Londonness - Traveling on a Crazy Pants Diet

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Ah yes. The joys of traveling on a restricted diet.

I knew going into my London trip that this would be an issue, despite all the cool U.K. blogs I'd discovered dealing with my particular food issues (aka the FODMAPs way of life). And then, mere days before taking off, I threw caution to the wind and started taking a daily multi vitamin, which INSTANTLY made me sick until the day of the trip itself. Ah yes, to be at such a wonderful point where a vitamin will make me sick! Luckily my nutritionist came to the rescue at the very last minute and enabled me to get my hands on some of these sweet babies:

Ultimate Aloe powder packets. I'd already been hooked on the Aloe Juice, which was insanely amazing at getting rid of heartburn, nausea, the regular cocktail of stomach maladies I was used to dealing with. But thanks to this travel convenient form, I could safely take it along WITH me on my trip, leading to a much better stomach-on-the-go. Whew.

So since I mentioned yesterday some of the amazing restaurants we discovered right in our hometown for the week of Brixton, I was amazed to find out that several of them just happened to also be gluten-free. Woot! Okay, so one was a happy accident, and one I searched for.

Here's my list of some FODMAPs-friendly, gluten-free places we managed to find:

  • WAGfree - featuring breakfast sandwiches, baked goods, and sandwiches. I had a bacon-egg-toast thingie one day, and grabbed a giant loaf of bread with toasted pumpkin seeds on top another. Yum-MY. And even though I went to the one in Brixton, they popped up all over the place during our travels.
  • Brick Box- the first time I typed this as Brick Top...

    Such a wuvable gangster. Brick BOX was where I managed to find some gluten-free crepes that came in all varieties of sweet and savory. Also located in Brixton Village, and the staff was so friendly they let us squish in for seats next to a couple trying to have a private dinner. Ha HA, take that suckers! Romance can't compete with my gluten-free appetite! Looks like they have multiple venues as well.

  • The last place we hit up in Brixton was a vegan cupcake place called Ms. Cupcake. I didn't realize it also had gluten-free offerings until I wandered in and hit the motherload - bars, gummy bears, cookies, and a fine selection of gluten-free cupcakes. SCORE. I loaded up on snacks for the flight back but couldn't help but hork down a GF cupcake while I was at it.
  • While visiting the West End Theatre District, we turned the corner from the Leicester Square Underground Station and stumbled upon TONS of restaurants and eateries. Seeing Italian food, though, I figured to hell with it and surrendered. It wasn't until my traveling companion Heather shouted "GLUTEN FREE PIZZA AND PASTA!" before I realized my good fortune. We'd happened upon Bella Italia, and it was mighty tasty.
  • Also in/around the West End (or maybe not, I was a tourist after all), and further up near Convent Garden on our way to the British Museum, I'd scouted out a little out of the way place called Da Mario (SURPRISE! Also Italian. Which is part of why I love traveling with Heather - the girl will eat pizza with me anywhere.) It was super cute, the servers were really attentive and fast, and it was clearly THE place to go for lunch during the work week. We got a table before a regular patron could - who's in the know?? They also had a dumb waiter that brought food up from the kitchen to the dining room. Fantastic.
  • Last but certainly least was the Ebury Wine Bar, which took only about 2 hours on foot to find. It just so happens in some parts we were wandering through in London that there'd be 12 streets with the same first name of the street but with Avenue, Street, Square, Place, arbitrarily tacked onto the end. So since these were my fabulously detailed directions to the restaurant (the lower portion): So yeah ... me writing down "Ebury" sent us on a wild pub chase for quite some time. BUT! Here's the reason that Heather didn't kill me: on our way to the Ebury Wine Bar we passed many a fine establishment, one of which was called The Orange and full of hoppin' people enjoying great food and drink. So when we finally dragged our feet up to the Wine Bar and the host snubbed us, it wasn't too hard to decide where to go. I made sure to repeatedly remind Heather that if it wasn't for MY directions, we never would've stumbled upon The Orange (okay, and a zillion other places) in the first place. After enough wine she agreed with me. And The Orange, though not particularly gluten-free, was amazing and full of hot, happening people. (I'll dish more about that in the Pub Post!) So ... I'm not saying don't go to the Ebury Wine Bar. But if you do go and they're kind of rude ... there's a kick-ass pub right down the street.

