We got back from Madeira late on Monday and had to wait a bit for a train up to King’s Cross as there were some transit issues. We got back to the kitties who were so happy to see us.
Tuesday was a lot of work, and I played one commander game of MTG.
Wednesday it snowed in the morning, but by mid-morning it was a slushy mix coming down. Steph was kind enough to meet me at Hiden, the Japanese curry place in Coal Drop Yards. It was pretty good, but Andrew’s mom does it better. I worked late again, and got a good bit done.
Thursday was a crazy day. The landlord had a guy come by to look at a leaking window, and then the sea shipment with most of our stuff finally arrived. As you can see in the title of the post, it was 15 weeks for it to get to us. The sea shipment was mostly unboxed and we just had a ton of stuff on all the tables and couches and bed. Steph and I got to work putting things away. I took breaks of work meetings, and then we also got deliveries of our gifts to ourselves for my yearly bonus payout. I gave us a budget of £500 each to spend on high quality things that would make our day to day life better. Steph chose a nice bedside lamp / phone charger as well as a really nice set of dishes. I chose a cat tree and planters for plants along the windows. She went over by a bit, and I went under by a lot, but maybe I’ll think of something else that would improve our daily lives.
Friday Steph finished unpacking as I went back to the office. I was able to get my work done earlier than expected, and I came back to work more on my AI Storytelling app.
Saturday we went to the Yonder climbing gym to watch climbing videos about women for international women’s day. We also got a good bit of climbing in. It was a really cool space that was climbing gym with coworking space above it. Saturday we got some more of the way through The Crew.
The next week was a lot of work, and hanging out with people from work. We had some great food at Dishoom and Little Georgia, but I worked a lot and didn’t do much outside of that group.
We finished The Crew on Sunday with Michelle and Michael, so we now need to find another game to play with them. I might be able to use my work computer to play on Steam, but it would have to be pretty late.
Steph and I had a chill Sunday. We went to the Tate Modern and saw a lot of strange exhibits. Steph got some poses in front of the ones that looked a little silly.
Some of my favorites include:
The mudlarking exhibit of the areas in front of the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. They had lots of interesting things they pulled out of the river. None of them were particularly significant, but each had a little story to it. They made a really nice arrangement in one of the old wood and glass display cases. The most interesting thing was the drawer of pipes. They had a lot of bottle caps arranged in a rainbow color display. They also had lots of glass bottles and vials.
The large display of window blinds was strange and interesting. I really, really wanted a giant cord that I could pull and raise all the blinds.
The side by side video of a Filipino drama show, with a recreation using genderswapped actors and a very different acting style. They had such a different feel and effect, but were spot on scene by scene.
We didn’t stop by any of the paid exhibits, since Steph didn’t have the Arts Card with her, and we also had spent nearly 2 hours inside on just the free portions. We might go back for a second round and prebook the paid exhibits on a weekday morning. We could see the entrance and it looked absolutely packed inside those exhibits.
On Wednesday we went to see Magic Mike Live. It was way better than I was expecting. They had the fake MC start out, and the acts they were doing at the start was about what I’d expect, minus the ridiculous banter from the fake MC. The show was like a burlesque, but not themed, and with a lot more physical performance similar to a cirque show. I had a good time, and Steph really enjoyed it.
On Thursday I stayed late at work to play MTG Commander with everyone. I used the Grenzo deck, which is really fun and random. I didn’t really get it going too strongly, but I had a good time playing.
Friday morning we went to the Better gym and did some max weight lifting. We were still figuring out what our max lifts were, and we were both pretty sore afterwards.
Friday evening we had Nancy, Punit, Roel, and Marlien over to watch the finale of Physical 100. It was a well done set of challenges, although some of them were deceptively simple. We hung out for a good time afterwards. They saw the Alice book, and they saw my itch.io games. I think they liked it, and I’m really looking forward to the AI day on Sunday.
