So you can just imagine what happened yesterday, when FIVE INCHES of snow fell. Buses stopped running. Streets were closed. People frantically dragged their poor husbands to the grocery stores at ridiculously early hours in order to get food so that they would not starve during the imminent ice age (okay, fine. That last one might have been me. I’m not sitting through snowpocalypse without a run to Trader Joe’s first).

We’d were scheduled to have friends over to watch the NFL playoffs, and we figured that no one would make it. But make it they did. By foot, by light-rail, by four-wheel-drive, they made it.

And they came wielding this:

Yes, yes, it's EXACTLY what it looks like.

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It’s a cake. IN THE SHAPE OF A SNOWMAN’S HEAD. I, personally, had never seen anything more glorious. It’s bizarre and morbid and hilarious and IT WAS ALSO MADE OF CAKE. There are times when you are so delighted by the absolute ridiculousness of your friends that all you can do is clap your hands and giggle maniacally. Which I did for the better part of five minutes.

And then – because really, how often do you have a cake in the shape of a snowman’s head when it’s snowing out? – the fun began.

First, the gentlemen built the poor guy a body.

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And then Rand did this:

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And Peter did this:

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And Thomas did this:

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And Joanna and I did this:

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And we all did this:

Oddity loves company.

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After we had sufficiently documented whatever the hell it was we were doing, we took the cake downstairs and the carnage began.

"Do you guys have a meat cleaver?" "Why, yes. Yes, we do."

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Inside was chocolate cake and chocolate mousse. Which goes to show you, you can't judge a cake by its frosting.

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If you happen to come across your own decapitated snowman cake, I can give you a few pointers. Take as many photos as you can. Don’t cut all the way through from top to bottom (just cut off the top half, otherwise the cake will lose structural integrity). Feel free to wear the fondant scarf like a choker. Licking frosting from a loved one’s neck is totally acceptable.

And do not, under any circumstances, call out to a room full of people,

“DOES ANYONE WANT SOME SNOWMAN HEAD?”

Because when your husband replies that it “sounds like fun”, you will be very, very embarrassed.

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P.S. – In you are in the Pacific Northwest, please stay incredibly safe on those icy roads. We locals DO NOT know how to drive in this stuff. And if you need something to keep you warm, I highly recommend this photo. You’re welcome.

Behold:

Somewhere, someone is starving to death. </seriousness>

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These are the cones that Rand and I spotted at an ice cream shop in Pennsylvania that was graciously named “Pigadilly’s“.  If the extra $1.50 price tag looks a little steep, remember: innovation and genius do not come cheap. You aren’t just paying for a cone – you are investing in what makes American great.

And also investing in what makes America fat. But let’s focus on the great part.

How have I let so much time pass without telling you about these?

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It is late Sunday night, and I’m staring at my computer screen, trying to figure where the time went.

“How is the weekend already over?” I wonder (even after years of having no real obligations on Monday morning, I am still sad when it approaches).

And just earlier today, I asked a friend how, exactly, it was December already. And how can 2012 possibly be weeks away? How – sweet lord in heaven – how am I thirty-one years old and still have to stop myself from answering “Sixteen!” when people ask me my age? (And why, while we’re on the topic, do people keep asking me how old I am? Is it that much of a mystery?)

I close my eyes tightly, trying to take a mental catalog of the last few hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Did they all pass by so quickly? Did I miss anything? Did I forget to tell you anything?

There are things I’ve yet to get to, I know. Last summer’s trip to Ashland. The visit to the east coast that happened just before that. The journey to Machu Picchu right after. Barcelona. London. Halloween in New York. Thanksgiving in San Diego. They are all places that I will tell you about, as soon as my life calms down and my wheels of my rolling suitcase have had a chance to cool.

Really, there’s nothing that I have to tell you about that can’t wait. Except for one thing. Something of such importance, that I’m amazed I didn’t write about it sooner.

I need to tell you about the best cupcake I’ve ever had. And the middle of the night on a Sunday seems a perfectly good time to do it.

Rand and I were in New York this past August and in possession of a rental car. On our way out of the city (heading to Jersey to see Rand’s grandparents) we figured we’d swing by Philly and visit a friend. That’s something that’s always fascinated me about the Northeast: drive a few short hours, and you’ll find yourself in a different state, and a drastically different city. It seems that whenever we drive anywhere in New Jersey, Rand will excitedly turn to me and say, “Guess where we are?”

