Escape from deep freeze!

In the wee hours of this morning I returned home after a week in Anaheim, California. Although I was there for business, it was also a lot of fun. And the most welcome part of the excursion of course was escaping the freezing cold weather for sunny souther California. When I left New Jersey on Tuesday morning, it was bone-chilling 13° outside; when I stepped off the plane in Anaheim, it was a wonderful dry 78°! Yay! And there was a nice pool and hot tub right outside my hotel room! Woo-hoo!

The reason I went to California was to work at the Natural Products Expo West, once again serving up all kinds of delicious pies, cookies, tea breads, crumble cakes in the exhibit booth of the company for which I work. Standing in the booth all day for three days in a row is tough on the feet, but it's nothing a little soak in the hot tub can't cure. ;)

The day before I left for Anaheim, I did a little research to see where I might be able to go swing dancing, since I knew there is a very active Lindy community in southern California. To my extreme delight I learned that Orange County was hosting a Lindy exchange the very same weekend that I would be in town. I didn't have a whole lot of free time in the evenings, but I did manage to sneak out on Friday night for some dancing at the Atomic Ballroom. I don't know whether the size of the crowd at the Atomic Ballroom was larger than usual (it's a regular weekly event) due to the exchange. Either way, it was quite a large crowd, and it seemed to me that there were a good number of quality dancers there. Folks seemed quite friendly too, so I can safely say that I enjoyed dancing with southern California quite a lot.