Saturday Steph and I had a nice walk to a pottery showroom that had some gorgeous pieces. We also stopped by Russel Square. They had a lot of blooming flowers, as it is starting to get into March. We headed back and played some Crew with Michelle and Michael. It was much harder this time, as we were playing the later, harder missions.
We planned a trip to Hever Castle for an overnight on Sunday. I took Monday off from work to make the most of it as well. The castle is famous for being the home of Anne Boleyn. It was also fully refurbished in the late 1800’s and looks good compared to many other castles of the time. There is also a snowdrop walk and great castle gardens. To get there it was a combination of three different rail routes, but overall a smooth experience. The only issue came up when contactless payment didn’t work on the rail out of London at one point, and the announcement said we’d have to pay a penalty fare if we didn’t get off. Luckily we just had to pay a small upgrade fare.
The walk from the train station to the castle wasn’t too bad, but it did have some very muddy parts. We got to the castle and dropped off our bags before walking the grounds. We started off with the snowdrop walk, which was nice and took us through most of the open sections of the garden, then we walked around the lake and took a relaxing sit at the Japanese Tea pavilion. There wasn’t any tea, but there was a great view of the lake. Then we continued around the lake and went to the walled and hedged parts of the garden, stopping off for two rounds of coffee.
We also went into the castle proper, which was pretty impressive, if small. There were a lot of interesting paintings and furniture. The hard part of it was telling what was the reconstruction in the early 1900’s and what was the original furnishing, walls, or windows. I think most of it was from the reconstruction. There were callouts to parts of the castle that were from the times of Henry VIII, including the sleeping chambers he was expected to have used.
We chilled in the room for a bit, as well as around the Victorian styled castle village that was actually built in the early 1900’s. We sat in the adorable sitting room and tried out hand at some Snooker, which we were terrible at. We ended the game at 13-8, which is pretty bad all around. Then we went for a lovely dinner in the castle dining room.
The dining room wasn’t in the castle, but in the victorian styled village. It was nonetheless a gorgeous and intricately carved set of rooms. There was a huge fireplace that we had breakfast next to the following morning.
We made our way through the gorgeous countryside the next morning with some fog and sun mixed together for a lovely walk. We got to London via London Bridge rail station and decided to walk the south bank. Since last time we went by the Golden Hind they weren’t open, we went back and into the ship.
The rest of the walk along the south ban was really nice, and we went down onto the river bank and I looked around for any artifacts like in the the lost alchemist. It couldn’t have taken anything, but the tide seemed to be really low so it was worth taking a look. We then went into Westminster Abbey and it was a lot more impressive than I was expecting, especially on the historical front. Unlike most churches, the people who are buried there are major historical figures. It was also a lot more expansive than most churches we’ve been inside. They had some garden sections as well.
We then walked to the Victoria Bus Station and got on one of the older double decker busses that had been converted to serve afternoon tea while driving around London. I really enjoyed it, even though we’d already seen most of the places they wanted to show us.
We then headed back to the apartment and cuddled the kitties for the rest of the evening.
Not much happened for the rest of the week, as I was working long days.
We continued watching Physical 100, and the draft is currently favoring us. It is fun to draft participants in shows like this. We have two drafts going with different people and are winning both.
Saturday I went climbing with Alexander from work. We did well on up to V2, but I couldn’t quite get a V3. Alexander was able to as the last route he did.
Steph and I then ran errands for most of the rest of the day. We got some new plants, and some things around the house that we’d been missing.
I was sick over the weekend, and Steph got sick from me during the week. We still were able to make it out a bit between me getting better and her getting sick. We did go on a nice walk to some art that is spread around King’s Cross. There was the Lethaby Gallery for student art on Granary Square and there is a corporate art gallery in King’s Place.
We went to Allegiance, the George Takei musical about Japanese internment camps in WWII. It was an interesting take on them, as some parts they glossed over, like the start of the internment camps and how they were created. They also embellished parts of it with more physical violence and military like camps than was actually reported in the histories Steph looked up. It is possible that happened, but the histories left it out. The ending was strange and rough, as the fight the characters had in their 20’s resolved by one dying of old age supposedly in their 60’s or 70’s. Steph waited after the show and got Takei’s autograph.