“Um … Princeton?”

“No. We’re in Pennsylvania!”

It happens without fanfare or flourish. I will watch the trees passing by on the side of the road, and suddenly, miraculously, we are in another state. This is how we end up in Philadelphia. We leave New York on a hot, overcast morning, storm clouds rumbling on the horizon, listen to a few hours of NPR and Mumford and Sons, and end up in a place called New Liberties, in Philly.

It is there that we meet Rand’s friend and colleague Wil (with one L) and after a lunch during which things got far too intellectual for a Sunday, and the threatening skies finally open up on us, he tells us about Brown Betty.

Cupcakes lie within.

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One of its many claims to fame? It was featured in Oprah Magazine. This didn’t immediately sway me: I still have yet to buy into The Secret or the holiday stylings of Josh Groban. Besides, when it comes to cupcakes I am a tough critic. I demand a moist cake with golden edges that are just a weensy bit crisp. A frosting that tastes of something more than sugar (vanilla, perhaps?), has a bit of salt for height, and develops a nice crust that provides just a little bit of resistance as you bite down.

And, rather remarkably, the cupcakes at Brown Betty meet all of my demands. They are enormous, and almost creamy in texture. And yet, they are not overwhelming. The sweetness is actually quite moderate: it doesn’t cloyingly coat your tongue,  and it spares you the slightly-revolting-feeling that comes from having ingested half a pound each of sugar and butter. These cupcakes are, despite their miraculous size, subtle in flavor.

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Rand got the "Sing Little Alice" a chocolate-vanilla marble cake with chocolate and vanilla frosting.

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Ever the traditionalist, I went with Sally's Sour Cream. It was heavenly and light, and not at all indicative of the condiment in its name.

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The store is darling. Decorated in pink and brown (like all good cupcake shops should be) it looks like a confection, and yet there is something gritty and down-to-earth about the shop. Perhaps it is the less-than-perfect appearance of the cupcakes. They do not look like they were made in a professional kitchen, but rather in the home of some genius friend who happens to have a sweet tooth and a less-than-steady frosting hand. The girl behind the counter is friendly and courteous while still being all business. She tells us the cupcakes she prefers, takes our order quickly and competently. We order three – one each for me, Rand, and Wil, and they are packed in individual plastic cases (no pink boxes for this place, and that’s fine by me. I like to gaze at my cakes before I devour them).

Rand and Wil pick out their cakes.

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If I ran the world, all menus would look like this.

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The surrounding area, much like the store itself, is a mix of glamor and grit. Wil explains that it’s changed considerably in the last few decades. It wasn’t a particularly wealthy part of town when he was a kid, but now it’s full of trendy boutiques and restaurants, modern condos and offices (including Wil’s company’s headquarters which are located – no kidding – in a renovated church).  The issue of gentrification in the area is a heated one – many residents say it’s at the expense of the neighborhood’s soul. As a visitor, I’m not able to pick up on this – I just blithely see the charm of the area. I look no further than the frosting on my cupcake or the facades on the buildings.

It is getting late – we need to head back to Jersey, and Wil needs to be in New York that night. There’s comfort in the fact that many of our friends travel as much as we do.  We say goodbye, and as we head back to Flemington, I occasionally peek at the desserts nestled near my feet.

Hello, lover.

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I worry there won’t be enough for everyone, but Rand reminds me that his grandparents aren’t big on sweets. While this is true, it proves to not apply to these cupcakes. They are so delicious, we all devour them on a rainy night in his grandparents’ kitchen, and I am left pressing my finger against the last few crumbs and depositing them on my tongue.

And I am very, very happy.

It remains perhaps the best cupcake I’ve ever eaten. An unforgettable one, really. Which is why I can’t believe I almost forgot to tell you about it.

My response to this is usually to giggle, because it is always a comfort to know you can still surprise your husband, even if that surprise stems from his shock at how evil you are.