And thus ends my discussion of the gluten-free eats I found that helped me keep to my diet for at least part of the time on my trip. What also helped? CHIPS! The savior of vegans and weirdo dieters alike.

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Londonness - Traveling on a Crazy Pants Diet

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Ah yes. The joys of traveling on a restricted diet.

I knew going into my London trip that this would be an issue, despite all the cool U.K. blogs I'd discovered dealing with my particular food issues (aka the FODMAPs way of life). And then, mere days before taking off, I threw caution to the wind and started taking a daily multi vitamin, which INSTANTLY made me sick until the day of the trip itself. Ah yes, to be at such a wonderful point where a vitamin will make me sick! Luckily my nutritionist came to the rescue at the very last minute and enabled me to get my hands on some of these sweet babies:

Ultimate Aloe powder packets. I'd already been hooked on the Aloe Juice, which was insanely amazing at getting rid of heartburn, nausea, the regular cocktail of stomach maladies I was used to dealing with. But thanks to this travel convenient form, I could safely take it along WITH me on my trip, leading to a much better stomach-on-the-go. Whew.

So since I mentioned yesterday some of the amazing restaurants we discovered right in our hometown for the week of Brixton, I was amazed to find out that several of them just happened to also be gluten-free. Woot! Okay, so one was a happy accident, and one I searched for.

Here's my list of some FODMAPs-friendly, gluten-free places we managed to find:

  • WAGfree - featuring breakfast sandwiches, baked goods, and sandwiches. I had a bacon-egg-toast thingie one day, and grabbed a giant loaf of bread with toasted pumpkin seeds on top another. Yum-MY. And even though I went to the one in Brixton, they popped up all over the place during our travels.
  • Brick Box- the first time I typed this as Brick Top...

    Such a wuvable gangster. Brick BOX was where I managed to find some gluten-free crepes that came in all varieties of sweet and savory. Also located in Brixton Village, and the staff was so friendly they let us squish in for seats next to a couple trying to have a private dinner. Ha HA, take that suckers! Romance can't compete with my gluten-free appetite! Looks like they have multiple venues as well.

  • The last place we hit up in Brixton was a vegan cupcake place called Ms. Cupcake. I didn't realize it also had gluten-free offerings until I wandered in and hit the motherload - bars, gummy bears, cookies, and a fine selection of gluten-free cupcakes. SCORE. I loaded up on snacks for the flight back but couldn't help but hork down a GF cupcake while I was at it.
  • While visiting the West End Theatre District, we turned the corner from the Leicester Square Underground Station and stumbled upon TONS of restaurants and eateries. Seeing Italian food, though, I figured to hell with it and surrendered. It wasn't until my traveling companion Heather shouted "GLUTEN FREE PIZZA AND PASTA!" before I realized my good fortune. We'd happened upon Bella Italia, and it was mighty tasty.
  • Also in/around the West End (or maybe not, I was a tourist after all), and further up near Convent Garden on our way to the British Museum, I'd scouted out a little out of the way place called Da Mario (SURPRISE! Also Italian. Which is part of why I love traveling with Heather - the girl will eat pizza with me anywhere.) It was super cute, the servers were really attentive and fast, and it was clearly THE place to go for lunch during the work week. We got a table before a regular patron could - who's in the know?? They also had a dumb waiter that brought food up from the kitchen to the dining room. Fantastic.
  • Last but certainly least was the Ebury Wine Bar, which took only about 2 hours on foot to find. It just so happens in some parts we were wandering through in London that there'd be 12 streets with the same first name of the street but with Avenue, Street, Square, Place, arbitrarily tacked onto the end. So since these were my fabulously detailed directions to the restaurant (the lower portion): So yeah ... me writing down "Ebury" sent us on a wild pub chase for quite some time. BUT! Here's the reason that Heather didn't kill me: on our way to the Ebury Wine Bar we passed many a fine establishment, one of which was called The Orange and full of hoppin' people enjoying great food and drink. So when we finally dragged our feet up to the Wine Bar and the host snubbed us, it wasn't too hard to decide where to go. I made sure to repeatedly remind Heather that if it wasn't for MY directions, we never would've stumbled upon The Orange (okay, and a zillion other places) in the first place. After enough wine she agreed with me. And The Orange, though not particularly gluten-free, was amazing and full of hot, happening people. (I'll dish more about that in the Pub Post!) So ... I'm not saying don't go to the Ebury Wine Bar. But if you do go and they're kind of rude ... there's a kick-ass pub right down the street.

