She Wolf

The first time I heard Shakira's new song She Wolf, I was not impressed. Don't get me wrong. I'm huge Shakira fan and have been listening to her since someone first played me one of her Spanish songs when I live in Costa Rica - when by the way, she was still just a girl from Colombia who hadn't made it big in the US and had yet to die her hair all blond and get an amazing body...

As usual, I digress. Anyway, She Wolf... I like it now. I still think that her howling in the background is kind of annoying but it's a catchy tune with a good beat and recently I had a look at the words. Check out my favorite verses:

Sitting across the bar, staring right at her prey

It's going well so far, she's going to get her way

Nocturnal creatures are not so prudent

The moon's my teacher, and I'm here student

To locate the single men, I got on me a special radar

And the fire department hot line in case I get in trouble later

Not looking for cute little divos or rich city guys that just want to enjoy

But having a very good time and behave very bad in the arms of a boy

For some odd reason, I feel like I can relate to this song. I like that she calls men in bars "prey." And also, I especially like the use of the "divos." Plus, she looks super hot in the video (although definitely channeling her inner stripper). Check it out here.

By the way, speaking of Spanish which we weren't really... I'm going to spend the 3 day bank holiday weekend in Barcelona partying and hanging out with my younger brother (who currently lives in Barcelona and plays awesome music - by the way, my brother and I are like total opposites, I'm a workaholic, my brother is an artist -  no one really understands his job situation but at least he's living life unlike me who's working my life away) I can't wait. I hope it will be fun.

Last year I spent the long May holiday weekend in Amsterdam for Queen's Day. That was pretty crazy between the attempt on the Queen's life (one of the girl's we were was the niece of one of the people who died), wearing obnoxious amounts of orange, participating in massive street parties, cruising the canals, checking out the infamous red light district, drinking heavily all day, and participating in other things that are illegal everywhere else but Holland. (By the way, Amsterdam has to be one of my most favorite cities ever... and not because of the legality of certain substances - believe me that's not really my thing - however... when in Rome... or Amsterdam). But alas, I was with the beautiful Swede and we did spend much of the time fighting... So, this year I'm counting on my brother to show me a good time in "his city." He usually delivers. So, I'm not that worried. It's going to be great! And this year, I'm single - so no worrisome boyfriend picking fights about money (I was paying so I couldn't understand why he was complaining), or doing other annoying things like deciding to smoke an entire joint basically on his own despite my warning that this might not be a good idea for the following reasons:

1. He wasn't exactly an experienced smoker - this was like the second time in his life he had ever partaken in this activity
2. He is Swedish and Swedes in general are not very accustomed to the use of illegal substances (this is obviously a good thing - just sayin)
3. It just seemed like a bad idea... (and I have learned that my gut instinct is usually pretty good)

 Let's just say that the day's activities ended with us exiting the "Coffee Shop" walking 3 blocks and him deciding he needed to sit down immediately (in the middle of the road in fact) for an hour to recover before we could make our way to a table at a restaurant where the bartender took pity on him and brought him water with sugar in it (which did seem to help) and where I sat there and told he he wasn't really dying... he was just high. Finally we managed to make our way back to the hotel room and call it a night at a ridiculously early hour (yes, another fight then ensued).

Anyway, I'm sure I will have some interesting updates on my Barcelona trip coming at you shortly. I plan to embrace my inner She Wolf and give those Spanish boys a run for their money. Stay tuned! Awhooo!

An Email from Mom

So, my Mother sends me an email today... and I can't help but share it.

The subject is: A Beautiful Parable

My Mother then writes...
This made me think of you and our conversation yesterday. You can’t control everything the way you want to. You just have to let it flow and it will happen exactly the way it is supposed to.


Love Mom

As many emails do these days, this one had an attachment with an inspirational story meant to change your life. Let me copy paste the story below. Read it carefully and think about the message.

A woman came out of her house and saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them. She said, "I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat."


"Is the man of the house home?" they asked.
"No," she replied. "He's out."
"Then we cannot come in" they replied.