Funny thing, though – I tend to surround myself with things that are the opposite of my temperament:

• My friends are all sweethearts. They remember my birthday and don’t give me nicknames that start with the word “ass” (I cannot say the same of myself).
• I like twee movies that involve little conflict.  I clap my hands when the two leads get together (so what if it’s predictable? I don’t know what city I’m in half the time – I NEED A LITTLE PREDICTABILITY.)
• Dessert marks the end, and occasionally also the beginning, of every meal of my life. Am I angelic? No. Do I like angel food cake? Yes. Yes, I do.

I seek out precisely what I am not. Perhaps that’s why I’m so stupidly smitten with Zach Anner.

A while back, the Oprah Winfrey Network set up a competition for folks who wanted their own TV shows. Aspiring tv-stars pitched ideas, and people could vote for their favorites online.

Anner was one of the folks who pitched an idea – you can see his Oprah audition tape here. He has cerebral palsy (which he describes as “the sexiest of palsies”) and requires a wheelchair to get around. His idea for a travel show was based on this premise. Thanks to his incredibly likeable and funny demeanor, and a hoard of rabid fans (including a passionate group of redditors), Zach received a slew of votes. His show, Rollin’ With Zach, will premiere on December 12th.

Based on his previous work, we can pretty much rest assured that it’s going to be best thing ever.

In the travel world, I encounter a lot of folks who ascribe to the church of Anthony Bourdain. I myself was a regular member of his congregation, watching delighted as he made snarky comments and gallivanted around the world. But after a while, I grew weary of the show. I have enough sarcasm and snide remarks in my life, courtesy of my own brain. I don’t need Mr. Bourdain’s as well.

Anner’s take on travel is markedly different. He manages to be smart without being a smart ass, upbeat without being treacly. He never really pokes fun at anyone besides himself, and yet he never comes across as self-pitying. Anner appears to be having the time of his life –  genuinely enjoying what he’s doing and happy to take us along for the ride. It’s a far cry from Bourdain, who makes every episode seem like the consequence of a lost bet, or Rick Steves, who is only remarkable for his ability to make any destination as dull as central Canada.

I’ve compiled a few of Anner’s clips below. If you have a few moments, check them out. Be warned, though: I showed these to a coworker of my husband’s, explaining that Zach was “my secret boyfriend” and she and I began fighting over him. We have not spoken since (edit: we talked tonight. It was weird.)

•  The video that started it all – Zach Anner’s Oprah audition
• In this less-travel-centric video, Anner fills us in on what he’s been up to (mostly doing a strip tease for Mickey Rourke.)
• In a preview of his show’s pilot episode, Anner visits Los Angeles and contemplates the fleeting nature of fame. Also, he eats a ginormous hot dog.
• In an amazing three-part series, Zach shows us around his hometown of Austin. He visits the capitol, gets carried to the top of a mountain (because he forgot to bring his manual wheelchair), and visits the Keep Austin Weird festival.

Ready? Here goes: It’s my birthday.

I know. I’m positively tickled. I love birthdays. Entire days dedicated to eating cake and wearing party dresses. It’s not unlike what I imagine heaven to be.

I suspect I might be in the minority here. I’ve met a lot of folks who absolutely abhor birthdays, and the inevitable aging that goes along with them, but that’s something I’ve never really minded. Every year I spend on this planet, things just seem to get better. After three decades, I’m really getting the swing of things. I now listen to NPR voluntarily, and not just because I’m trying to impress a boy. I’ve become quite adept at walking in heels. As the years go by, stinky cheeses taste better and better. And the Muppets now hold another level of humor that I never understood as a child (if you haven’t experienced this phenomenon for yourself, I highly recommend you rewatch The Muppets Take Manhattan. The puns! The double entendres! A cameo by a delightfully young and handsome Elliott Gould!) Plus, with adulthood, I’ve found I’ve almost grown into my nose. Not quite, but almost.

"You like my nose, right sweetie? RIIIIIGHT?"

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Really, I hope the fashion magazines and Hollywood get wind of this, because growing older is fantastic and it’s so easy.

And yet, and yet, and yet … this year, I found myself a little sad. Because 30 was really, really good to me, and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

30 was the year when things started making sense. Do you remember those “Magic Eye” posters that were all the rage in middle school? (Or depending on your age, it might have been college/high school/elementary school/infancy. And if you are in that latter category, why on earth are you are reading my blog when clearly you should be napping?). They were a messy pattern of dots, like static on a TV. But stare at them long enough, and you would eventually, and rather suddenly, see an image. That’s how 30 felt to me. Suddenly, amidst all the nothingness, something appeared. In the case of the Magic Eye posters, it was usually it was a T-Rex. But with my life, it was something grander. Like the realization that I could skip an archeological museum and instead spend the day roaming around the city eating chocolate. That getting miserably lost is okay, because my hotel is always a cab ride away. That no matter where I went in the world, as long as Rand was with me, I was home.