And thus ends my discussion of the gluten-free eats I found that helped me keep to my diet for at least part of the time on my trip. What also helped? CHIPS! The savior of vegans and weirdo dieters alike.

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Londonness - The Accidental Awesomeness of Brixton

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This week I'm going to ramble on a bit about my recent trip to London. Since I'd never been before (and neither had my travel partner), and we didn't do too much researching beforehand, it was an exciting land full of adventure to be had. Or, you could say I was just being lazy by not learning that much about it before embarking on our trip. ANYWAY.

One of the first things we did before leaving was check out cheap places to stay. Sure, we could've jumped around from place to place, in and around London, but we both agreed we'd prefer to be in one place for the entire stay and venture out from there. Our home base ended up being in Brixton, based on a super awesome place we found on AirBNB.

All I knew about Brixton going in was entirely based on Attack the Block, a fun movie about aliens attacking a neighborhood band of hoodlums. So, y'know, I was ready. When we arrived on a pleasantly overcast Friday morning, fresh from over 24 hours without sleep, we were thrilled to discover the Brixton Underground station to be just right around the corner from our new flat. Unfortunately, it was about 11:00am London time and we couldn't check in until 3:00pm. So we picked a street and dragged our luggage until we found a quaint coffee shop called Opus to plunk ourselves down in and siphon off some of their free wifi. We stayed long enough to discover there was a pub right across the street, and swapped our coffee cups for wine glasses.

The next day we decided to experience the Brixton Market, a large winding string of outdoor vendors of everything you could imagine. Lots of fish, lots of scarves, suitcases, even VHS tapes. More fish. We lingered under the false promises that a fashion show was about to happen, but when it was over an hour overdue we instead chose to go further into the thick of Brixton Market. We went through a secret passageway (okay, it was an archway called "Brixton Village") which took us into enclosed section. At first we assumed it was just an extension of the market but oh no, it included so much more! Tons of tiny boutiques and restaurants boasting local, gourmet meals, all tucked away into a winding series of aisles.

As soon as we knew it was there, it became a regular stop throughout our entire stay. Although I never got to the magical upper level of this one wine shop called "The Cheese Room" (WHAT COULD BE MORE MAGICAL??), we did nab breakfast at a charming gluten-free bakery called WAGfree, snag a much desired seat at the Brick Box restaurant (which had gluten-free crepes), and on our last night managed to get into the uber-popular sourdough pizza restaurant Franco Manca. All places had fast, friendly service and yummy food. Since our typical style of travelling was to wander down the wrong street and miss out on all cool things that happened to be one block over, we couldn't believe our luck at finding this happening area.

Across from Brixton Village, another restaurant that boasted a good mixture of happy hour cocktails and french-inspired food was the Market House. Unfortunately we only went here on our last day, but we did make sure to do it twice. A little up the street from there was The Prince pub, which had a great cheese plate and enough tables/chairs that on the jampacked weekend nights we could still be sure to find a seat. Our closest pub, which had 2 cats and boardgames (and therefore became our favorite) was Trinity Arms. It was small, cozy, and neighborhood-y enough to make us Yankee tourists feel welcome.

I just realized that I'm already mentioning a LOT of the pubs we went to, and this isn't even my pubs post! That's later in the week. Clearly, a lot of our "London Activities" involved just sitting around drinking in various places. Don't judge.

So if you want a friendly, hip, up-and-coming city in south London to visit, I couldn't recommend Brixton enough. Its citizens seem to care a lot about making Brixton better and better, and they've clearly already done a bang-up job.

Tune in tomorrow, when I go more into detail of trying to travel on a ridiculous diet, like the Low FODMAPs one I have!

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I Can Pull Off This Whole Tired Look, Right

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I'm back!

I flew in from London late last night after a long but surprisingly doable 8 hour plane ride (I spent my time watching a triple feature of The Five Year Engagement, Friends With Kids, and Men In Black 3, which helped whizz by the hours), but today I'm pretty much completely zombified. Even the cats are horrified at the bags under my eyes. I wasn't sure what to expect from jet lag on the way home, since on the way there it manifested in me being able (and tempted) to fall asleep at any moment for the first three days. I nobly resisted the urge and visited multiple pubs instead -  you're proud of me, right?