In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.
"Got tell them I am home and invite them in!"


The woman went out and invited the men in.
"We do not go into a House together" they replied.
"Why is that?" she asked.
One of the old men explained: "His name is Wealth he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, "He is Success, and I am Love." Then he added, "Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home."


The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. "How nice!" he said. "Since that is the case let us invite in Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!"
His wife disagreed. "My dear, why don't we invite Success?" Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: "Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!"


"Let us heed our daughter-in-law's advice," said the husband to his wife. "Go out and invite Love to be our guest."
The woman went out and asked the 3 old men "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest."


Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 men also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success"I only invited Love. Why are you coming in?"


The old men replied together. "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two would have stayed out, but since you invited Love, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!"

And then the foot note said: Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's learning how to dance in the rain! We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails. (I do kind of like the footnote by the way)

So? What is the moral of this story folks? What was your impression? Other than the predictable ending, did anything else strongly jump out at you?

Well, I wrote my mother back to tell her:

"Thank you Mom for reminding me that first I need a man of the house in order to invite Love, Success and Wealth into my life!"

Seriously, the woman had to wait until her husband came home before they would let her invite them in! I wondered if my Mother was trying to subtly tell me something...

The previous night my Mother and I had our usual Sunday night conversation where I complain about being overworked and underpaid and unsure of what direction I want my life to go in and the fact that I'm no longer sure I'm prioritizing the right things. Next I talk about different changes I'm contemplating while expressing frustration about how difficult it is to figure out what the next step is (thus my Mother's preceding comment to the attachment) to actually make positive changes happen. This usually and inevitably leads to a general moaning about the fact that I am absolutely going to be single forever if I continue to relentlessly pursue my career and sacrifice any real semblance of personal life for work and work-related travel (I used to think that I could have it all, that it all would just come my way - but I'm starting to realize, it might not be that simple. Maybe to create change, you have to first make a change). And by the way, that this scares the bejeezus out of me since I'm not getting any younger and doing the same activities is producing not only the same results (i.e. work is continuing to dominate me while not much else in my life seems to be progressing forward), my Mother and I continue to have the same Sunday night conversation.

So, thank you Mom for finally pointing out what I have been doing wrong! It is all so clear to me now! All this time I've been prioritizing my career when I should have been prioritizing finding a man! As the story implies... if I have a man at home... and then I invite Love in then Wealth and Success will follow. Damn! I had it all backwards! All this time I thought it would be Success first then wealth then Love then a Man of the house. I'm very grateful to this little beautiful parable for helping me to get my priorities straight. Now... I'm off to find a man and solve all my problems!

If only it were that easy...

P.S As I have noted before, my Mother has always been my strong feminist role model, I'm sure her intentions were good. Love you Mom!

Not a cloud nor plane in the sky

Well the much anticipated spring/summer weather has finally come to London and I'm enjoying it immensely. Although I miss Stockholm very much, there are never warm days in April in Stockholm. Come to think of it... there are never really any warm days at all in Stockholm. I can just hear all the Swedes who read this blog getting defensive. Ok Sweden, I give you this: Midsommer 2005 was warm and so was most of the month of May of 2007. My 30th birthday in 2008 was also warm and nice and so was the day in 2008 that I ran the Kungsholmen Runt and then sat out in the park. But as you can see... if I can remember the warm days individually... they are unusual. What I do recall most strongly about spring/summer in Sweden is always having to bring a jacket, sitting outside at Thai Boat last June wearing hats and gloves, freezing on the beach in Gotland and putting away all summer clothes by September first - it's already winter by then. While I still favor Stockholm over London in so many ways, I am definitely going to make the most out of a warmer/longer London summer. I will however miss the long light.

But as usual... I digress. Back to the warm weekend in London.