30 was the year I stopped shrugging my shoulders when people asked me what I did. It’s when I answered, without too much sheepishness, “I’m a blogger.” 30 was when I started walking around with comfort and confidence (and, okay, fine – a good measure of neurosis, too, because this is still me we’re talking about). Can you blame me for not wanting to let go of such a wonderful year?

But then I thought about 31. Thirty-one. All the legitimacy of the year before, all the confidence and comfort, and then some. The word even starts with thirty! It’s out there in front, leading the charge for all the numbers that follow. 31. 32. 33. All the way up to 40. Forty! Can you imagine? It sounds positively regal. Maybe I’ll even get a few grey hairs. Then no one will be able to mess with me.

“Yes, I AM having cake for breakfast, sonny. I’m forty. I can do that.”

And suddenly, I’m excited all over again.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. Which was sort of true. I was presently in the process of squatting in my friend’s old clawfoot bathtub, running cold water over my head and body in an attempt to alleviate the crippling migraine that had come over me. Migraines aren’t new to me – they strike more or less monthly (it takes little sleuthing to guess when) and render me a miserable wreck. This time, one had hit while I was visiting my friend Christine, who was now knocking at the door.

“I didn’t throw up,” I shouted over the rush of water. As though it was an achievement.

“It would okay if you did,” Christine said gently, as only women who are mothers can.

I’ve no doubts she was sincere when she said those words. Christine and I met in the seventh grade. There are elements to our friendship that are grandfathered in. Among them, she can call me Deenie (and before you ask, no. Do not even think of trying it, even as a joke), and I may vomit in the Victorian clawfoot tub of her Wichita home.

That’s the thing about friends from childhood. You may live in different towns, and living radically different existences. But the now-divergent strings of your life were entwined once, and if you trace it back, you can still find that knot. It means that you’ll likely know each other forever. It means that you might not always get along, might not see eye-to-eye, but you’ll always love eachother.

It means that you can hop on a few planes and spend the weekend with them, even if you literally have not spoken a word to each other in 15 years, and get sick in their bathrooms. Which is precisely what I did.

Though it all happened barely a month ago, it’s a story I’ve had to tell over and over again. Mostly because people keep asking me what in the hell I was doing in Wichita.

Which is a very good question indeed.

It’s not that Wichita is not a nice place. I enjoyed myself plenty, despite the fact that it was consistently more than 100 degrees every day that I was there – a temperature that sounds positively unearthly (I went so far as to calculate what it was in Centigrade as well, so I could effectively communicate to all of my non-American friends just precisely how hot it was. “Forty degrees!” I screamed, feeling rather worldly and cosmopolitan in the process). It is simply that Wichita is one of those places that I honestly and truly never thought I’d see. I’ve never lived there. I don’t have family there. And up until Christine moved there last winter, I could safely say that I didn’t know a single soul in the entire state of Kansas.

I maintain that it began as a joke. Christine insists she was serious from the start.

It began with a rather innocent tweet between Christine (location: Kansas), her husband, Jason (a.k.a., @raisingdad) and our pal Deanna (location: U.K.). They were jokingly trying to rope me into babysitting, for, as Deanna put it, I was childless and had yet to be traumatized by the wee ones. I must hand it to my friends – they are surprisingly well-reasoned, even when they are trying to get me to fly across he globe to watch their offspring.

Notice how I agreed to watch their children before I knew what the hell was going on.

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Of course, it would require a plane trip for me to get to either of them. Deanna lives somewhere in the Northern English countryside. I could easily get out of that one. And Christine’s in Kansas. Kansas. I had only a vague idea where Kansas was. I knew it was north of Oklahoma, and just west of THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, right? Squirreling out of this would be a snap.

Nope. No private jet. Some days I don't even know why I'm with him. Wait, yes I do.

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That really should have been the end of the discussion. Should have been.