I got some bronchitis, but we had the extra antibiotics so I took a course of those and it helped a ton. I got better pretty quickly.
Saturday we went to Brixton and did some more climbing. We joined Nancy, Punit, and Roel at a small climbing gym there. We then went out to lunch and had some pretty good okonomiyaki.
Saturday and Sunday I got inspired to illustrate Alice in Wonderland using Lexica.art. I made over 3000 images with them and used 76 in the text. Here is one of my favorites.
Sunday Steph and I also went on a nice walk to and around Regents Park. We took a small detour out of the park to a cheese shop that had three of 2022’s cheese competition winners. They were good, but my tastes aren’t refined enough to appreciate the difference between those and the decent ones from Waitrose. I also decided to get all the tea biscuits, and they are all tasty.
Sunday evening we had a great bookclub discussion with Candice and Michelle on Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is such an interesting book with lots of great story. In addition to the story there is great narrative complexity with six main characters over four epochs. The parallels and differences made for great conversation, as did the ethical concepts.
We went climbing again this Monday with some people from work at the Castle Climb. I had a great time and we found out that we hadn’t even made it to the largest bouldering room. The other 5 bouldering rooms were small in comparison, but they weren’t small by any means. We joined Carla, Vytautas, and a friend of Carla, Diana. I found a few V3’s that were fun, but I wasn’t able to complete any of those. I did manage to get a good number of the V1-2 and one or two of the V2’s.
Tuesday I stayed at work and played a round of Commander MTG. I ended up playing one of David S’s powerful decks and won at the power table after a 2 hour game. It was fun, but challenging playing a deck where I hadn’t even read through all the cards (some of which were in Spanish and Japanese).
We had an issue with our house in CA later in the week, where a pipe connection broke for the guest toilet and flooded most of the house. It happened after the carpets had been removed and before the new floor was put in, so perfect timing on a bad situation. Steph has handled it all well with the property manager and contractors that were already working on the house. We don’t expect it to delay the construction almost at all.
Saturday we had a nice social day. A friend from work invited us to a mini golf outing, at a place called Swingers [insert inappropriate remark yourself]. The place was tucked away in the financial district and we were the first on the course in the morning. Steph did well, and won. She had the only hole in one, and also didn’t have as many holes where she had to pick up the ball on stroke limit. William and Mimi have been in London for a while (with a break in the middle back to the US). They had great pointers on interesting places to go. For lunch we went to one of the 10 oldest pubs in London, the Hoop and Grapes. It was a pub, and had lots of markings on the wall saying that the Great Fire of London stopped just before it reached the location where the pub now stands.
In the evening we got online for some games with Michelle and Michael. We played a game called The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. It was pretty good, and we had a few fails, but mostly we were able to win. We made it through the first 17 missions.
Steph and I started this week well with going to a castle. This castle also happened to be a climbing gym, and we went with Nancy and Punit. It was an amazing place with so many bouldering walls. They had the towers as the top roping and lead climbing, and maybe if we get good enough we’ll make it to the top of one of them. It looked amazing. I stayed on the bouldering and was able to do some V2’s, which is good for as long as I’ve been away from climbing. My forearms are sore and I tore some skin off a finger, but nothing too bad. We went out with them afterwards to a restaurant called Bean, which is a chain in London.
We walked around the parks in the area, since we didn’t know when we would next be there on a nice sunny day. It was sunny but cold, as the lake was almost entirely frozen over. The park was mostly a big field, but was still nice to walk through.
Monday we went to a neon live drawing event at the Old Queen’s Head. The bar was amazing, being both incredibly intricate, fancy, and cozy. We had a drink downstairs before heading up to draw the model. They had a series of art styles they walked us through for the event, and then we had time to do freeform drawing. I had a few that turned out ok. Steph had a few that turned out great.
After the drawing event we were just in time to go to the comedy night at Camden Head. We saw eight acts, but my favorite part was the MC playing the audience. We were in the front row so she picked us out to make jokes about. She had a really hard time making jokes about me, but she was able to play Steph off some of the other audience members.