It was a beautiful weekend. Although volcanic ash in the sky was making air travel impossible and forcing closure of all UK airports, the irony was the clear blue skies that graced the London sky (no ash in sight). It was strange to see the to see the skies so eerily quiet (I live on the flight path to Heathrow and have gotten used to the constant planes) and so brilliantly blue. Theoretically, last Saturday was actually the first warm day in London, but that was kind of just a warm-up (ha ha - get it) with this weekend producing both a beautiful and warm Saturday and Sunday. In fact, there was not a cloud (or a plane) in the sky either day.

The first dilemma one faces on the first warm weekend of the year however, is what in the world do you wear? I mean are you really ready to expose your pasty white winter skin for all to see? Are you ready to bare those pale legs or work those pale arms in that tank top? After a few uncomfortable minutes spent trying on half the clothes in my "summer" wardrobe, I decided I looked: pale, naked and cold and I concluded that summer clothes should only be worn with a tan. This posed for me a dilemma - how do you get a tan if you are all covered up?

Luckily I finally sorted out an somewhat appropriate outfit of multiple layers which consisted of a black maxi dress, a grey hoodie sweat shirt with 3 quarter sleeves, a grey light leather jacket, a blue scarf and silver flip flops (I'm not sure why I felt you needed to know the colors of the clothing but this did feel like an important detail when writing it). I have to say that I did feel a bit strange stepping out for the first time in my summer dress and flip flops and at first I wondered if I had overdone the summer thing. But then I got out to King's Road and saw plenty of women who had really overdone it - totally rocking their pasty white arms and legs in tube tops and short skirts and sandals. On the other hand you had people who apparently hadn't checked the weather forecast or paid any attention to the brilliant sunshine who were still wearing winter coats and Uggs. So, I decided I felt pretty good about my sort of summery outfit -glad not to be showing off my white legs nor wearing my winter boots. However, a few blocks later I realize that I had actually overdone it with the layers (it was hot - my thermometer read 26 degrees in the sun; sorry to all the Americans, I have honestly forgotten how to do Fahrenheit) and had to peel off first scarf, then jacket, then hoodie... So after all that, my white arms were all exposed and feeling strange to be let out in the sunshine for the first time since September! My white legs however did stay under wraps until I reached the safety of the park and the anonymity of all the other white pale exposed bodies desperately trying to soak up the first summer sun while blinding those who happened to look upon them without sunglasses.

I'm proud to say that after two days baking myself in the sun my face and arms and the front (yes only the front) of my legs are very tan. I also probably have skin cancer. Sun worshipping is definitely an addiction. I learned it from my mother. Thanks Mom. However, I will keep praying for a cure to cancer rather than curing my sun worshipping addiction (although I do actually wear sun screen and spend less time in the sun now - I am trying... but like any addict, it's a slow process).

Other than the weather and the volcanic ash, the other notable event involved crashing a birthday party and drunk driving.

Of course my partner in crime was my sexy single Italian friend who I always manage to get up to some kind of trouble with. On Saturday night this meant crashing a 30th birthday party. Ok - she was invited to the party. I was crashing it - along with half the Italian population of London who she had also invited to crash the party (By the way, I LOVE the Italians - they are always fun to hang out with - and I promise I'm not saying this just because they read this blog). The night was absolutely perfect for a sunset cruise down the Thames. It was just warm enough to be outside until the sunset and the first Corona of the year tasted amazing (I do believe Corona is the best summer beer) and the music was fantastic thanks to the Ministry of Sound DJ's who kept the party going. The only unfortunate problem was that the party was lacking cute tall men to flirt with or perhaps I was lacking any ambition to do so after a very long hard week at work. All work and no play makes me a dull girl indeed.

But don't worry. As usual, things managed to get a little bit out of control and at one point rather late in the evening after at least 5 beers (on an empty stomach) my Italian Friend and I found ourselves actually driving the boat. Yes, this is indeed the scary truth. We charmed the Captain and took control of that party boat! (I mean did you expect any less of us)? Although we both managed to swerve the boat from side to side of the river causing the Captain to laugh his head off and every so often grab the wheel away from us to ensure that we didn't crash (it's harder then it looks to drive a boat), everyone else was too busy dancing to notice. But never fear, despite the drunk driving, the night had a happy ending and we all made it back to the pier safely! Phew. In fact, I was pleased since a boat ride on the Thames was on my list of "must do before I leave London." And actually getting to DRIVE the boat made it that much better!

