Conference Crazies

While I usually lose weight at conferences from missed meals and late nights, I’m not so sure about this one. I drank a lot more wine than I usually did… but I don’t remember ordering more than 1 a night. It seems they just appeared as the first one was about to be gone… but I did a TON of walking so I think it all balanced out. I may not have lost, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a gain.

I was happy to meet the very tall, very lean and very nice Simon Heseltine on this trip and catch up with Jenn. (We both tried a little subliminal sabotage on each other… ) I still don’t know why Simon thinks he needs to lose weight, but it’s fun having him on board.

Sooooooo….

What did I eat this week? Oh dear… a different nationality each night!

Night 1: Christine Churchill and I ate burritos. They were good! Not sure why we picked burritos- I think we were just tired of walking. (Reminds me of the last time I was in London and Jill Whalen and I ate pizza because we weren’t sure what else to try.)

Night 2: Thai food. You’ve seen the pictures on Simon’s blog…it was a lot of food. And a lot of fun. Poor John Marshall- he was sitting across from me and saw me pull out the credit card to pay and offered to pick up my dinner so we didn’t have to hassle with the card. Unfortunately, I was paying for Chris Churchill’s dinner (we kind of traded off who paid) so he ended up paying for both of us. (I tried to let him off the hook, but after a good laugh, he still insisted on paying.) What a nice gesture!

Night 3: Brazilian Steak House. Death by Meat. It was interesting… men walking around with big swords of various roasted meats and they would slice some off onto your plate. Andrew Goodman seemed to find something funny about my comments about meat on sticks… also it was Mikkel De Mib Svensen’s birthday. I did NOT eat the desserts someone ordered.

Night 4: Mediterranean with Chris and Mikkel. I limited myself to a chicken-tomato sauce appetizer. But I seriously needed to eat before we went to the SES after party, where I drank way too much. (Some people consider falling down twice to be exercise… leaving my purse behind at the bar was definitely additional exercise! Thanks again to Matt Paine for walking me back and finding the handbag. )

Night 5: Cuban food. I love cuban food, but settled on a chicken in garlic sauce appetizer. Who needs to eat when you have such interesting company? I ended up at a table with John Marshall and his sister and brother-in-law and we had a really fun and entertaining conversation.

Night 6: Indian food in Covent Garden. Mona Elesseily and I specifically went searching for Indian food. It took a while to find a place and even longer to get our food! When it finally arrived, it was very good. I ate too much rice but managed to avoid the bread and crispy things that come with the meal.

Breakfast was usually a skinny latte from Starbucks and lunch was picked out of the conference lunch bags- never very much there that I wanted to eat.