It's an Exciting World

We did very little on this short week before heading to San Carlos. Monday I went to the choir rehearsal at Liverpool Street, which got me to the required 6 sessions to be allowed to perform. I’ll catch a seventh when I’m back, but the performances have already started at that point.

Tuesday was a lot of prep for the flight on Wednesday. The flight itself was fine, as I used my voucher from the Seattle work trip for premium economy. Steph and I took different flights, but got in at about the same time. I waited for her in SFO for about 15 minutes.

It was a busy week at work, and lots of other activities came up as well. The one thing missing from this week was choir, as it is the mid-term break.

Monday Steph and I played some more Endless Dungeon.

Tuesday I messed up and double booked the evening. I had promised to do some volunteer work for a group online, so I missed out. Steph and Lynne went to a live orchestral performance of Amadeus. Steph said it was amazing.

Wednesday I did a lot of chores before heading to the BSAC club meeting. I won the bottle of wine, and we got a nice California rose.

Thursday we went to the Old Friends show, which was a Sondheim themed production with some of his original cast from many performances past. The songs were great, but since it was all the highlights there were no stories.

Friday was a lot of work, but I did get to play some endless dungeon.

Saturday I ran a 10K with a coworker, Baha. We got almost exactly 1 hour time on the 10K. I was doing pretty well throughout, but started hurting towards the end of the race. I surprisingly never had issues breathing, and could talk the whole time. As expected, my legs started to give out towards the end.

On Sunday, Steph and I went to the Museum of the Home in Shoreditch. It was pretty neat, with lots of different period based living room setups. They had maybe 20 different living rooms laid out based on the era. We also went on a tour of the gardens, but it happened to be in the pouring rain.

We then checked another food off our list of things to try in the UK. This time it was a Sunday roast at the Own and Pussycat. Nancy and Punit joined us, and it was pretty relaxed. We then went through some of the markets and ran across a stall selling lots of old stamps, and we got a few.

That evening we also experimented with some red lentil tofu. I had soaked red lentils for a few hours, and them blended and cooked them. It set into a nicely firm block that felt like tofu and tasted great with a ginger, garlic, and green onion mix flavored with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. So tasty, and we have a ton of the red lentil tofu left over for different dishes this week.

We had a pretty chill week. Tuesday we got back to the kitties and cuddle them a lot.

Wednesday was a bit busy with Andrew, Debby, and Alexander in town to visit some of Andrew’s family. They were nice enough to stop by and have a nice afternoon tea with us at the Thames Foyer, Savoy. I then went to the choir rehearsal, and finally to dive club. We talked about our trip to Turkey and I was exhausted by the end of it. Steph was talking cave diving, so I waited until 11 before calling it.

Steph and I watched our shows and played games together. We’ve started getting into Endless Dungeon, which is a great game that is a more real time upgrade on Dungeon of the Endless. The multiplayer also doesn’t break constantly.

On Saturday we went to the British Museum to see some of the originals of the statues we saw replicas of in the underwater museum in Turkey. It was interesting to see them, and we went to a few of the rooms that had been closed previously as well. We were lucky to get tables at an Okonomiyaki place right by the museum that was delicious. Steph made a 3D scan of one of the statues.

Steph and I went to Nancy and Punit’s new place this past weekend. It is a great location and a nice place. It has some quirky parts, but overall is very nice. Before visiting we did some climbing with Punit. Then we did a lunch at the Jamaican place across the street from there. We walked around the neighborhood a bit, and it was very nice.

With Steph gone I mainly worked then went to Choir. I did three choir rehearsals in one week, and I enjoyed the whole time. I went to a new location for me, Oxford Circus. They had a much smaller venue, but it was still a gorgeous church. Liverpool St. and King’s Cross choirs have pretty similar venues, and I like them a bit more. I will probably stick with the Monday, Wednesday choir tempo. I went out for a drink with the choirs afterwards on Monday and Tuesday, but went to the BSAC club meeting for Wednesday after choir. I talked with Gohkan, our trip leader for the Turkey scuba trip. Not much else going on, just getting ready for an early morning flight on Friday.

This week I went to two Choir rehearsals: Monday at Liverpool St. and Wednesday at Kings Cross. I also went to the two club meets: Tuesday for Westminster Speliological Group (WSG) and Wednesday for the British Sub-Aquatic Club (BSAC). Thursday we met with one of Steph’s Cave Diving buddies from Mexico and had dinner in Vauxhall at an Ethiopian place. Friday I joined in on the StartX discussion group. All of that made it a tame, but full, week.

On Saturday I went out paddle boarding in Reagent’s Canal near Reagent’s Park, while Steph was with Lynne at the National Portrait Gallery. Sunday was all chores, a new video game, and relaxing with the kitties. Steph headed out to Zurich for another work trip. A slow but nice week in the middle of lots going on.