But how about this volcano causing massive disruption to global travel? What chaos! I have colleagues stranded all over the world and I am just so selfishly happy that I am not one of them. It was a close call cuz as you remember, I was supposed to be in Brazil this week. My poor colleague I was supposed to travel is still totally stuck there. But to be honest, it's actually not really my colleagues I feel bad for - my company will take care of them. But my heart goes out to all these people who have ran out of money and are sleeping in the airports desperate to get back. Or children traveling alone trying to get back to a parent. Or school groups stranded. Or the people who have missed their wedding or other major life events. I count myself among the lucky.

I was supposed to be off to China today (and in anticipation have already been preparing a 10 things to love and hate about China post). But my flight has been cancelled. I'm actually really disappointed as I was looking forward to the China trip and I'm also nervous what rescheduling will mean. I have a Barcelona trip to see my brother coming up next week (I bet you can't wait for the Spanish post that is surely coming) and I'm worried that trip could possibly be in jeopardy due to the China rescheduling. So you see... life as an International Woman of Mystery can be very hard - especially when volcanoes in Iceland ruin your plans!

Happy Spring everyone!

I should have gone to Rio!

I was supposed to be in Brazil this week. It is true... I was supposed to be in Brazil today! In fact, today I was supposed to be in Rio. But instead... alas I'm still in London.

Ok - that sounds way cooler than it really is... I was supposed to be in Brazil for work. I was supposed to leave Monday night London time and arrive in Sao Paolo on Tuesday morning at 6am. The plan was to go check into the hotel and then go straight to the office and work the whole day. On Wednesday we would fly to Rio in the morning in order to meet with an absurdly difficult customer. Then we would fly back to Sao Paolo Wednesday night and then meet with the Brazilian team on all day Thursday and Friday. I would fly out late Friday night and arrive back in London late Saturday night (effectively killing most of my weekend). So as you can see, the trip sounded more glamorous than it ever would have been. Still... I was supposed to be in Rio right now.

But I had to cancel Rio for many reasons... including the fact that I need to be in China next week. And even for the International Woman of Mystery, 3 continents in 3 days is just too much.

So, for all of you who complain that I don't post enough... I will admit... I'm lacking fun things to write about right now as all I'm doing is working. I know I know... we are all very busy and important people. But just in case you don't believe that I am also a busy and important person (and to be honest - and I'm always honest - because I'm lacking any kind of fun dating adventures to share and generally lacking really any kind of creativity at all), and in case you are inclined to feel sorry for whinny people who blog about being too busy to blog, let me tell you about how my day went on Monday:

Monday April April 12th 2010 - A Day in the Life of the International Woman of Mystery...

3 am - I'm still working. I started working at 11 pm on Sunday evening... at 3 am I'm still working. However, I realize that it might be a good idea to go to bed soon as I realize that I must be in the office in 5.5 hours!

6 am - the alarm goes off with a hopeful sound.... I thought I might wake up feeling refreshed and jump out of bed and go for a run in the park before work! Instead, I wake up grumpy and tired and I realize I have only been asleep for 3 hours. I reset the alarm for a more reasonable time like 7:30.

7:30 - The alarm goes off again. I hit snooze for the next 40 minutes... I have to admit I'm a big snooze button addict. It's one of the great things of sleeping alone - you can hit snooze forever without anyone telling you to knock it off!

8:10 - I realize that if I do not get up soon, the house cleaner (who is supposed to come at 9 but is always annoyingly at least 40 minutes early) will be there (again) before I'm out of bed

8:11 - I drag myself out of bed cursing the world and begin to hurry up and get ready for work

8:20 - The house cleaner arrives. I make irritating conversation - irritating in part because she doesn't speak much English but mostly I'm not a morning person and she is always so damn cheerful. But I'm willing to forgive her because she does make my apartment really clean.

