Becoming A Citizen Of The World Again

My neighbor took me to the post office today to pick up a package that arrived for me last week.  Despite the unfortunate fact that every package sent to me, unless it's computer-related, comes with a V.A.T. charge of $76 TT (about $12 US), I was totally stoked about getting this one, a late Christmas present from Generous Laptop Refurbishing Guy.  It was huge and heavy and I couldn't wait to get home and open it up.

Then my neighbor decided that, since we were out, we should take a little tour.  The unwrapping would have to wait.  We drove out to a boatyard where there was a little restaurant she really liked.  We sat outside and ate burgers next to the water, and I cajoled her into regaling me with stories of the three and a half years she spent living on a boat with a French chef.

I'm telling you, start asking people to tell you their stories.  You'd be amazed at the world of lives out there.

I also learned a new Trini-ism at the restaurant.  When I saw a sign that read, "No bare feet, no bare back", I was confused.  Why weren't women allowed to wear low-backed halter tops inside a restaurant, I wondered?  I asked my neighbor about this and she informed me that "bare back" actually referred to shirtless guys.  Ah.  It was the "no shirt" equivalent of the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" policy.

For a minute there I thought maybe it was an admonition to practice safe sex.

Yuk yuk.

On the way back from the restaurant, I noticed that my neighbor, who'd only been back from the States for a few days, was driving on the right side of a two-lane road.  Feeling still confused about the rules of the road here, I asked her how the heck she knew this was a one-way road.  At which point she let out an expletive and swerved into the other lane, realizing she'd unwittingly fallen back into American-style driving.

It was completely adorable.

So then I got home, and tore into my Christmas package.  Once I got it open, I suddenly found myself covered in chocolate.  It was literally raining chocolate bars.

And these weren't just any chocolate bars.  These were Green & Black's organic chocolate bars.   

I normally try to keep a low profile in the complex, since I'm a couple years shy of the official minimum age for residents, but I may have given myself away today as the mound of chocolate, within which I found myself, set me to squealing, very loudly, several times.

There were 22 of them.  TWENTY-TWO.  Twenty-two bars of high-end organic chocolate, in every flavor they come in.  Now, if I had gotten merely one or two, I would have ripped through them immediately.  But the moment I discovered I had just acquired a monumental stash of cocoa gold, I suddenly became Ebenezer Scrooge.

Nobody, but nobody, is getting close enough to these things to even smell them.

Even I'm only allowed to take one nibble at a time.

And I make no apologies for that.

I mean, come on:

Ain't that a beautiful sight?

Food-Related Non-Sequiter Post Script:  Have you ever noticed how the scent of hamburger doesn't come off after just one hand-washing?  Why is that?