On Wednesday we went to the Canary Wharf lights installations. It was an interesting time, and we got to have some delicious ramen at Ippudo. The lights were mixed in quality and didn’t have too much of a unifying theme. I especially liked the giant globe, the hanging fiber optics, and the misty fountains with colored lights.
Thursday evening I participated in a MTG draft at work. I did pretty well, winning two of my three matches. We have been making the apartment more homey with some pictures hanging, and the kitties have been so cuddly.
Sunday we went to the British Museum for some of the rooms we hadn’t really gone through yet. We focussed on the Native American, Fertile Crescent, and Islamic sections on this trip. We wanted to go to the Assyrian Gates section, but the rooms were closed. We could still look at the large gate guards, just not the rooms behind them. We also took a peak in the library, but will have to go back to go through that room a bit more.
We then wen to a restaurant in SOHO called Brasserie Zédel. It was French art deco, and was one of those places with a seemingly secret entrance that was through a cafe, down a hall, down some stairs and through a movie theater like lobby. The windows were probably just frosted glass with lights behind them.
We relaxed at home for a bit, and tried to go to Camden Head in Angel for a comedy night, but showed up too late and they were full. We then headed to Laki Kane, a tropical themed restaurant and bar. It was amusing how they styled themselves as Thai in some places, Southeast Asian in others, and had things that were vaguely tropical all over the place no matter where from (Cuba, Hawaii, Dominican Republic, Thailand). The vibe was great, and the food was good.
I had a nice walk along the canal and made it down to two more big basins. I can’t wait to get a SUP on the canal. I also saw a few more canal side places to have dinner, but definitely not in the winter.
We cooked dinner for Nancy and Punit. The carrot ginger soup turned out amazing. We played some Drawful and had a great conversation over dinner. Nancy made a burnt cheesecake that was delicious, and Steph’s egg and tofu dish was tasty. They were so nice and will be taking care of Archer and Lana when we are in Florence.
This week started out slow with New Years. I did the audio tour of King’s Cross, which was a nice walk and good info. Steph and I relaxed for most of the rest of the day. I was sad when Michelle was the only one to call in for book club, but not too surprised. The book wasn’t the best for a discussion anyway, so I’ll let it slide instead of rescheduling. The next book, Cloud Cuckoo Land, should be a great discussion, as it has all sorts of interesting social and political commentary.
We played a game of Wingspan on BGA with Nancy and Punit. It went pretty slow as they were learning. Steph won with a set of really valuable birds. Punit had some powerful combos with the Corvids, but not the fully overpowered one as we’d turned those cards off. I had a great food combo, but couldn’t turn it into enough points without the eggs.
Steph and I went to an exhibit at the British Library the next day on Alexander the Great. I expected a few more non-book elements to it, but it is the British Library, so I suppose I was wrong to hope that. They had a nice suit of armor and a few paintings. The illuminated manuscripts were amazing. I also found it funny how so many of the texts on display tried to show Alexander as being Muslim or Christian, when neither of those religions existed at the time. The honest ones that didn’t try to claim Alexander were the Zoroastrianism texts that said how much they hated him for destroying their holy places and texts. After the exhibit we stopped by the Euston Tap, which is a unique bar in a monolithic building in front of Euston Station.
The next evening we went to a show at the Barbican, which was a live play with large puppets as an adaptation of My Neighbor Totoro. It was very well done and adorable. The first appearance of Totoro had it take up nearly the entire stage. It must have been 40 feet across and 20 ft high at the top of the belly.
The rest of the week was normal life, with lots of work and rain in the evenings keeping us in. Saturday we played some Terraforming Mars against Paul and Yutong. It was a close game, with one milestone being the difference. It was great to chat with them during the game, although it sounds like Yutong is having a hard time at work.
It was a slow week, but it good to feel like I’m getting a bit of a routine set up.
