Night SkyA beautiful summer night (11 p.m. to be exact) in Drogheda. 

Remember when I first arrived, and I wrote a post about the “Irish diet?” Basically I was amazed that even though I was eating more starch, fat and sugar than ever before, I wasn’t gaining weight. I think at the time (it was still wintery in early March), I chalked it up to the fact that my body – used to the balmy climate of Los Angeles – was working overtime to keep warm in freezing-cold Ireland.

Well, it’s not so cold here anymore. In fact, it seems Ireland is enjoying one of the best summers in recent memory (naturally I am taking full credit for this freakish change of weather pattern). The good news is that we’re having really warm, perfectly-cloudless days and it actually feels like summer. The bad news is that my body is no longer burning calories at twice its normal rate yet I’m still eating like a bear preparing for hibernation. When I recently saw a photo of me that one of my friends had taken, I nearly had a heart-attack. So mortified was I that I actually asked her to remove it from Facebook (thankfully, she did).

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