Side Effects

It's 5:45 am here in NY right now and I've been awake for almost an hour. Why you might ask? Well because for the past 17 days I've been in a strange country where when it was 5:00 am in NY it was already 11:00 am and I was out seeing the sights of Spain and France. So now that my body is totally screwed up I guess it means that I will truly live by the saying "early to bed, early to rise...blah blah blah."

And what, you might ask, have I been doing for the past hour at this ungodly time of day? Well, thanks to Google Reader, I have been catching up on the 155 new blog posts that my friends have posted while I was away. Btw...Google Reader is a God-send. All your favorite blogs in one easy place. That way you don't have to click on each individual person in your blog links list. Saves so much time (thanks Kimmy for opening my eyes).

Well...just to finish up this random post I have a few things that I have learned to be thankful for during my trip (and since I missed Thanksgiving I feel entitled to this).

1. International phones that allowed me to talk to my Mom every day of my journey. I love you Mom and miss you tons!
2. Being back in a country where I can understand almost everyone (sometimes it's hard to understand the cabbies here...but for the most part everyone speaks English) and where I don't have to guess what I'm ordering for dinner from a menu that is only written in French
3. My bed!!!! And I might add my pillows. Hotels in Europe have really given up in the comfort area of hotel service - rock hard beds with either rock hard or paper thin/barely there pillows
4. American men (wow I never thought I'd actually say that - hahaha jk) - most don't think that if you smile at them it means that you will willingly go to bed with them or just move to Spain and help them kill rats in the basement of their store (true story...not joking)
5. My closet and drawers. Yes my closet is half the size of my one growing up and I don't have THAT much space in my NY apartment...but it's SOOOOO much better than living out of a blasted suitcase.
6. Paying for things in USD - no conversion
7. My Blackberry
8. Jo being tempted to camp out on my doorstep til I came home because she missed me so much - I missed ya too Jo!
9. Christmas music - that's all I've been listening to since my return
10. DVR and TV online - instead of going to work yesterday I spent the day catching up on all the shows I missed. I only have Greys Anatomy left to catch up on.

There is so much more that I'm thankful for...but I won't bore you any longer with my early morning rambling. Plus I'm heading off to the gym to try to work off the 100 lbs of chocolate and pastries that I ate over the past 2 1/2 weeks.

ps - Pics will be coming shortly. I just have to weed out the bad ones and then I promise a very long, boring (yet fun) post about my travels.