the blog is back

Despite my best efforts, the blog has fallen to the wayside over the last little while. You can rest assured that this is because I've been so busy living my life that I haven't had time to write about it. (Don't you ever think that some of the people who write blogs actually don't have lives??)

Things have been rather intense at work recently. The intenseness finished off with a week-long, whirlwind trip to Chicago, New York City, back to DC and then off to Atlanta. It completely dissolved any misconceptions that I had that business trips were simply glorified vacations paid for by my employer. Nope. This one involved 7:30am to 10:30pm days with rushing to and from airports and receptions. Luckily, it was good experience and things went remarkably well, which was satisfying not to mention a huge relief.

During my travels I was lucky enough to squeeze in a couple of minutes of sightseeing, including sampling my first Chicago deep dish pizza (WAAY too much cheese!) and some real southern cookin- grits with more cream and butter than I have ever had at one time- and a visit to the World of Coke (Coca Cola, that is) for even more sugar and advertising.

Below are some of the more amusing snippets of American culture that I encountered:

Overheard at the airport lounge
Mother to son: "Johnny. You can't just eat candy for breakfast. Go and get some real food. What about a donut"

and we wonder why Americans are overweight. That was almost as amusing as this one:

A sign in a Chicago restroom (aka "bathroom")

In order to conserve natural resources such as tress and oil, this restroom does not provide paper towels.