I got home from Seattle Saturday around 11am. Steph and I caught up on the shows we are watching and had a lazy day. I also played some Steam games from my list and drank lots of smoothies. The kitties were glued to me pretty much the entire day, which was really nice.

Sunday we met up with Punit at the climbing gym. It was the same climbing gym that Tina and Amit picked out for us. I had a good time and got one of the problems that I was too tired for last time. After that we took a walk along Southwark Bridge where they had several groups of sheep and some guilds. The sheep are there to cross the bridge as part of a tradition, and they had some stalls with lots of wool products. The guilds were set up on the other side of the intersection and I grabbed a donut from the Worshipful Company of Bakers, aka baker’s guild. After that Nancy joined us and we went to an afternoon tea at Lyaness, a Sri Lankan restaurant. The food was pretty good, besides the eggplant.

Monday after work I went to my first West End Musical Choir practice. It was great, and I enjoyed the singing and the chat afterwards. The song was pretty tough, as the words were fast and the harmonies difficult. There were probably 70 people there, and it was especially nice when everyone was singing all together.

Tuesday I took it kind of easy after work, because it was a crazy busy day, and Wednesday was Archer kitty’s dental appointment. Tuesday night he was so amazingly cuddly and needy. He wanted attention all night.

Wednesday I checked out the Choir at King’s Cross. It was at the furthest place from our house that could still be vaguely considered King’s Cross, but it wasn’t too bad. I enjoyed it, and there was still plenty of time for me to make it to the Dive Club meeting.

Thursday we met up with Lynne and saw a really interesting play, “Anthropology” about a woman who makes an AI clone of her sister. The AI then helps to find the sister who was missing and presumed dead. It was really well done. The tech they talk about with the AI clone is pretty surface level, and the only stretch is when they fed browser history, social media likes, and other meta data into an LLM.

Saturday, Steph and I played a lot of games. We started Frosthaven in the morning, then had Ethiopian, then played Don’t Starve in the evening.

Sunday we went to the Japanese festival in Trafalgar Square in the morning with Nancy and Punit. We walked down to the river and hopped on a ferry to go to Greenwich. There we saw the Cutty Sark, walked through the park, then crossed the Thames via a pedestrian tunnel underneath it. We went to one of the farms that is strangely inside London, before heading home for book club.

This was a packed week.

On Monday I set up some new shelves that I had ordered in the kitchen. It filled in a spot that was strangely vacant, and made me think that we needed some more color in the kitchen as well. The color part will have to come later.

On Tuesday I went back to The Burnt City and had a fantastic time. I’m really glad I went three times, as there was just so much to see. I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head since the first time, and I would love to make a VR experience that had that same feel.

Wednesday I went to Shit-Faced Shakespeare and it was hilarious. They were doing the production Much Ado About Nothing, and Duke Leonata was the drunk one. She was hilarious and immediately took it off the rails by killing a main character. The antics were fantastic, and I would love to see it again to see how much is staged vs. the drunk person doing their thing.

Thursday I had a MTG draft of the new set Wilds of Eldraine. It was a fun set, but I lost all my games.

Friday, Steph got home from her Mexico trip. She chilled during the day while I finished work, and had some non-work meetings as well.

Saturday Steph and I went to Finsbury Park station, but not to the park itself. We had some decent Indian food, then set off on a short hike along the Parkland Walk. It was really nice, and even though it is just a narrow strip of trees on either side gave a great feeling of being in a forest.

That evening we jumped on and played some Grounded with Michael and Michelle, but we are all getting really tired of dying so much and having to go get our backpacks afterwards.

Sunday we had a relaxing morning, and then met Amit and Tina at Shakespeare’s Globe to see a production of “As you like it.” The cast was pretty good. They had most of the roles gender reversed, and some did amazing jobs selling the characters they were portraying. I especially liked the costuming, as it was a strange for some of the characters. We then went to afternoon tea at The Swan right there. We walked down to the Golden Hind and around The Boroughs Market.

This was a short week, due to the Summer Bank Holiday.

Tuesday I started looking after the cats of a coworker. They are pretty nice, and one lets me give it belly rubs.

On Wednesday I took Archer to the vet to have them look at his front broken tooth (from when we moved to the UK and he snuck under the bed while I was moving it). They said it didn’t have to be exctracted immediately, but sooner is better than later, as it would probably just get more and more painful, and the older he is the harder it will be on him. Otherwise they said his teeth look great, so the brushing seems to be paying off.

I took a class on riding Penny Farthing bikes, and they were a ton of fun. I did well pretty quickly on them, and we took a ride to Buckingham Palace.

I also saw some shows while Steph was away, including The Book of Mormon and Les Miserables. I also walked through some parks since the weather was amazing. I went to Primrose Hill and Battersea Park.