Hey, peeps! I’m home from a business conference I attended in Norfolk, Virginia. Oh, sweet blog, how I’ve missed you!

Here are some random observations I collected along the way:

1. A garden shed with a crucifix slapped over the door and a hand-painted sign counts as a church in the south.

2. I almost threw my back out unloading pillows from my bed every night. It is possible to have too much comfort and too much poof.

Marriott  pillows

3. If the conference staff puts out chafing dishes every day full of delicious bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and buttery biscuits, and you get accustomed to it, when they start putting out stuff like this…..

Does not compute 

this is how much of it you will take.

No thanks

4. Apparently, the Tyson plant somewhere in Virginia has a Chicken of the Month award for birds on good behavior. We saw a gaggle of them feeding outside the factory on the front lawn.

If death row chickens knew how to fly at a decent clip, they could, you know, leave.

Tyson escapees

5. The south doesn’t breed tail-gaters or speeders, and everyone politely lets you into a lane when you need to get there. Unlike in the north, where drivers will sooner shoot out your tires than show you the least bit of courtesy. North, take a lesson.

6. After going insane being on the road for eight hours, when your driving companion leaves your neighborhood to return the rental car, and you follow behind, you will  laugh so hard you cry when you see her make the first turn the wrong way and wind up in the suburban abyss for an extra ten minutes it kept her from getting the hell home already.

7. Having a panic attack while riding on a leisure yacht going only 2 knots per hour will get you laughed at by total strangers.

yacht

8. Having a conference badge hanging around your neck and swinging off your boobs will get you unintentionally ogled by total strangers trying to read your name and university, printed in teeny tiny typeface.

9. Four cups of coffee in the hotel room the morning of the drive home, plus four more during conference events and one more on the way home is sort of too much. It also gives you the crazy eyes, an unforgiving bladder and lead foot.

10. Coastal cities rock it with the seafood. And so do seafood restaurants.

We Serve Crabs

11. That guy who was stuck to my trunk on Philadelphia’s I-95, in the rain and on a shoulderless stretch, can go to hell. You proved that I had every reason to fear driving on that highway and ruined any chance of me ever attempting it again.

12. Southern hospitality is alive and well. When your fat ass knocks over a dozen formerly organized pashmina scarves from a display in a gift shop — not once, but twice — the cashier will apologize to you for the incidents. You will feel like a dumb northerner and pray she doesn’t have a blog of her own.

I’m glad to be back! Missed you guys!

Stumble it!