So I hope to post a new Bonnie comic today, but hopefully you'll all forgive me if it won't be for at least a few hours. I'll leave you for now with a picture of the first thing that greeted me upon entering London ....

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British Pause

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As I may have mentioned before, I'm going to the U.K. (yippeeee!), so things might be quiet around here for the next week or so. Bonnie will continue to update next week (now on Tuesdays AND Thursdays!), but I'm not sure how much I'll be posting much beyond that. Since I haven't travelled abroad since ye old era of pre-iPhone/iPad days, I have no idea what to expect. I mean, from myself.

But I've got my passport, lipstick, and a list of comic book stores in London to check out (Gosh! Comics, Orbital Comics, and Forbidden Planet) so I figure I'm all set. Hey, do you think if I mention to Forbidden Planet that the NYC Forbidden Planet already sells my stuff, I'd be a shoo-in?

Also, my 12-year-old cousin gave me a helpful note that lists all the members of One Direction (and their girlfriends) to keep an eye out for on the street.

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omg omg omg

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Okay it's not here yet but it's coming soon ... my first published graphic novel, Glitter Kiss!!! Written by the lovely and talented Adrianne Ambrose, illustrated by yours truly, and published by the kick-ass folks at Oni Press!

GAH I CAN'T WAIT!!

Real cover coming soon! Eeeeeee!

Big thanks to the Comics Worth Reading peeps for a mention! I'll stop geeking out now.

Or WILL I??

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omg omg omg

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Okay it's not here yet but it's coming soon ... my first published graphic novel, Glitter Kiss!!! Written by the lovely and talented Adrianne Ambrose, illustrated by yours truly, and published by the kick-ass folks at Oni Press!

GAH I CAN'T WAIT!!

Real cover coming soon! Eeeeeee!

Big thanks to the Comics Worth Reading peeps for a mention! I'll stop geeking out now.

Or WILL I??

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SPX-y

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SPX is one of my favorite shows to go to, and not just because it's nestled in my very own state, right down the street from my old teenage Tower Records stomping grounds. One of the reasons I love this show is because it's the very first one I exhibited at, back when I just had a binder full of printouts of my webcomic and free postcards to give away. Back when it was split up in 3 different ballrooms of a hotel, and all the exhibitors would descend upon the downstairs bar for a drink when it was over. Ah, the memories. Of the drinks.

Anyhoo. Even though I was super disappointed that I didn't get to exhibit at SPX this year, I did dash in and out for a couple hours on Saturday and immediately threw some money at some books. Here's what I'm going to check out:

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Mark Twain's Autobiography by Michael Kupperman. Okay, so this one is really a gift for a friend, but I'm sure I'll probably end up reading it before I wrap it up (oh, like you've never done that!). I can't wait to see how the images and awesome Twain quotes tie in together. Have you guys ever been to his house? GORGEOUS. And, according to Ghost Hunters, haunted. Bonus!

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Yessss, more Kate Beaton is always required. I'm not sure if this comes before or after the published Hark, A Vagrant, but I'm sure to love it just the same. I can't get over her facial expressions of people in medieval garb.

 

Paris by Maarten Vande Wiele was a pure impulse buy. The art style, the subject matter (bitchy fashionistas doing bitchy things) - I knew I had to have it. It looked like everything I aspire to be as an artist. And, maybe, as a fashionista. You don't know! It could happen!

I'll let you guys know what I think after I finish them. It's so nice to have some graphic novels in my to-read stockpile again!!

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Bonnie Moves to Twice A Week!

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Bonnie N. Collide, Nine to Five, my sassy little webcomic, is now moving to twice a week!!

Which means instead of being posted every Wednesday, it'll now be posted EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY. Sandwiching Wednesday with comicky goodness, if you will. STARTING NEXT TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18th. Which is kind of crazy, since I'm going to be off to London that Thursday, BUT that's why I switched this here website over to WordPress last month - so I could start scheduling this stuff!

(wish me luck in remembering to DO this twice a week now ... )

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Bonnie Moves to Twice A Week!

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Bonnie N. Collide, Nine to Five, my sassy little webcomic, is now moving to twice a week!!

