i would like to present you with a gift: a picture of myself.

One of my favorite memories to date involves a trip to St. Petersburg. As we were walking through the Hermitage looking at...Van Eyke? Charity recounted a story about Czarina katherine the great in which she managed to convince some idiotic English dignitary to part with 13 Van Eykes (or something) in exchange for one portrait of...HERSELF! it's a story that always make sme chuckle, even if i have the details wrong. it just sounds right. and is so russian. well, queen elizabeth totally pulled a catherine the great when meeting with barack obama. he and michelle gave the queen a personalized ipod with video footage of some nostalgic trip she took through virginia to see the land her predecessors lost, and they also gave her a rare songbook. She in turn gave barack and michelle a signed portrait of HERSELF! and prince philip, the afterthought. hysterical. i've often wished i had the chutzpah to offer such a trade myself. maybe at starbucks: I don't have any funds, but i will trade you an americano for the chance to take a digital photo with me. how bout it?

so speaking of outrageousness. wait. before i say anything else. to my great shame, i forgot to mention the glorious meeting I had with shannon and kim in new hampshire. and it really is remiss after they drove an hour each way and in fact ferried me around godforsaken nashua to find feminine products. in fact, since we lamely forgot to take a picture of the 3 of us, this will have to do until our next meetup:



i love you girls, i love you more than hugo chavez. and shans, i was thinking of you today when the hotel gym was suddenly filled with lanky, crazy junior high or early high school boys from one of the million booker t washington schools in the country. and of course it was the one day since last november where i wore my hillary clinton for president shirt. rats, so much for solidarity.

in other news, today sam and i went out to get dinner. we had seen a brazilian steakhouse we were going to try but it was SO INSANELY COLD outside that we thought we would die if we had to walk another block and that's when we spotted a mortons a block away and decided to go there instead. yeah, we just happened in on the mortons. um, so mortons is really expensive in case you didn't know. we nearly walked out. but then we realized that if we eat really really cheaply the rest of the week, we can probably swing it. God in heaven. yes, it was the best steak i have ever had. or at least as good as the other best steak i have ever had, which i think might be the peppercorn butter steak at chaya. whatever. it was insane and so very awesome. so while i am guessing i don't have an iron deficiency, this did absolutely nothing to help my stupid high cholesterol. in fact i believe i had a case of angina just sitting there.

p.s. my travel agent in india added me on her gmail chat list so she can talk travel without me using my screechy skype. and she always has these uber cheesy inspirational sayings as her status. yesterday was "Believe in yourself" and today's is "consider things from every angle." thank you, my daily fortune cookie. but, if you are going to be a fortune cookie, have the decency to be one that actually predicts stuff. like, "luck will find you next tuesday." or "you will find yourself on an elephant ride on april 18th"