the start of the post :-p*

Waah :’( He seemed pleased to see me too – he wouldn’t stop burying into me when I picked him up

You know what I really missed whilst I was away though? Not my mum. Not Chika. Not the boys. Not Hannah. Not Ian. Not my bed.

Nope, it was…..

….

….parsnips, squash and oats!!

OH yes. I went there!

There is no moment quite like the first bite of a sweet, roasted parsnip after not having one for 8 days – 8 days too long.

Never again, My Parsnip Beauties. Never again.

(Watermelon ‘mousse’, that didn’t do the mousse-thang..hurrumph. Stupid xanthan gum.)

Aside from eating many, many bowls of oats, and many, many kgs of parsnips (literally), it hasn’t been a good week – my mum’s best friend’s mother died the other day, which my mum is obviously very upset by; we’re both going to the funeral on Friday. Then Carter’s gone missing, Hannah is leaving Officially For Good tomorrow,  my job interview for my dream job has been withdrawn (they had to make a decision whilst I was in the US), Tig miiight be being retired – which is upsetting Hannah – and Chika’s having a few age issues too, which is upsetting me! I think the Powers That Be have decided to throw a whole bunch of bad stuff at us at once.

Gah.

In tough times though, there is only a handful of things that can make it better.

Number one? Putting Vincent to work!

That, my dears, would be a yellow tomato soup I made My gran grows about a trillion little yellow tomatoes every year, and they are delicious. She’d saved up a huuuuge haul for me whilst I was gone, so I had to get cracking on them! My soup turned out scrumptious. Oh yes it did.

The other solution to sad times is to bake, bake, bake. Or more specifically, bake for other people, so you can out Hugh Jass smiles on their faces! For example: I hadn’t seen my gran and grandpa in a couple of weeks, so I baked them some apple-crumb-cake-muffins from Vegan With A Vengeance. Sadly only 9 arrived at the destination, as SOMEONE ate 3 before I could take them over…but it did nay matter: they were declared ‘the most awesome muffins EVER!!” Freya: 1. Evil Powers That Be: 0.

Hannah actually requested another batch to take with her tomorrow, so that’s what I’ve done today: donned my chef hat and baked muffins and granola bars for her:

Seriously, she should pay me to be her sister. Normal sisters aren’t as wonderful as I

—

In totally unrelated news – have any of you read Eating Animals? OOHH my days. I finished it in 2 days flat, and what. a. book! I think it’s one of those books that everyone should read: vegans, vegetarians, omnivores, carnivores, dogs, cats, people…it’s life changing. It’s very well written, and yes, it is biased..but not Skinny Bitch-biased. Foer used a lot of direct quotations from factory workers, and he interviewed both ‘nice’ farmers and factory farmers, people who work for PETA, friends..I just thought it was ace.

I forced my mum against her will to read Born To Run – which she ended up loving (she even went for a run!) – and now I’m going to force her to read this too :-p

Next on my hitlist?

Food, Inc!

It arrived today from Amazon, so that’s my bedtime viewing sorted….

xo

OK!

NYC recap!

To be honest, I was NOT looking forward to writing this post – I took about 600 pictures, so trying to limit the amount I put on here was . . . difficult, to say the least!

I’ll do my best to condense it though, cos I’m nice like that.

SO: Sunday! After killing time with Shannon et al, we set off on the epic cab ride trip to 30th Street Station to catch the Megabus – which set us back a  whopping $7 in cabfare. We were there freakishly early, so we had a leisurely lunch and cool down (it was a badillion degrees at this point), then stood in line in the blazing midday sun for 20 mins.

Fun times! *bonus point if you can spot me in the bus reflection :-p*

The Megabus was pretty cool – hello, free wi-fi – but the ‘two hour’ trip took three, largely due to traffic and the most heavy storm known to man:

Gah.

The end of the trip was awesome though – seeing the NYC skyline for the first time!!

Aah, too exciting!!

When we arrived, it was still tipping it down, but luckily my hotel was only a couple of blocks away from the bus stop.

The room…oh my gosh, my room. I think the hotel people upgraded me for free to be nice (there’d been a mix up a couple of days before I left where they charged me twice), cos my room was MASSIVE!

A long hallway entrance, a living room with a TV twice as big as any I’ve ever owned, a HUGE bathroom (with a fancy jacuzzi bath) and – without doubt – the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. Facing another massive TV, with a killer view:

Empire State Building seen from my window? Yeah, I’ll take it.

After my stuff was left, Shannon and I went to……yep, Whole Foods! There was one a 5minute walk from my hotel, and as it was dinner time…well, why not? Dinner, sorted.

—

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday kinda blended in together, cos they all consisted of similar stuff: a LOT of walking (I didn’t take a cab once, to save $$$$), a lot of photos, a LOT of bars bought, and a lot of photos taken…

NYC carriage horses are the most miserable horses I have ever seen in my life

Times Square!