Did I mention Christine is a lawyer? Yeah. I had lost before before I had even started.

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That’s right: girlfriend was looking up flights for me.

This was nuts. She hadn’t seen me in 17 years. SEVENTEEN. That’s a lifetime. A decade and half is more than sufficient time for someone to become a jerk. I could have joined a cult, or started clubbing baby seals. I obviously hadn’t, but Christine didn’t know that. What if I annoyed her? What if she discovered that I was a snobby west-coast liberal who does nothing but unfairly make fun of small towns like the one in which she lived? Which is, regrettably, ENTIRELY TRUE.

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She wanted me to visit. She didn’t expect me to watch her son. Her husband was even willing to drive several hours to pick me up from various airports. I was running out of excuses. It’s not like I had anything on my plate. Rand was heading off to Brazil for a few days. I had elected not to go with him (the ticket prices were excruciating, and he’d barely be on the ground). I was going to spend the weekend blogging and doing laundry. Plus, I wanted to dedicate some time for yoga and cake-eating (such is the one-step-forward, one-step-back dance of my life).

Couldn’t I do most of that in Wichita? Particularly if I swapped out “yoga” with “more cake-eating”?

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It was beginning to look like I might go to Wichita.

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Scratch that: I was DEFINITELY going to Wichita.

That was it. A series of tweets. A few direct messages. Approximately three emails. Two connections. And there I was. IN KANSAS. To hear it, it sounds like madness. But this was Christine. We had slept-over at each other’s homes in middle school. I knew her mother, her brother, her sister. Was it really that crazy?

There was no going back now. I mean, not without a change-your-flight fee.

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I was of two minds. Part of me thought that yes, this was absolutely crazy, and potentially disastrous. Christine and I might find we had nothing in common, and nothing to talk about. It would be a weekend of uncomfortable silences and failed attempts at polite conversation.

Incidentally, the other part of me also thought that this was crazy, but that it might be good fun, too. Thankfully, that part proved to be right.

Had Christine changed since the last time I saw her? Yes, absolutely. After all, this was the last time I saw her:

Christine's in the middle. I'm on the right. Apologies to Giselle (left) for getting dragged into this. Also, what in the name of fashion is going on with my jeans?

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It had been 17 years. I would be substantially alarmed if she was still who she was when she was 13.  After all, now she had this little guy:

All together now: "AWWWWWwwwwwww."

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And this not-so-little guy:

We were in a salt mine. But that's a story for another day.

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She’s a lawyer, and a mom, and someone’s wife. She was an adult now, as, it seemed safe to reason, I was. But the hallmarks of the old Christine were there. When she saw me, she ran to give me a hug (and had to stoop to do it, like she always did).

“Seeing you is totally surreal in the best possible way,” she said. It was such a … Christine thing to say. I gave her the present I had brought her – a small charm necklace that I had thought was cute, but now was nervously reconsidering.

“If you don’t like it you don’t have to wear it,” I kept repeating (how does one determine someone else’s style after a decade and a half?)

“Of course I like it,” she said, and gently scolded me for being neurotic. As I always am.

“Same old Deenie,” she said, laughing. Same old Deenie. Same old Christine. Same old friendship.

With a couple of additions.

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And so I spent the weekend in Wichita. It was not odd. I felt welcome and comfortable, the way one does in the homes of old friends. They even had cupcakes waiting for me when I walked through the door. Two dozen of them. Which is ridiculous. Everyone knows that I can usually only eat one … dozen.
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Did I mention they were topped with bacon? They were.

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The migraine was the only downside to the trip. It struck unexpectedly, putting me out of commission for an evening. It turned out to be fine. The nausea passed, like it always does. But that knock in the middle of the night? It was a nice reminder that no matter how many years pass or where you end up, some people will always be there for you.

Even if you throw up in their clawfoot tubs.

So naturally, you can imagine I might have been slightly beside myself when I saw this a few months back:

WHAAAAA ...?

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STRAWBERRY. MOTHER-EFFING. HOSTESS. CUPCAKES.

Yeah, I know.

I have no idea why I was not informed. Does Hostess REALLY not have me on their press mailing list? It seems that they ought to. Because even though the strawberry variant of the Hostess cupcake has been around since January 2011, I did not see them until June.