8:25 - The house cleaner points out to me that I haven't managed to buy bathroom cleaner even though she had asked me to last week... I realize I have been too busy to go to the grocery store in the past week. The grocery store closes at 21:00. I realize that sadly, I have not left the office before 21:00 in a week.

8:45 - I arrive at work. I say a grumpy hello to my team. Strangely enough work seems too familiar... I feel like I worked the whole weekend. Oh right. I did.

9:00 - Think about coffee but decide I don't have time to walk across the office and get one, and I definitely don't have time for the coffee room chat with colleagues that will surely ensue... Decide to forget about coffee and tackle my emails. One of the many joys of being an International Woman of Mystery is dealing with people in all time zones. In a normal job, you would wrap up emails at 3 am and come to the office and find you have no emails... Not so true when working with China. I amazingly had 26 new emails in my Inbox!

9:05 - Make a list of everything I have to do this week. I have two lists - a work one and a personal one... The funny thing is that the work one always gets crossed off and the personal one never does. Every week things like "find a doctor, talk to someone about my major back pain, track down my bank card to the only account of mine that has money in it, call my grandfather, email my brother" appear on the list but they never get crossed off

9:06 - Decide to go to China next week (as you do when you decide not to be in Brazil this week)

9:07 - Realize that my Chinese visa has expires on Tuesday. DAMN! That means I have to fit in 2 trips (one to drop it off and the other to get it) to the Chinese Embassy! Always a joyful experience. And it means processing a lot of paperwork. I loathe paperwork. I can't stand doing personal admin.

9:30 - Start the first very frustrating meeting of a day where we discuss the fact that a customer is not happy with the work we have done and we have to do it over

10:30 - Realize I double booked myself in meetings... Start meeting with the person I see first... hope to catch up with the next person later - continue frantic meeting cycle until around lunch time

12:00 - Think about lunch - continue with meeting

12:30 - Think about lunch again - continue my attempt to catch up on emails during my brief pause in meetings

13:15 - Colleague reminds me we have a meeting in 15 mins. Realize I must eat lunch of loose the opportunity. Run to the nearest place I can find and order something "quick."

13:25 - Realize that my idea of quick is very different from that of the employee of the cafe who is waiting on me. Make a mental not never to come here again. Ask them again to please hurry up. Frantically send emails from my Blackberry while impatiently tapping my foot

13:30 - Back at the office and happy to see that my colleague is also running late. Shove food into my mouth as quickly as possible while preparing for the meeting.

15:00 - Meeting over and before rushing into the next one manage to squeeze in a quick bathroom break - begin to actually contemplate not drinking any liquids during the day because I really feel that I don't have time to go to the bathroom... Realize this is a crazy thought and start to think that I might be a bit overworked

15:02 - Next round of meetings takes me through the rest of the afternoon

18:00 - Think about the fact that this is the time I "should" leave the office

18:01 - Start checking emails instead

18:30 - In need of something to look forward to (some light at the end of the dark tunnel I'm finding myself in), I start to count the weeks until I go on summer vacation - it's only 9 weeks away. I try to rationalize that this is actually a very short time... but I don't do a good job at convincing myself.

18:45 - Realize that I will feel better if I book my flight home - I do this and feel a moment of happiness knowing that I have actually crossed one thing off my personal "to do" list

18:46 - Think about the fact that my back is killing me (Stress makes it worse); think about the fact that my health is more important than any job and that I should really get someone to help me sort my back out

18:47- Get distracted by another email, forget about back - once again it remains an urgent item on my personal "to do" list

20:30 - Finally leave the office and rush home to change into gym clothes and run to the gym to try to work off some steam

10:15 - Arrive home from the gym

10:16 - Realize that since I haven't been to the supermarket in over a week, the only thing I have to eat are Ramen noodles - which is slightly worse than it sounds. I secretly love Ramen noodles and actually eat them often even when there is other food to eat

10:26 - Relax (finally) with a big bowl of Ramen Noodles while watching an episode of True Blood

10:27 - Think about the blog I should be writing... Feel guilty for sitting down relaxing rather than updating my wonderful readers with my wonderful (ummm.. or whatever it is these day) life

10:28 - Think about the work I should be doing...

