Another Fun Weekend in River City

The weekend was fairly low-key: laundry, checking out gyms, wandering along the Thames and looking at the sites, before meeting with two people from my fledgling GURPS group for dinner and cards at a local Starbucks in the West End.

We had a lot of fun, which is always a good thing, and I got home in time to watch "Torchwood".

Here's some pix of things that I saw over the weekend: an escape artist (or amateur bondage monkey) by the London Eye. I was only able to see a little bit due to the huge crowd, but he was actually pretty good. When I went back later, there was another fellow that escaped from a strait jacket.

And here's a picture of someone blowing massive bubbles. There was a gaggle of children clustered nearby charging back and forth so that they could try to capture or pop the bubbles floating through the air.



And lastly, the student march on Parliment to argue for less money spent on Iraq or nukes, and more money spent on education.



Can't argue with that sentiment.

The Lovely Lori

My first visitor from home. Lori's here with her bf for a few days before heading to Barcelona. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to meet her for more than a quick lunch.

My Bedroom

This is my bedroom. You don't get to see the window overlooking the garden, the desk or the closet. Trust me, I have it pretty cushy.

It's Enough to Restore Your Faith in Mankind...

I got home from work last night and found that I had a letter from the Lost Property office of the London Underground. They thought they might have found my Palm LifeDrive. I headed over this morning and found that they did indeed have it. (Unlike in the States, you have to pay to get your lost property back here; £10 later, I had my old Palm in hand and headed back to the office.)

The person that returned it didn't leave a name/number or anything. As far as I can tell, the only thing that the faceless person (or the Tube staff) did was diddle with the Palm enough to see the menu of programs.

Now I've got two of the damned things to schlep around. It could be far worse. (I did make sure that I set up both of them to secure themselves and need a password to log back in. I thought about using the data encryption office on the LifeDrive, but the damned thing is just way too slow to encrypt due to the hard drive (versus the flash drive on the other Palm, the T|X.

Getting everything up and running while trying to get some work done this afternoon.

Gaming!

Went to the London Gamers group last night for their usual Monday night gaming. I know that I said this last time I was here, but damn... I do like the way they do things here.

We meet at the Black Horse pub, where we're ensconced at the upstairs bar/events room. It's quiet, well lit, pleasant, and the staff is fantastic. Want something to eat? Pop downstairs to the pub and order your dinner or something to drink. Either carry up your drinks or wait for them to be sent up in the dumb waiter with the food orders.

Periodically, the staff will come upstairs to take away empties, plates and the like. You can't complain about that sort of service.

When you have a room full of gamers, at times, it can get loud, but for the most part things are much quieter here than they are in the States.

I joined a new game recently and last night was the first table top game. The GM is an Italian web designer/programmer/writer (he writes cyberpunk stuff) and the other players are his girlfriend and a German that works for Yahoo! in marketing. We're playing Star Wars, which was a lot of fun.

Due to scheduling conflicts, we won't be playing again until November. I did hear about a GURPS player over the weekend. Hopefully, I can find a game for my GURPS fix, soon.

National Insurance Number Interview

Had fun with the NHS bureaucracy today. Woo. Get there early, find paperwork is lost, fill out the paperwork again, smile, nod, correct things, smile, nod, correct things again, smile, nod, sign the paperwork (initially all corrections), and head back to work two hours later.
Rah.

My coworkers

The first post on my week in the life of Jp in London series of blog posts. This is a picture of two of my co-workers as they discuss a problem. Unfortunately, it's not the best picture but that's more me than them.

Test of my New Phone's 'Blog This' Functionality

Ceiling in my bedroom. What can I say, it's a test. (My new mobile phone allows me to take pictures and send them to my blog. Ta da! It works. Expect to see more of London, as I do in the future.)

What a Difference a Night's Sleep Makes

I woke up at a few minutes before 5 again this morning. Happily, for the first time since I got here, I was able to roll over and go back to sleep.

Rolling out of bed an hour later when my alarm went off was absolutely fantastic. Today, I felt like a million bucks (about £539K), when I rolled into the shower. Yesterday, I barely made it to 16.00; I was so tired.

The weekend is here and hopefully, I'll have some fun. Maybe a long hike through the Putney Heath, some people gawking in Trafalgar Square? We'll see...

Insomnia

There's nothing like waking up at 2am and spending the rest of the night staring at the ceiling. Even worse, when you go to bed at 11.