I was at gas station in northwestern Washington state, not far from the Canadian border, and there they were, innocently sitting on the shelf. Next to them was something I have seen before, if only rarely: the elusive orange-flavored Hostess cupcake.

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These are kind of like Haley's comet.

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In college, I had a friend who disputed the existence of orange Hostess cupcakes, even after I swore, hands down, that they were real. She questioned my knowledge on the topic of cupcakes, which is just ridiculous – it’s like debating Einstein over physics. THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE PUT ON THE EARTH TO UNDERSTAND. Do not question them. Ever.

Seeing an orange Hostess cupcake is rare enough. Seeing it alongside the previously-unheard-of-at-least-to-me strawberry Hostess cupcake is like discovering that Jeff Golblum made a movie with Cyndi Lauper (awesome, but a little shocking and disorienting).

I made sure to snap a few pictures, but then I did something I rather regret: I did not buy either of these confections.

I know. I know. I’m not really sure what I was thinking. I was just so overwhelmed by what I had seen (plus, all my cash was in Canadian currency).

Also, let’s be fair: Hostess cupcakes are kind of terrible. That’s not to say I won’t eat them (I remember once when I was little my mother let me take a chocolate Hostess cupcake in my school lunch. I have not forgotten it. It was one of the better days of my life.) It’s simply that I’ve found much much better iterations as I’ve traveled the globe.

But still. I should have been informed about these beforehand. And I should have tried them.

You know, for science. 

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What’s that? Er, no, I’m sorry. Not the man in foreground. The man in the foreground is my husband. He has many lovely attributes, of which “god-like” is not one. He is charitable and kind and good, and he often smells fantastic. While he is one of the best humans I’ve ever been fortunate enough to encounter, he is still human.

No, the man to which I refer is this one, here:

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He is no mere mortal. Mortals cannot sleep on planes. Mortals require quiet surroundings and consistent altitudes to sleep. They need dark rooms devoid of screaming babies; to spend long hours free of screechy announcements from the cockpit. But this man? He required none of those things. Instead, he boarded our flight from Boston to Seattle, sat down, and within minutes, enjoyed the golden dew of sleep. And he did not stir. Not when the passengers next to him, imprisoned in their middle and window seats, finally gave up any hope that he would wake and climbed over him to use the facilities. Nor when the beverage cart lumbered down the aisle, crudely banging his elbow (for in his mindless oblivion, he did not hear the 120-decibal warning blaring from the speaker above, instructing him to tuck in his arms and legs). Through turbulence and smooth flying, through ascent and descent, from east coast to west, he slept.

He is no mere mortal.

Would that I had his power. In otherwise pitch-black hotel rooms, I find myself draping articles of clothing over every blinking light and digital screen (to the good staff of a-hotel-that-shall-remain-unnamed: I am sorry for slapping a pantyliner to the digital thermostat on the wall. The blinking lights were driving me crazy. Also, the pantyliner was clean.) I’ve worn earplugs to bed, because a sound in the distance, barely above a whisper when it reached me, was too much to endure. And I’ve have trouble falling asleep in the past because the sound of my blood pumping in my own ears was too much for me. All signs that I am not a by-product of countless years of evolution, as my lack-of-sleep should have rendered me eaten by wolves long ago.

If only we had a Prometheus, to steal this god’s gift of sleep and share it among us mere mortals. What would the punishment for such a crime be? Being chained upon a hill, forced to polish off plates of lukewarm coach airline food every day, only to have them reappear the next morning? Or maybe just a really long layover in Newark?

Alas, I realized I had no hope of being able to so effortlessly enter and exit unconsciousness. The moment the plane’s wheels hit the ground, his eyes opened. He rubbed them gently, and within seconds looked refreshed and wide-awake.

When Armageddon comes, I suspect he will be the last survivor. Long after the cries of the wretched, burning in hellfire, have died down, after the earth has been scorched and no trace of life exists, he will wake. Looking around, he’ll wonder what exactly happened while he slept. And finding no one around to answer his question, he might just roll over and catch a few more winks, because really, why not?

I mean, secretly I always hoped people would find my blog useful/interesting/entertaining, but I was also convinced for a long time that Dustin Diamond was actually Beastie Boy Mike D‘s little brother. And I am still absolutely positive to this day that Duran Duran actually sings “Mysterious Ways” (please do NOT tell me otherwise.)  The point is, I can’t trust my brain.