We had a lazy Christmas Sunday. We played some Ship of Fools together, and the final round of Wildermyth with Michelle and Michael. We also, of course, had calls with family. That, plus cleaning up the place took up the day. Steph got me some socks and warm leggings. I got so many kitty cuddles, with them both snuggling up to me when we were playing games. After vacuuming Lana hid and wouldn’t come back out until pretty late. I think she hears it and it reminds her of the plane. If I start in the bedrooms she goes to Steph and starts shaking.
We also started planning more of our time in London with a restaurant list/map and museum list/map
For Boxing Day we went on a bit of a walk and did a little shopping in Islington. Most things were still closed, so it was pretty empty everywhere. We walked along the canal to the tunnel under Islington, then went up into the greenway path until we hit the high street. We went to an outdoors store Steph wanted to visit and grabbed some nice socks and shoe cleaner. Our shoes had been destroyed by the snow and wet, including all the salt and grit that went with that. I took about 20 minutes to clean them up, which I’ll need to do every few weeks going forward most likely.
We played some more ship of fools, and got much further. I decided to go for a nice long walk along the canal past Camden. As I got to Camden the market there was very busy, and it took a bit to squeeze through the crowd. Just past Camden the canal walk was closed, and I hopped on the surface streets to get to Regent’s Park. I walked along just the close corner, but could see into the zoo from the path. The camels looked super fluffy and smaller than I would have expected. I took surface streets back, to make a loop of the walk instead of an out and back.
We watched some Netflix series on London and Florence to get ideas of more things to do, and got some very nice additions to our lists.
The next day was Boxing Day (Observed) for the London offices, so I took it easy while still getting work done. I just focussed on writing the year end reviews for myself and others. Steph and I also did another boxfit class at Frame, which was better than the previous ones and more intense. Afterwards we decided to drop by Nando’s, since it is a must eat place in London. The piri piri sauce was tasty, but La Vic’s orange sauce is better we think. The heat was too forward in the sauce, with the flavor taking a back seat. I stopped by the grocery stores looking for after Christmas deals and picked a few up. I got a Christmas Cake, which was surprisingly good, but very dense. I also grabbed some more plants to add to my growing collection.
The kitties have been really eating up the plants, but I don’t mind as they haven’t been puking like they would with the lemongrass. We decided the ribbon on the Christmas cake would look good on Archer, and it did. But he didn’t like wearing. He did like playing with it.
Many things seemed closed this week. I went to the office, but they weren’t serving food, and the kitchens had been cleared out. They didn’t even have coffee, with the machines turned off. I tried to go to the crypt gallery, but when I showed up 30 minutes after the listed opening time online, it was still closed. I grabbed a pasty nearby for lunch, and then headed home a little early to work from there and eat Steph’s delicious cooking.
Steph and I took a quick trip to the British Library, which is less than a ten minute walk from our place. We went through the permanent collection, which has a lot of amazing books and documents. They have a lot of old bibles, with the oldest from 350-400CE. They also had a few copies of different Magna Cartas. A number of other documents from famous authors, inventors, artists, and musicians were on display; all of which were people I just recognized on reading the name. Most documents weren’t possible to read, even if they were ostensibly in English.
We took a day to go around to some museums in Kensington: The Design Museum, Japan House, and Kensington Palace. Getting there was interesting, as you take the Circle Line to the Circle Line, since it isn’t actually a circle, but a loop with a tail.
The first stop was the Design Museum, and I got tickets to both the exhibits there. I’d also picked up the National Art Pass, which was entirely worth it. We went to the Surrealism exhibit first, and parts of it were interesting, while others we thought were just odd. I was amused by some of the language describing the process where “he let his body take over from his mind” really means “he didn’t plan anything and was probably on drugs.” The Dali art was the stand out part of the exhibit. The second exhibit was on ASMR, but was pretty completely ruined by screaming children and children running around with noise making toys. We did enjoy the small room about Bob Ross and how his Joy of Painting was unintentional ASMR with the sound of the brush and the soft spoken positive voice. They had three paintings there that corresponded to the episodes being shown, and I think they were original Bob Ross paintings from those episodes, but I had a hard time confirming that. I did get a little bit of ASMR from the studio where you can mess with the mic setup yourself. We also went upstairs to the Designer Maker User exhibit, which was interesting but had a strange layout.
