Birthday at the Waitrose

Alright I get it. I've been extremely neglectful of the blog lately. Not only have I truly been swamped by work since I've been back - philo paper, writing scenes for a play, thesis proposal, Brit Lit Paper - but it was probably the most eventful week of celebrations that the London Program has ever seen. In a span of seven days, there were six birthdays, starting with Conor Bruen's and ending with my own, but also St. Patrick's Day. Needless to say, I've been treating my body more like a tent than a temple, and last night my body retaliated. It started with the heavy head, sore throat, and really gross cough that starts way down in your chest. It culminated in me wearing all of my sweats to bed, still freezing cold, and resigning myself to the fact that I had a fever. So I slept til 10am and then went back to sleep at 1pm, woke up at 3:30, and then forced myself to rally so that I could go see the play required for my Intro to London Theater class, which was painfully bad.

But no more excuses. I'm back and ready to blog, but it's not going to be about spring break. At least not yet. I've asked for some collaboration on my spring break post from one of my possibly not so loyal followers - my sister Liza - because just the thought of blogging about that week is horribly daunting to me, so I thought that if she asked me questions (or if anyone asked me questions!!! hint hint)I would be able to tell y'all what you want to know, instead of me go through the rundown of each day like a 7th grader writing in her diary...

This post is going to be about two of my favorite things - my 21st birthday and my favorite grocery store ever, Waitrose. My birthday was simply one of the most fun nights I've ever had. It started on Saturday the 20th (I decided to celebrate into my real birthday) with a fun meal with my London crew at a pub down the street. We then had a gathering at the flats until we went out to a pub/club that had a DJ that played anything I wanted him to. I just danced the whole night to my favorite guilty pleasure pop songs, and then went home and woke up on birthday feeling wonderful. I went for a long run to kick off my 22nd year and then Conor and Patrick and I decided to make a nice birthday dinner (since all establishments are closed on Sundays for some reason here. Sundays are the days I miss America most...). In order to make said birthday dinner, there was only one place we needed to go - Waitrose.

Waitrose is the epitome of what a grocery store should be. You walk in and everything just looks pristine. The food is beautiful, the store is clean and organized, that have a big cheese bar (which won Patrick over) and if you can't find something they'll find it for you. Not only that, but their Waitrose brand things are AWESOME (with a really cool font and design) and it's not even more expensive than the run of the mill Tesco and Sainsbury grocery stores. It's also closer than those grocery stores to our flats. Not only that, but they sell toilet paper that is made with cashmere threads. Seriously. I bought some. It's awesome.

So the boys and I set out to buy groceries, but with it being beautiful outside and my birthday, we decided to stop for a pint on the way and sit out at one of the picnic tables. Once we made it to the Waitrose, we found all of the things to make chicken tikka masala from scratch, brought it home, and started cooking. For the production that it could have been, the team effort put forth by the three of us made the chicken tikka adventure fairly painless (the G&T's probably helped that too). We made a delicious meal, and then went over to - where else - Exmouth Arms for a night cap.

So now I'm old and sick, which makes me feel like I should have decided to stay 20, or at least not have run my body into the ground for the past two weeks, but hey, you do what you've got to do. Stay tuned for the spring break interview, and if you have questions, please pass them along! I'm begging for a little push.