10:29 - Think about the Match.com boys who I have been ignoring for the past weeks due to my enourmous workload. Am sure they must be missing me...

10:30- Think more about the work I should be doing...

10:31 - Give up on True Blood and open the computer

10:32 - Immerse myself in work

1:00 - Think that I should really go to bed...

2:00 - Finally turn off the computer, the lights and call it a night - half-heartily set the alarm for 6 am to go for a run (I know that I will skip it).

So that my friends is a day in the life of the International Woman of Mystery. And you thought all I did was drink and meet boys... ;)

It's possible I might have a more entertaining post next time... however I see no end in sight to the massive workload - so just warning you...

Easter Weekend: Top Ten List

I know you are all wondering what happened on my four day Easter Weekend with my super sexy single Swedish friend (check out that awesome use of alliteration).

So here is a quick update in list format! I love lists. (You have now been warned - plan to see more of them in the future).

Top Ten Things We Did NOT Do Over Easter Weekend:

1. Dress up as Easter Bunnies - sorry to disappoint you
2. Hunt for Easter Eggs - I couldn't convince my friend to play the Easter bunny (I should have bought her the costume...)
3. Sleep very much... In fact, we didn't actually go to bed before 4 am on any single night
4. Go to any museums or participate in any cultural activities outside of seeing the musical Chicago and having afternoon tea
5. Find amazing cute London men (we found plenty of men... but unfortunately no amazing ones... unless my friend begs to differ)?
6. Stay in and watch DVD's - we talked about doing this but of course we decided to pretend we are younger than we feel so we went out clubbing instead
7. Talk about Ex-boyfriends - nope we didn't do this NOT AT ALL; we are both so over our exes... ummm... (I might be lying a little bit here)
8. See any London tourist attractions - woops - this is the second time this friend has visited me and the second time that we didn't manage to do any sightseeing - she is such a bad influence on me!
9. Go to my favorite Chelsea nightclub - Valmont - which I'm still kind of sad about...
10. Drink enough water - we seemed to be in a constant state of hangover induced dehydration - despite the bottles of sparkling mineral water my friend insisted that we keep purchasing to ward off the evil hangovers...

Top Ten Things We DID Do Over Easter Weekend:

1. Drink - a lot (But you were expecting this right
2. Have afternoon Tea (with champagne of course) - and the best part is that we flirted with the waiter and somehow managed to get a ten pound discount (by the way, I still can't figure out how to make the pound sign on my computer so I have to write it out every time. If anyone knows where to find this, please tell me). If you are in London and don't want to pay top hotel prices but still want a fantastic afternoon tea, I suggest you check out The Botanist - and don't forget to flirt with the waiters! You just might get a good deal
3. See the musical Chicago - Very good! Very hot! Very Sexy! I recommend it!
4. Eat a lot - especially Indian food
5. Have drinks at the uber-trendy Zuma
6. Meet my sexy single Italian friend for dinner and talk about lots of fun girl stuff such as "size really does matter" and so does "lasting more than one minute" -sorry boys!
7. Have an after-party at my house with young obnoxious boys
8. Go to an after-party with old obnoxious boys (and on that note, I should have been a banker, I mean this guy had a 4 floor house in Chelsea! WTF! And I think my 2 bedroom apartment is kind of awesome - and extremely expensive).
9. Hang out with Swedish men - this is kinda the thing in my life - it seems like Swedes are everywhere... but the funny thing is that we crashed a colleague's birthday party and met his Swedish friends who were also visiting from Sweden and it was all very confusing how we all knew each other or where we had met before... (I will spare you the dramatic details here)
10. Go for a run in the rain until my friend begged me to go home (I secretly wanted to go home as well but it was more fun to blame the short workout on her)
11. (I actually can count... but I was on a roll decided to keep going here - it's my blog - I make the rules) Complain a lot about how tired we were because we kept getting home so late and not sleeping late enough
12. (Take really bad pictures of ourselves at a nightclub because we were bored - oh yes, there is obviously a whole Facebook montage just waiting to be posted...