Fortunately, having an unreliable brain doesn’t seem to be a road-block to blogging . Judging by my crazed fellow travel bloggers out there, it might just be a requirement.

So, while I try to calm myself down from all of this crazy excitement (Seriously. This. Is. Awesome.), I’ve compiled a list of my top posts from the last year (and beyond). Of course, they’re my opinion of what my top posts have been … and you know how unreliable that brain of mine is.

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The Danish Village of Solvang. (A brief exchange between myself and my husband as we walked through the streets of this central California town – Me: “Can we move here?” Rand: “No.”)

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My experience with the new TSA screenings. By the time you read this, getting on a plane will require a pelvic exam.

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Horrific Temptations and the Golden Gate Bridge. How spending time at the most suicidal spot on the planet makes me crazy introspective (I’ve since concluded this was due to a contact high received from being downwind of Berkeley).

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Finding George Harrison’s Clock Part I and Part II. We all have inner demons, sworn enemies, and collections of skeletons in our closet. Turns out mine was a very old clock that changed the way we travel the world (which is funny, because for YEARS I thought my sworn enemy was skinny jeans.)

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Dick Move, 1st Class A-hole. We get upgraded to first class next to a guy who’s so obnoxious, I wonder if tackling and punching him will render me a hero.

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Los Angeles: City of … no way … hope? I try to find the magic that my actor brother still sees in his hometown of L.A. And I almost succeed.

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Glasgow Bus Tours. Apparently the trick to hailing a tour bus in Glasgow is to look like you really, really want it. Um …

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London’s Old Operating Museum and Herb Garret. The scariest phrase on earth? “Victorian medical tools.” GAH.

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Ashland, Love, and Frosting. Quite simply my favorite place on the planet.

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The Local and the Tourist (a tale of Rome). Just when I start thinking I’m a total fish out of water, I find myself fitting in, far better than I could have ever imagined, in my mother’s hometown.

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The 12 items of clothing I always pack (and you should, too). Note: this post is actually useful (I’m surprised, too.)

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Borough Market: A place for love. But not vegetarians.

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Okay, I know it’s only 11:30am, but I think I need to have a celebratory drink. And by drink, I obviously mean “cupcake.”

Thanks to Time.com and all of my readers. This, honestly, is a little too awesome for words.

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There are, of course, exceptions. The meal so incredible, it makes you want to forget your culinary commitment issues and settle down. You are hopelessly smitten: and you can’t think of anyone else.

For me and Rand, this place is Broder.

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I can see a few PDXers rolling their eyes at this admission. Broder is in no way a secret. It’s like admitting to a crush on the most popular guy in school. But it’s delicious and reliable and the service we get is always fantastic. By some miracle, we’ve managed to miss their crowded hours, going either later in the morning or on weekdays. The restaurant is Scandinavian, and their breakfasts are the stuff of legend and magazine articles. The first time we went, it was because they had been profiled in the magazine we had found in our PDX hotel room. Since that day, we’ve only ever been back once, but it was just as blissful as the first time.

We ordered the Swedish Breakfast Bord, a collect of crackers, breads, a wedge of danish, and smoked fish.

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The bord also came with granola, which was utterly gorgeous …

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We also ordered the aebleskiver (Danish pancakes) with lemon curd and ligonberry jam. I suspect we’ll always get an order of them every time we visit (we’re two out of two thus far).

Little doughy planets of yumminess.

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We had a drink called the Finnish Line (oh, god. I LOVE PUNS) – a mix of amaretto, rum, espresso and whipped cream.

The food is wonderful, but I think my and Rand’s love for the place transcends that. Like I said, I’m not sure what it is. I can’t dissect it anymore than I can dissect my love for my husband. It’s a combination of so many factors, of positive experiences, of being treated wonderfully and feeling so damn happy when we’re there. It may even be because it reminds me of our trip to Sweden, years ago, before I had this blog. We’d sit and eat danishes all day and wander around Stockholm, feeling miles away from Seattle, and yet completely at home.

Are there other fish in the sea? Other restaurants in Portland? Yes, of course. Absolutely. But Broder will make you think there’s no other breakfast in the world. And that’s fine by me.

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