Grace totally made this brown girl blush. Thanks so much to Design*Sponge for the lovely mention this morning. Cupcakes are always a good thing.

That’s what you might be thinking. I’ve been compiling a monster list of links using a lovely service called Del.icio.us for a few months. Though the tagging is amazing, and the community is phenomenal, I was beginning to get overwhelmed in finding the links I was looking for without a visual aid. I decided (after, of course using the service for four months) that I’d come back to blogging but blog my links so the blog serves as a sort of digital scrapbook. Eventually all my links at del.icio.us will be here, illustrated wonderfully and (hopefully) utilizing a tagging service.

And the above? That’s a freaking awesome painting by Dave Chung. Dave’s work is fantastically funny and makes you wonder what the hell is going on. I love it all.

The girls in security seem to be quite happy despite the long lines at the checkpoint. “People keep to your LEFT! A single line to the LEFT!” People are anxious to get through and to the gate.

I show an attendant my shoes. “Girl, next time wear flatter shoes. You gotta take those off.” I put my shoes in a plastic bin, and hand them to her. She doesn’t seem to notice and instead fixates on a woman in a green sari barreling down the line.

The woman doesn’t seem to notice people protesting her shoving them aside. She moves to pass me and through the detector. “MA’AM! Where are you GOING!?”. The woman is stopped. She frantically looks at the sister. “INDIA!” she replies jubilantly, wide-eyed and excited. The sister rolls her eyes as the rest of the attendants chuckle. “Back of the line, ma’am.”

I stop a cab on Madison. He’s counting his bills, looking up he says, “Get in.” not noticing my two suitcases. “Sir, I need you to pop the trunk.” He obliges, I deposit my luggage and we’re off.

Weaving in and out of traffic, head out of the window cursing other drivers, nearly rearending a bus we pull up in front of Penn. The meter reads $9.10. Is this right? $11.20 to get from 108th and 2nd to 57th and Mad and $9.10 from 57th and Madison to Penn at 34th? “Miss you takin’ too long to pay me. I’m going to pull over across the street.”

The cab turns perpendicular across Sixth Avenue and clumsily pulls up in front of a waiting bellhop. The trunk pops and I notice the bellhop is going for my bag. “HEY! That’s MY bag! What the hell are you doing!?”

And I haven’t even gotten to the airport…