Hope You all had a great Easter!

Easter Weekend!

Well it's day one of a four day bank holiday for Easter here in the UK! Wooohooo! I have just finished up what I hope will be the last of the work I have to do on the weekend (yes, always working even on the holidays cuz that's the kind of gal I am) and my sexy single friend is visiting from Sweden and we are ready to have some fun and meet some boys and basically spend the weekend participating in various forms of debauchery - see my post from earlier this week. However, just to show you that I do other things than drink and work. We are planning to go see the musical Chicago tomorrow and participate in an afternoon tea session (the kind with champagne included) on Easter Sunday. If we manage not to be too hung over... then we might go to a Museum or participate in my favorite thing to do (and yes, in my world this does count as a cultural experience) in walking distance to my flat - WALK AROUND HARROD'S! I love Harrod's. And I hear the pet section is a "must-see" and I haven't even checked that out yet.

On another note... Isn't it strange that in the United States you don't get ANY days off for Easter but the rest of the world seems to get both Friday and Monday off. You poor poor Americans. But America does have the Easter Bunny! Do you know that my Mother hid eggs for my brother and I to find until we were in our 20's! Seriously. The final year we refused to find them because we felt we needed to really prove to her we were "too old." Hmm... I wish someone would hide eggs for me this year. Maybe I can convince my friend to do that. ha ha... Actually, she brought me an Easter egg from Sweden so I guess that counts. And many clubs in London are giving free entrance to girls in bunny costumes. My friend and I are discussing whether or not we are going to rock that or just suck it up and pay the 20 pounds cover... Actually, it would be more fun to dress up! I'll let you know what we decide.

Well I'm off for a run on the Thames right now - see I do do other things than drink and work!

Oh, and by the way, I've been accused by several friends of not posting enough... so I'm going to attempt to do some shorter more meaningless posts that basically ramble on about nothing... Just warning you...

But not to leave you too dissatisfied, below I share some three very nice (ego-boosting) sweet nothings from the Match.com boys! As you can see... I'm certainly quite a catch - at least according to these strangers who have never met me but have just read my (kind of awesome) profile and checked out a few pictures.

Happy Easter Y'all!


Hey there...

You popped into my '5 New Matches' inbox a few days ago, and I couldn't resist sending you a quick email to say hello. Whether it is your profile, your looks, the fact you like peanut butter, or all three... I'm not sure? :o)

... but I was sure I should contact you.

I'd like to be able to tell you that I own a chocolate/peanut butter factory, or a shoe shop... alas I own neither :o( What I do own however, is a good heart, a fun outlook on life and a desire to maybe get to know you a little better.

If I can't persuade you, then I will of course do my best impression of 'not being disappointed' and bow out gracefully...

....I do reserve the right however to have a private ‘moment’ and stomp my feet a little though! ;o)

What do you think?

Rick x

Hello mystery American girl,
I am sure you get many many mails everyday and I wasn't going to even write to you.
But I thought why not.
I am at a complete loss as to why you need to bother with net dating as you are by far the most stunning and beautiful woman on here by miles!
Looking at your pics completely blew me away.
I just pray that you are a lovely person too.
If you are just as pretty on thr inside then you are going to make one guy very happy.
I hope you can open your mind and see the spark within me and let me ignite your fire.
Never settle for second best and always live like its your last day on earth.
Passion and commitment, they are the corner stones to a happy life.
Be Lucky,
Cheeky Jason x

Hey Miss,

You're beautiful. And I'm speechless.

Maybe I can show you around London town sometime?

Hope to hear from you soon.

A