PSA: H&M is online!

Remember that first trip to New York I told you about? The one where I went to H&M over and over because there were only a few stores in the U.S.?

Well this is a game-changer… all of H&M’s merchandise is on sale online now. Even the maternity, and the kids, and the home sections! I looked up the shipping and return policy, and it’s $6 each way with 30 days to return. Not bad!

[Shown: Patterned Kimono]

Memory lane: Our first apartment

Aron and I took a little trip down memory lane on our last trip to Los Angeles…

This is the first apartment Aron and I shared—on Ogden in the Fairfax district.

I lived in that large, Spanish-style apartment, just up the block from CBS Studios, alone at first as a graduate student at USC. I was about six-months into the Comparative Literature PhD program when Aron came down from San Francisco and moved in. It was a giant one-bedroom with an amazing layout, but it seemed small at the time. (Funny, considering our five years in 500-square-feet.) Six months later, as he began medical school at UCLA, we moved around the corner to a two-bedroom on Genessee.

I remember pushing our things (literally) around the block and being asked whether we were selling our records. We looked like a walking yard sale, we had so barely bothered to pack up.

I went back through our old photos and it’s amazing how few we have of it, especially considering we were there for four years.

It was here that we got engaged (nearly eight years ago)!

Where was your first home away from home (other than the dorms)? What was it like? There’s a great book called My First New York

where artists, actors, writers and the like recount their early days and first homes in the city. No matter where you are though, it’s something you’ll never forget.

P.S. Favorite shops in Los Angeles (and now this one, too) and my pick for pizza in the city.

Coffee Talk: How much caffeine is in your coffee?

Is this the real reason Starbuck’s took over the coffee industry? And here we all thought it was the frappucinos.

An interesting infographic from the folks at Thrillist (with help from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and EnergyFiend.com).

And here’s Mayo clinic’s comparison of caffeine in coffee to that in other sources (like chocolate). You’ll have to do the math to make the ounces match up.

P.S. Ice coffee at home; and I wonder how some of my favorite cups stack up: Blue Bottle in SF and Ninth Street Espresso in NY.