I don't even know why. Is it stress? (I don't feel stressed. I've got a project, my boss wants answers that I don't have, but we're moving along on that front. I have money in the bank, a job, a place to live. *Shrug*

We'll see, I guess.

At some point, I'll be able to sleep through the night again. In the mean time, I can read, play mindless games of solitaire, etc... until I fall back to sleep during the night and then go to work when the alarm goes off.

Ex-Gays

I'm listening to yesterday's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. It was about the ex-Gay ministries.

I swear, every time I hear about these people, I just shake my head. Part of it is having dealt with the whole coming out thing and realizing that I had to be who I am, rather than wallowing in the shame and all of the things that these ministries prey on.

All I can think of is how lucky I am to have had the people in my life (both family and friends) to help me when I needed it so that I could become who I am today.

Keeping Homesickness At Bay — One NPR Show at a Time...

It's really funny, thanks to the Internet and listening to my favorite radio station no matter where I am, it doesn't feel like I'm as far away from people as I am.

When I come into work, I listen to the previous weekday's Talk of the Nation and Fresh Air, before turning on WBUR and listening to the live broadcast from Boston. The time zone difference does make for some discomforting things: everyone at work is asking about lunch, but because the radio is talking about the drive into work, I don't even think of food at the moment. Then at the end of the day, the radio is talking about lunch time.

*Shrug* Anything that makes missing home a little easier is a good thing, I guess.

You Know You're Settling In When You Get Sick

I think it was a one day cold or flu or something. Fever, rampant ooginess, and a burst of whining. (Though, I think the British call it whinging.)

Happily, it wasn't anything that a 14 hour coma couldn't take care of. I woke up this morning, feeling refreshed, happier and once I did my laundry and hung it out over the mud flat in the back (I couldn't help but thing that this was a disaster waiting to happen, but it's got to be better than the smell of wet clothes for four days that I'd get otherwise), I was ready to face the day.

A quick shower, a run down to the village centre to the library to check my email and I'm ready to see if I can do anything else today.

BTW, new writers that I have to share with people: Mark Billingham - I just read a couple of his books on the way back and forth to work this week. He's really good. Gritty crime dramas that take place in London.

Things to do to Polish friends that visit...

Last night, my flatmate and I went to the Polish Social & Cultural Association in Hammersmith for dinner with a friend of his. I had been to a Polish restaurant in Dorchester, back in Boston, with friends and figured I'd get some potato pancakes and maybe some borscht or something.

Big mistake.

The menu was only in Polish. I think the only word that I recognize was pierogi. (Not speaking Polish, we had to defer to my flatmate's friend.) He ordered what he told us the women behind the counter said was good.

Pierogies, pork loin with potatoes, sauerkraut, and pig's knuckles. *Shudder*

The pork loin, potatoes, and the bread were very good. The pierogies were all okay. I really only needed one taste of the pig's knuckle to decide that the others would like it more than I would.

I can't wait until my Polish friends come to visit, so that I can inflict this on them.

Jp Live at the Barbican

I work near the Barbican Centre. (All I had known about it was that Billy Bragg had played there.) The other day, I went out for a walk at lunch with a couple of my co-workers and we explored. From what I was told, originally it was an idea for community housing. There are high-rise flats, above ground walkways, gardens, etc... all above the street level below. There is one spectacular place where you can see the hanging garden of ivy, etc... reaching down to the man-made water garden below.

I hope to put up some pictures of it soon.

Still getting up to speed with things at work. Other than than that, things are going well. Met with some friends, saw my ex, meeting new people. Life is proceeding and the homesickness is decreasing.

Gaming

Went to the London Gamers group last night at the Black Horse Pub by Tottenham Court Road. Saw some familiar places and apologized to the people that I thought I had said good-bye to when I was here a couple of years ago, but hadn't. The tables were full, so I figure I might need to start my own GURPS game.

*Shrug*

I'd rather play, but with my books, I can definitely run something.

More as events warrant them.

Sunday Debrief

I had an absolutely fantastic day on Sunday visiting with a friend from Boston's cousin. We ate, wandered the City's market's, went to a pub for the traditional Sunday roasts, and in general had a lot of fun, chatting, laughing and walking around.

Outside of friends of friends from grad school that I met in New York, I don't think I've ever met such open and welcoming people.

London Gamers

Off to the London Gamers meeting tonight. Probably just for a few minutes to look for familiar faces, but I'm really looking forward to getting plugged back into gaming groups again.

Woo!