Some of my favourite things ...

1. The way that when it rains in NY, every store stations a couple of their staff at the door with plastic bags open, ready to receive your dripping umbrellas. That way you can carry them in the bag while you are browsing with no drips or wet slaps against your leg - I know it is probably OH&S drive, but I love it!
2. The hot chocolates at work - we have a very funky machine where you insert little sachets. However I read the ingredients today of the hot chocolate: sugar, skim milk, cocoa "processed with alkali", hydrogenated coconut oil, glucose syrup, salt, sodium caseinate, mono- & diglycerides of fatty acids, soya lecithin, dipotassium phosphate, sodium citrate, artificial flavour, silicon dioxide. Not one of my favourite things anymore - if you took out the first 3 ingredients that sounds like sunscreen!!
3. Planning a trip. Whilst SM (Sindy's Mom) is in town we are taking a side trip to Washington. After spending half a months salary on train tickets (wow Amtrak is certainly covering costs), we are off to spend a couple of nights in the capital, staying at a rather nice looking B&B called the Akwaaba DC. http://www.akwaaba.com/about_akwaaba/index.html Will let you know how it goes. So I have my guide book, have mapped where I want to go, and am starting on the itinerary!
4. Sunshine - more of it today, and I am still smiling.
5. American customer service. They really do know how to do it here. I went to buy the Amtrak tickets at Penn Station (stupid overseas credit cards don't work here as they check everything back to the billing address, which has to be in the US. Problem for those of us without local credit facilities...) and the queue moved very fast, and the lady I got at the end of it was lovely and efficient (probably helped that I gave her the printout of the trains I wanted).
6. Wholefoods queuing system: at the local supermarket they have three queues all for the same set of about 30 registers. You join the shortest queue. how does this work? Well, as each register becomes available, the head of each queue takes it in turns to go to that available register. So the size of people's purchases is completely immaterial, just pick the line with the shortest number of people, and you will get served in order! This is brilliant for me as I have a gift for choosing the slowest moving line in supermarkets - here that can't happen!
7. American stereotypes: they really are true and they surround you every day - fat policemen eating donuts; rude taxi drivers who drive like maniacs; steaming subway vents (although they have funky funnels they put over them now, so the steam comes out 8 feet in the air); people speaking with every second word being "like"; people saying "you're welcome" every time you say thankyou and meaning it ... the list goes on and on.
8. Sephora stores that stock Philosophy! Yesterday I did buy the Unplastic Surgery, and it is FANTASTIC. Even nicer was the delightful girl who served me, who said "You aren't buying this for yourself are you?" I did my usual when confronted with such questions and lied, saying "No, why?" and she said "Well, this is a wrinkle treatment and you don't have any! If it was for you I wouldn't sell it to you!" After wanting to reach over and kiss her for being so nice and so blind simultaneously, I did lie further and confess that it was for RRPP, my much older sister. I used it on my frown lines when I got home, and they really did smooth out - this is miracle stuff!