Which means instead of being posted every Wednesday, it'll now be posted EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY. Sandwiching Wednesday with comicky goodness, if you will. STARTING NEXT TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18th. Which is kind of crazy, since I'm going to be off to London that Thursday, BUT that's why I switched this here website over to WordPress last month - so I could start scheduling this stuff!

(wish me luck in remembering to DO this twice a week now ... )

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A Comic Con in Baltimore

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I love me a good Comic Con. And although I've only exhibited at Baltimore Comic Con twice now, it's definitely become one of my top faves. I was a little apprehensive this year about my location (across from Stan Lee, kind of hard to compete with that), but the sheer dedication and interest of the fans that come to this show never leaves me disappointed. Women, families - I've never seen a more diverse group of nerds than at Baltimore Comic Con. LOVE IT.

I tried to make my table display a little higher this year but honestly my teeny logo couldn't compete with the giant back walls and banners of everyone else:

The rest of my display was sectioned out into Comics, Prints, and Cuffs.

 

Some highlights from this year:

  • Exhibited next to Howie Noeldechen, whose vaudevillian Sean Connery impersonation of Bane kept me and Dennis going
  • Tiny girl in Batman costume,  complete with tutu (read: not BatGirl, BatMan and arguably pulling it off better than he ever did)
  • Actually, LOTS of girls/women in superhero costumes instead of superheroine ones. Did I miss the creation of this trend? I get it, I'd rather wear Loki's horns than butt floss. And these ladies were rockin' it.
  • 2 nearly naked dudes - Tarzan (GAH  OLD MAN IN LOINCLOTH) and Xerxes (heyyy, not so bad)
  • Learned that NO ONE wants my Sue Storm prints. Poor Invisible Woman.
  • Saw a HUGE guy dressed as Satan from Legend, fake-battling a Ghostbuster in the street for Orioles fans (aka, the reason I love comic cons)
  • As usual, met loads of awesome people who were cool enough to stop by and talk to me.

Here are the sketches I did, for those not following me on the Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr's!

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FINE. ... Fine.

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Awright, awright.  I guess it's time for me to grow up and accept the fact that I'll be on the FODMAPs diet for a while.  I know, I've been a brat since I first heard I have SIBO, and only *kind of* did the whole FODMAPs thing at first. Basically, since I was MOSTLY following the diet, and doing the herbs, I thought it was bullshit that I wasn't feeling better.

(And then threw caution to the wind and grabbed up some cheese and bread and stuffed a lot of it into my face).

Some stuff's happened since. Basically my SIBO is NOT gone, the power of the herbs was useless, and my insides are trying to violently overthrow me. Maybe I'm being dramatic. After I found out my SIBO wasn't only gone but worse, I wasn't sure what to do and limped back to my scattering of ol' FODMAPs recipes and blogs I'd found. Then I lucked upon a Facebook group committed to peeps dealing with FODMAPs and related cray-cray eating plans. Everyone was supportive, friendly, and best of all had stories to share. Immediately I was tld that you can't  do the FODMAPs thing half-assed (to be fair, I was at least doing it three-quarters of an ass). If you do, you'll never figure out if it can help or not. Like one genius poster noted, you've topped off the level of FODMAPs in your body and until you start to make that level decline, you're just adding to the problem. I'm already at a point where it's too easy to make bad things happen, and it's going to take a lot of work to make good things happen. My FODMAPs are at 11.

It's interesting too, to think I was treating this eating plan like a weight loss diet. I figured any effort I put into eating this way was bonus -  as long as I was mostly doing it, it had to be better than my previous habits. Right?? Nah. My gut's not MOSTLY dead, it's all dead.

Anyway. I just wanted to update you guys to my food struggles, and give mad props to the folks out there with specific diet to adhere to. Especially the pioneers in the field! Just like when I meet an older gay man or lesbian or feminist or civil rights activist, I want to shake the hand of the gluten-free fore-fathers: Thanks for all the hard work  you did to make my life easier.

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Which Bonnie Floats Your Boat?

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I'm thinking of putting some original art up for sale of some of my Bonnie N. Collide strips, this weekend at the Baltimore Comic Con but also to be posted in my Etsy Shop after that. Which ones would you guys like to see for sale? Bonnie and Stuart, Bonnie and her coworkers, Herb?? I'd love any/all opinions! :)

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Which Bonnie Floats Your Boat?