Tina’s book, and Mama Pea’s book in Barnes & Noble

Magnolia Bakery, of SATC fame!!! Gahhfheubbdsndakfvc.

Ahem. What’s that..? Museum of wha..? [I didn't go in to that museum, but I DID go to a really cool Photography Museum]

Central Park – soo stunning.

I could’ve stayed there forever. Sadly, my running-in-central-park dream never came true (I did go on the gym cross trainer, and had two three milers on the treadmill; hardly a stellar replacement), nor did my trip to the Central Park zoo. I went there at 5.00pm, thinking it’d be open til late, but NOOOO, it shut at 5.25pm! #boohiss.

You know what the highlight of my trip was?

Not the multiple Whole Foods / Chop’t dinners.

Not experiencing an earthquake.

Not seeing incredible street dancers.

Not the trip into Anthropologie (major. jealousy.)

Not the trip to the place that does BANANA SOFT SERVE (it wasn’t as good as what my Vincent can do though :p)

Not the trip to Chelsea Market.

(Which, by the by, is so cute! SO much chocolate and cakes! I loved it!)

Not the walk down 5th Avenue (ie fanciest, most designer-esque place ever).

Not the staring at the buff models guarding the entrance ways to the fancy stores.

Not the sheer amount of bars I bought.

Not watching The Perfect Host (amazing film) or Love and Other Drugs on my hotel TV.

Nope, it was having lunch with this lovely lady:

Courtney! If you’re a long-term, eagle-eyed reader, you’d remember that Courtney was one of my roomies at last year’s HLS. She lives in Brooklyn, and is such a wonderful person, so I couldn’t wait to see her! She met me in the lobby of my hotel, where I found her making friends with a crew of businessmen [as you do], and then she did something horrific: made me take the subway, which I was terrified of (if you’ve seen Ghost, you might get why) :/ Thankfully, I didn’t get murdered, get peed on, get a disease, die of heat exhaustion, or see an angry ghost – and  now I can say I took the NYC subway. Hooray!

We went for lunch, with Courtney’s roomie Devon (in the area for work) at Angelica’s Kitchen, a little vegan restaurant on 2nd Avenue. It had the most incredible menu! We started with kimchee:

(It was scrummy)

Annnd also some proper cornbread, with a carrot spread thing:

The cornbread was SO good! I’d never had proper cornbread (only a greasy lump from some English chain restaurant) so Courtney decided I must try some PROPER stuff. SO worth it!

For mains, I just couldn’t decide..I was swaying between about 6 dishes, which all sounded fantastic. In the end, I got a combo thing, which had LOADS of tempeh, the most incredible millet I’ve ever had (heck knows what they did to it, but it was out-of-this-world, steamed veggies, sea vegetables and a mushroom gravy.

Believe me, there was a LOT of good stuff hidden under the pile of squash

After we’d finished, I was asked if I’d been to 16 Handles. Err…eh?

Turns out, 16 Handles is an amazing Fro-Yo place. Now, I’m vegan, and don’t eat dairy. But you know what? I had a tub of fro-yo. Frozen yogurt in America seems to be such a huge thing – there were multiple fro-yo shops on every single street, and of course, all of the American blog world seems to eat fro-yo, go on fro-yo dates, and talk about fro-yo in every other post. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, I wanted to experience some American culture, and I wanted to have some fun with Courtney and Devon.

Was it delicious? YES (I got a coffee-type one, a PB one and a banana one, plus a load of toppings). Do I plan on eating dairy now? Heck to the no. Did I feel guilty for eating something ‘un-vegan’? No. I wanted to try it, I did, it tasted good (although melted too fast…gah), but I don’t need it again. In all honesty, my favourite fancy Booja Booja vegan ice cream (made with cashews!) is better :-p (now if I could just find my winning lottery ticket….)

BUT fro-yo is still tasty and fun, and I can see why everyone *that* side of the ocean is obsessed. [side note: please don't call the vegan police on me! MY choice, MY decision, MY life.]

Post fro-yo, I needed a picture of us all. Courtney grabbed some random dude off of the street to take it, who was massive – tall, pretty muscly, and kinda scary looking…turned out, he was an undercover cop! He showed us his gun belt and everything :-p (that sounds dirty..if you have a mind in the gutter, like I do).

Anyway – twas the perfect end to my NYC time.

Thursday morning, I was up bright and early (6am…YAY.), had a quick gym session, and then was all set for the Megabus back to Philly. Heh..I had to wait in line for an HOUR for the bus, and then the bus trip took another three, in pouring rain again! I got to Philly at about 12.30, but my flight wasn’t til 6.15pm, and my suitcase weighed a TON.