We then headed to Japan House where they had an exhibit on Japanese carpentry methods. It was a great exhibit, with better design than the design museum in our opinions. They had some hands on parts and a great set of videos of woodworking that I found pretty entrancing. Steph also enjoyed all the cute and well designed things in the shop while sipping a macha latte.
We walked through Hyde park to lunch at Pizza Pilgrims, where we got the top bunk seat. The pizza was pretty good, but had a really soggy bottom crust so it had to be eaten with fork and knife.
We then stopped by Kensington Palace. They had two main exhibits, the first on the young princess Victoria, and the second on the King and Queen’s apartments. The rooms were gorgeous, and with the National Art Pass it was free to visit. If we are in Hyde Park again we could just stop in if they have space.
Before and after the Palace we stopped by the Round Pond and watched all the birds. There were an amazing number and assortment. There was a swan that always had it’s head low, a black swan, several types of geese, ducks, coots, gulls, and pigeons. At the tube station the Piccadilly line was stopped due to a signal issue, so we walked to the next station and hopped on a different line. I cooked some soup while Steph went for a massage when we got home.
For New Years Eve we decided to do an escape room in the morning with Nancy and Punit. We had a great time in the escape room and did really well. We only needed two clues and we breezed through all the puzzles. They did a really good job of this one, and it was harder, but we had a better idea of what to expect. Nancy and Punit did a great job of figuring out the puzzles they were on, and we escaped with 13:30 to spare. Afterwards we went to Dishoom, which was of course, delicious.
We had a day of some chores and planning after that until a cheers of prosecco at midnight.
We had our first rainy week, and at first the mix of rain and ice on the sidewalks made for a very slippery shopping trip on Sunday. I got soaked and it was a cold walk, despite the temperature being higher than the previous week.
That evening we decided to see Avatar 2, and it was a decent movie. The visuals were amazing, but the story was a bit convoluted and many of the decisions didn’t make all that much sense. We went to Everyman again, and it was a nice theater experience. I think I chose the right seats and we got dinner at the theater. The only thing that was a little annoying was I had a tray of glasses and plates and nowhere to put it after I was done without leaving the theater.
We were finally experience true British weather with the endless drizzles. It was grey and lightly raining for several days in a row.
Our air shipment from California arrived and we unpacked it all. It was mostly kitchen things, and all the rest of our clothes and blankets. The shipment had a strange smell to it, so we ended up washing everything. The kitties were happy to have the soft blankets. We were also happy to have our actual blankets we normally sleep with. I certainly slept better, although Steph was too warm. We will need to dial in the sleeping arrangement and temp.
We also finally got our bank account set up and I spent a while tracking down how to do direct deposits, and automatic transfers for all the utilities, rent, and getting paid.
The next morning we hopped the train for Luton, and on to Prague.
We got back from Prague and gave the kitties lots of cuddles. There was surprisingly nothing really to clean up beyond some scattered litter. The kitties were doing well and just a little hungry.
I ran a lot of errands the next day as they are serious about their holidays in the UK. Pretty much everything will be closed on Christmas and the day after, Boxing Day. We will be walking around the city a bit to see what is going on, but I expect it to be pretty quiet. The Christmas markets similarly don’t actually run on Christmas, and they were all being taken down on our way back from the airport.
Christmas Eve evening we went over to Nancy and Punit’s place, which is just on the other side of King’s Cross. We met their friends Alex and Jonathan. Nancy and Punit had made an amazing spread of food, and each other person brought a little something to start with. I really enjoyed the conversation and the people seem like they would be great to hang out with around London. They introduced us to the reduced ticket prices, and a few other local gems that we need to look up. We ended up playing Sushi Go Party, which is a version of the game we hadn’t played before. I had a great time and we look forward to seeing them again.
It's an Exciting World 