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I'm thinking of putting some original art up for sale of some of my Bonnie N. Collide strips, this weekend at the Baltimore Comic Con but also to be posted in my Etsy Shop after that. Which ones would you guys like to see for sale? Bonnie and Stuart, Bonnie and her coworkers, Herb?? I'd love any/all opinions! :)

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Grand Prix All Up in My Biz

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Last weekend the city of Baltimore welcomed a bunch of high-speed cars and their international drivers to careen around the city streets that us city dwellers merely use for gridlock. This is the 2nd year Baltimore has hosted the Grand Prix, which at first I only liked because it brought attention and dollars to the fair city (charm city) in which I live. But since my boyfriend just happens to be a prix fan, or rather a Fan of Fancy Cars That Drive Around But Definitely Not NASCAR, he loaded up on tickets for the weekend and I let him drag me there for one of the days.

Outside events typically aren't my thing. There's something about the combination of aluminum bleachers + burning hot sun with no shade + port-a-potty's that can ruin a good weekend day. This is why, years ago, I dragged my boyfriend away from a Ravens game to go sit somewhere cool and air conditioned before the game was over (he claims we were there only 5 minutes; I claim 10 days). But for the Grand Prix I decided to put on a brave face and suck it up. A brave face and lots of sunscreen, and a hat.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd witnessed a bunch of races on TV, but in person I was worried I'd get vertigo trying to track the cars zooming by. Luckily my boyfriend had picked some killer seats, not only high up in a corner with no one in front of us, but also in a spot where we could witness cars careening by one way, then turning around and heading back towards the other. This allowed me time to figure out which car I needed to root for, and I settled on a green Ferrarri.

My boyfriend informed me it wasn't JUST a green Ferrarri, but the Team Patron Ferrari 458 Italia. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize there was not one, but TWO of them on the track. I had actually chosen this particular green car initially because it had the funniest, loudest PUTT-PUTT-PUTT sound as the driver was down-shifting around the corners (using the flappy-paddle gear box, as the Top Gear boys have taught me to say). So I kept clapping for it, which was pretty stupid since I wasn't the only one wearing earplugs.

Blissfully, after an hour the sun disappeared behind some hazy clouds and the seats weren't nearly as unbearable. I enjoyed myself (after wolfing down a giant pretzel), and it was hard to deny how exciting it was just to hear those cars zooming around, trapped between the concrete barriers like a pack of angry wasps, let alone see them. My boyfriend graciously let us duck out early to meet a friend at a bar with a view of the track, and I was proud for our city to have successfully hosted such an event. It's rare when I experience moments of civic pride, but I do indeed have them. (Also, I'm proud of myself for not being an indoors-only spoilsport as per usual).

Go green car!

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Vampire Saturation

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I've held off on watching True Blood for a while. At first I heard things like "this show is amazing! You gotta watch!" and then it quickly turned to "that show is crap" or "it's just a big dumb soap opera" to eventually "omg you have to watch because the men are so hot". So obviously, I became intrigued. As someone who's been too inundated with images of naked women romping about (Game of Thrones, even though I love you, give it a rest already), I figured it was fine time to get to see a show that celebrated the male form. The NUDE male form. Hence, True Blood.

But even though my initial impulse to watch wasn't necessarily noble, I quickly became interested in the story and fell in love with (most) of the characters. Lafayette, Tara, Sam, Jason, Alcide, Jessica, Eric, Andy, Pam .... just a few who are never predictable and every time you see them they add another notch of complexity. Much like Friday Night Lights, it's easy to pigeonhole these "types" before you get to know them, and then watch as they unfold into ever changing, unpredictable people.

Except for Sookie. Ugh. Can they do something with her, please?

Sure, I could tell on the series when they were throwing in obligatory Maenad sex parties or romps with fairies in the forest in order to boost ratings. Luckily the strength of the actors was enough to keep things interesting and flowing and not cringeworthy when the script suddenly made someone a little TOO over-the-top.

So I just want to thank you, True Blood, for all the seasons I recently binge-watched. As I mention in this post on my other blog, summer is not my favorite time and these cold-cheeked vamps have helped me get through another one.

Oh, and does Pam remind anyone else of Janice?

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