So, I killed half an hour at the big train station, then cabbed it to the airport – and had about 4.5 hours to kill. Nay fun.

I ended up exploring every last nook and cranny of the airport, in search of food. Did you know, Philadelphia airport is basically a small hell hole, if you’re a vegan? I managed to find some cheap ‘express’ oats, roasted sweetcorn in a bag, and a cereal thing, and called it a late lunch. Tasty.

Plane ride – duuuh, Nay fun! They forgot that I’d requested a vegan meal, which led to the air hostesses shouting across the aisle to each other ‘ YOU FORGOT THE VEGAN MEAL. YEAH. VVVEEEGGAAANNN.. FOR THE GIRL WITH THE HAIR.’ It was so embarrassing! And when it DID arrive (after everyone else had finished) it was: one slice of aubergine, in a tomato-oil sauce, with two pieces of finger-sized broccoli that mushed when I pronged them. Oh, and a ‘white sauce’ made with soy milk, which looked like a cat had sicked up its’ own innards. Niiiiice.

Oddly enough, i didn’t eat it. I DID however, have a bag rammed to the brim with dried roasted corn snacks, Clif bars, Luna bars, oats…you name it, I had it.

Breakfast was equally bad. In the 6hour time lapse between breakfast and dinner, they’d forgotten me again. When the vegan meal eventually came out, it was some cheap tinned peach pieces, and a slice of gluten free pound cake – made with butter and eggs.

Right.

More snacks for Freya!

My plane landed at 6.15am, and after a long train ride, I was home at 11.30 am – a full 24hours since I’d last slept! I ended up staying awake til 11.30 pm, making it 36hours awake! A new record for me, I reckon!

Annnnnnd that was New York.

I’m so, so glad I’ve been – it was a life long dream to go there, and I loved the city. It wasn’t quite what I’d imagined, but awesome all the same. The travelling solo and being extremely bored doing so was tough, and sometimes it would’ve been good to have someone to talk to..but I really loved the trip.

Next country on my wish list? Canada!

OHH so much to SAY!

I literally don’t know where to begin, so I’m going to try and run through things in some kind of sane, logical order, but whether that ACTUALLY happens is another story. Here goes…

Wednesday:

All dressed and ready to go! One 3 hour car ride, 3hour airport chill time, & 8hour plane ride later…I arrived in Philly!

VERY, very tired (I can’t sleep on planes. Or watch films, thanks to the *crap* head phones provided.) and hungry. I didn’t get t the hotel until about 10pm, so I asked at the front desk if there was a super market open – right opposite the hotel was a Seven-Eleven, and I could not believe me luck when I found this:

A TOFU sandwich in some small chain store!!?? That would NEVER happen in England! A happy dance followed.

After a cracking night of sleep, I was up bright and early (ish!) to go meet my BFF Jenny!! Jenny has been my best friend since High School, and she’s the girl who I stayed with when I went to Washington DC in 2007 (she has family in America). I haven’t seen her in ages, so it was awesome timing!!

(Isn’t she gorgeous!?)

We ate lunch in Reading Terminal Market -

- (which was a MASSIVE foodie paradise! ‘Biggest indoor market in America’ <– tis what they say.), and then wondered for a bit o’ sight seeing:

Old historical places, Hard Rock Cafe, Macy’s…the usual.

Partway round, I got miffed seeing all of the horses giving carriage rides:

Nothing wrong with horses, or carriage rides..but the thought of those horses having to work right in the midday sun (blazing!) on hard ground (not good for horses feet and legs), and then not even getting any turnout, or ‘being-a-horse-time’? It makes me uncomfortable Especially since  a lot of them looked so miserable! Gah. I had the same issue in NYC, and actually had a tear run down my cheek. Errrccccccck. Too close to Chika home!

Jen and I then proceeded to ‘get lost’, which basically meant we walked around City Hall and Macy’s about 15,000 times, despite both being within one or two blocks of the hotel. Apparently, Jenny was born blonde too.

After we said our tearful farewells (seriously, I LOVE Jenny! She’s my brutha from anutha mutha!), I headed back to the hotel to wait for my roomies to turn up – Wannabe Chef Evan, Chef Katelyn and Nourishing Flourishing Katie!

For some reason, Friday has fallen into a black hole and I have NO idea what I did that day. Eat at Whole Foods? Probably. Sweat? Highly likely. Meet new blogger  folk? Most definitely. Pick up awesome swag? HEEEEELLLLZZZZZ yeah!

Sadly, I had to leave behind the 5 pots of apple sauce I got, and the skipping rope and a couple of other bits and bobs..but so much ace stuff! One ‘appy munchkin, right ‘ere.

Friday evening saw the COCKTAIL PARTY! Held in Reading Terminal Market, and attended by some stunning lovely friends

Yes, I did feel like a giant! In FLAT shoes, may I add.

