It's an Exciting World

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.

We got back from Fringe and had a calm/sick week.

We didn’t do much because of the sickness, which we tested for and wasn’t Covid. Friday was our anniversary of 5 years, and we had a lovely dinner and went to a bar afterwards with a Chocolate theme.

Steph and I weren’t 100%, so we kept the weekend mostly quiet. I went by coal drop yards to listen to the London Opera perform, then Steph and I went to listen to a musical choir, which was pretty good. I’ve joined the fall term of the West End Musical Choir, and I’m really looking forward to it. I also took another long walk in the nice weather. This time I went to Mile End and then through Victoria park, up through the marshlands and ended at Blackhorse Road Station.

It was a pretty calm few week before Edinburgh Fringe (yes, this is out of order).

Steph and I played a few rounds of Frosthaven. The four character group is fun, but the sessions take about 3 hours each.

I went on two long walks through parks, since the weather was so nice.

The first was through Islington. I walked through Bernard Park and up to Highbury Fields. I saw a cute pub that looked like it was covered in Wisteria called The Albion. It wasn’t blooming at the time, but still looked like a great spot we will need to go to when it is blooming next. I also saw a fox on this walk, as it was ducking into a park.

The second walk was a long one. I walked through Russel Square, then down to St. James Park. I continued through Green Park, then Hyde Park. I stopped by Little Venice and then went to Regent’s Park. I walked along the canals home from there. It was the perfect day, and there were tons of birds in all of the ponds.

Steph had a work trip to Zurich, and I ended up hanging out with some people from work more this week. On Wednesday the finals for the Beat Saber competition were being held. One of the finalists, that everyone expected to win, Connor, was in London. They had set up a studio with a green screen. We had dinner with him in between the semi-finals and finals. The semi-finals was a five song competition, and the finals was eight. Connor ended up having a clean sweep, winning every song in the competition. We chatted about it for a while and agreed to do a Beat Saber dance group, like I had done before in Burlingame.

The weekend was pretty chill as well. Saturday we went climbing in the morning. During the day I worked on my story machine project. Then we went to see the Barbie movie with Nancy and Punit in the evening with a stop by Vegan Planet for dinner. The fake meats they had were pretty good, but I think the tofu dishes were still my favorites.

Sunday was also pretty relaxing, with us playing some Frosthaven. In the evening we played some Grounded with Michelle and Michael.

We had a low key week. We played some Frosthaven, and I worked some on my side projects. I went to the cave club meeting, and the dive club meeting. The plans for diving over the weekend didn’t end up happening because the weather wasn’t good. It was mainly that the winds were too high, as they were causing lots of waves, and blowing in a direction that would sweep us out to sea.

Instead of diving we went climbing on Saturday, then went to the Spitalfields Market, which was a lot of small shops and food stalls in a large open air building. We were saying goodbye to Roel as he was about to move back to The Netherlands. It was interesting to wander around, but everything was the typical mix of knick knacks. I misplaced my backpack, but the janitorial staff were kind enough to find it and take it to the lost and found.

On Sunday we went to Draughts in The Vaults under Waterloo station. We went with the group from the cancelled dive trip, and had a pretty good time. I think for games going forward it would make more sense to do it at people’s houses, so that we don’t have to worry about times and what games fit. We also would be more able to hear each other. The vaults make for loud echo chambers. It was an interesting area, and one I’d been wanting to go to for a while. It was more commercial than I had expected, but not that bad. The main graffiti tunnel was still amazing to see.