Diana, my lovely eating buddy from last year!

I even managed to snag a photo with the legend that is Derek…(aka, Meghann Meals and Miles’ boyfriend!).

Yes, I am that weird stalker girl. But hey, you’re only at the Philadelphia Healthy Living Summit 2011 conference once, right!? Besides, I think I kinda made him feel like a celebrity – he seemed thrilled someone wanted their photo taken with him! Mwahaha.

Next morning, I was up at 4.40 (!) to do a long run – I’d run a tentative 3 miles and 4 miles on The Dreadmill on Thursday and Friday with no ankle pain, so I decided for 7.

WELL.

I turned round at 4miles with another girl, but had to stop at 5.6miles.

BOOOhiss!

My ankle started to niggle at me…not hurt, but I could feel it, and – as I am a smart cookie now – I decided to stop. It SUCKED stopping, cos I was walking back to the hotel, alone, in a city I didn’t know, at about 6am…and it was beautiful out!

BUT I was proud of myself for listening to my body. Freya of January would’ve powered through, but I knew I needed to stop before it really did get injured, and stop I did. I even veto’d the 3mile run the next morning too, and just walked! I. am. a. genius.

Post run-walk – an amaze breakfast (FREE Starbucks on tap! Oh boy. 3 x coffees consumed, and many a bathroom break..!), fabulous presentations, an amaze lunch and snack break!

I had 2 x cereal bowls and more fruit

Vegan gluten free cookie dough ball from roomie Katie (SO delicious! Go to her blog and make the recipe NOW)

3 sandwiches plus more chickpea-quinoa stuff…

And add to that picture 2 more rice cakes, more veggies, more hummus….

It was awesome! My favourite presentation was actually one from the keynote speaker on action mantras – she was enchanting, and really made me think – I’ll have to do a separate post about it yarrr.

On Sunday, I was up early to go on a 5k sightseeing / walk trip:

(being photo-bombed by Meghann!)

LOVE sign (no idea what that’s about..anyone care to enlighten me!?)

Rocky steps. Again, eh? They didn’t seem very rocky to me..*strokes beard*

After, there was an AMAZING breakfast (which ohemgee I needed – my stomach was about to implode on itself) – an OATMEAL BAR with loads of toppings! Plus fruit, cereal, yogurt etc etc..

I had a 2nd bowl of cereal and more toppings :-p

Then, I said my goodbyes, but Shannon and I still had a couple of hours to kill before the megabus to NYC…Reading Terminal Market it was

THEN – OFF TO NYC!! I’ll save that recap for another post…

Now, I know I haven’t done a huuuugely detailed, wordy post (at least, I don’t think I have!) but I’m guessing by now y’all have read a billion posts showing the middle of the sandwiches in detail, tons of conference photos etc etc…so I’ve just stuck to my own photos. I’ll probably talk more in my NYC post though (at least pretend to be excited. Please?).

SO. What did I learn at HLS?

- Dreadmills really are Dreadmills. And gyms need to learn what AIR CONDITIONING is. Crikey!

- Running at 5am is actually really FUN! There’s nothing like having done a workout before the city has woken up.

- I need to see my beloved Jenny more.

- Oatmeal tastes better when a tall man serves it to you.

- Katie is an amazing chef / dough ball maker!

- Action mantras are friggin’ awesome.

- Random cross-dressing gay dudes you shelter from the rain with are adorable:

- I need to hire a maid for my house – or just learn how to make my bed…*ahem.

- There are some truly lovely, wonderful, supportive ladies out there.

- American nut butters really are better. (Chocolate cherry? Cinnamon vanilla? Gah.)

- Wearing a tag necklace thing with your name and blog address on it, AND having business cards, makes you feel like a Crazy Cool Business Woman.

- I LOVE Philly!

NYC next

*see title*

I’m home! I left New York City at 11am Wednesday (English time) and got home precisely 24.5 hours later. Phew! I haven’t slept since I left, and it’s now 8.10pm as I type…so I’m kinda cranky, pretty dang tired, and have a dull headache. Nothing a good night of sleep won’t fix!

(That was the *before* I left pic – *after* when I got back was not so pleasant!)

But first – like, YOwoah I have MISSED you all!! Seeing Amanda’s beautiful oats…all of Jess‘ blonde boyfriends…CEC’s hilarious rambles…Nicky’s inspirational awesomeness…*and so, SO many more I don’t have enough space to type*…let’s just say, it’s good to be back

ANYWAY! I need to go get my life in order now.

I took about 1,453,679 photos, my Google Reader is out. of. control., my inbox is..is…is..let’s not go there, and I have a whole bunch of relatives to phone to let them know that I *didn’t* get mugged / raped / die in the earthquake / hurricane / storms.

Oh yeah, and I have a big old recap post(s) to write. No rest for the wicked!

Back soon xo