It's an Exciting World

London Weekly 78

I took it really easy this week, both for making sure my back got better, and for having a slow week before heading to California for three weeks.

I had breakfast with Royi this week, and it was good to see him after many years. It sounded like neither of us had been great in keeping in touch with fraternity brothers. He’d moved back to Atlanta, but I guess not really reconnected.

We also watched a ton of taskmaster. We went through the seasons that had Mel, Sue, and Noel, since we are familiar with them from The Great British Baking Show.

Steph and I had a dinner at Rosa’s Thai restaurant on Wednesday, and I left work a little early so we could. Otherwise Wednesday was the typical choir and dive club. In choir we did The Colors of the Wind, which was really nice. The baritones had lots of melody, and the harmony parts weren’t hard for us. I regret that my work trips will make it so I can’t perform this term.

Thursday was a day I’d been looking forward to for a long time, we got to see Spirited Away the live action show. It was really well done, but the puppets weren’t quite as impressive as the massive Totoro and Cat Bus. It followed along with the movie pretty much exactly shot by shot. Friday we watched the movie to compare.

Saturday we went on a hike from Uxbridge to Rickmansworth. The hike was along the Grand Canal, and was so nice. The baby waterfowl were adorable, and I always love seeing the variety of house boats along the canals. We stopped for lunch at an adorable pub inn, Coy Carp Harefield, and it was delicious. We played through a round of Frosthaven that evening.

Sunday was about relaxing and chores before leaving for California.

London Weekly 68.

We got back from Tromsø, and got right back to work. The building I normally work from was closed due to a massive plumbing issue, so we went to the office just down the street. I brought some of the Norwegian candies that we picked up. We also got our new assignments at work, more or less. I made it to Choir on Wednesday, but I was dead tired afterwards. We still made it to dive club, and multiple people were passing around candy, so I got a bit of a sugar rush to carry me over.

Thursday was Pi Day, which is an American thing because of the way we write dates. Steph got a few tasty pies from a nice pie shop for us to celebrate.

On Friday we had an amazing night out with Carla and Grace. They suggested going to the Seven Dials Market, which is a food court in Covent Garden. It is a really interesting place, and has a great atmosphere. After that we walked over to the Artists’ Church and saw a performance of some musicals music performed by a string quartet. I really enjoyed the evening.

Saturday Steph and I joined Nancy and Punit at Duck and Rice for lunch. It is an amazing Dim Sum place, and brewery. We then toured a lot of the art galleries in Mayfair. It was interesting to see everything, but I like the student galleries in Central St. Martens more.

It was the start of spring in London for sure. The trees that line the lanes near our place were all blooming in massive floral displays. I really like how colorful and vibrant London gets in the spring.

I got into Atlanta and took Marta up to Midtown without any issue. My mom picked me up and made a lovely dinner, despite the burnt rice on the first pass. This is what would have been London, week 52.

I was able to see Brian and Brittany Martin, with their new son Arlo. Ethan was with the grandparents and cousins. They were talking about what’s next for them, and they are trying to figure out where they want to live and what they want to do. It is something a lot of people I know struggle with. I hope they can come meet us in London or we can meet up in Europe somewhere.

I spent the rest of the time with family. I went to Jeff’s on Wednesday to have a discussion with just him, and everyone got together on Thursday for lunch. The food was delicious. The green bean casserole was ok, but I still didn’t like it. My three nieces were cute, and I got to play with them a good bit. They had one of those rockets you launch by stomping on a paddle, and they would run to grab it and bring it back for me to launch again.

I had lunch with my parents before heading to the airport for an overnight flight.

this week was pretty calm, and I didn’t do much. I had an injured foot so I skipped most after work activities. I made it to choir on Monday and went for drinks on Thursday with colleagues.

The main event for the weekend was heading to the Westminster Speleological Groups cabin for Bonfire Night. We stayed in Penderyn, a small town up the road from the cabin. We stopped by Friday night and got some time to hang out at the cabin. There was lots of talk about the routes to do the next day, but nothing solidified.

Saturday we went back and I was planning to hang around the cabin all day. The groups planned their routes in the cave and Steph went in the group with Marcus, Rob, Ben, and Steve. At the cabin a talked to several groups that wanted to do hikes, and one that went to a nearby castle museum. In the afternoon Martin came back and I helped him cook Chili for everyone that evening. Forty or so people came by that evening and Dave set up an amazing fireworks display.

We hung out around the campfire and I got to talk to Rob and David for a while. David especially had great stories, and it was interesting to hear how he would just go volunteer all over. Graham kept throwing random things in the fire, like old cabinet fronts.

On Sunday we stopped by the cabin before heading to Cyfarthfa Castle and Museum. It was an interesting history of Wales and Merthyr Tydfil, the town it was in. They also had the collections of several of the rich men that lived there. They also has some artists that were in the family, so some of that art was on display.

I took a one week trip to Seattle for work on what would have been London, Week 43. This was a serendipitous set of meetings / internal conferences for work. My larger team was meeting for an offsite in Seattle, and my role was having everyone of that role meet in Seattle on the same week. I chose to do the role based meeting on Wednesday, which was the only day of overlap.

Monday I headed to the airport around noon, and got some nice chill time in the Virgin lounge before the flight. I had some people from both groups on the flight with me, but we just did our own things while on the plane. I took a downgrade for some nice Delta credits, which wasn’t a big deal since I was planning on staying up the whole flight anyway. On the way back I plan to sleep so that I can wake up at 7am when the plane lands and try to just start going about my day.

The first day of the offsite was fun, with presentations in the morning and a high ropes course in the afternoon. I really enjoyed the ropes course and was able to make my way through most of it. We had a nice dinner and I got to chat with a lot of the US team that I hadn’t seen in a long while.

Wednesday I went to the summit for my role, and had a great time chatting with everyone, trying demos, and meeting up with more US people I hadn’t seen in a long time. The conversations were some of the most intellectually stimulating I’d had in a very long time. Everyone in my role is a tinkerer and hearing about their work and the ways they get things to work is amazing.

The second day of the summit I gave my talk on AI and showed off some demos, like Story Machine. I had a great time at the conference, though I called it a night really early as I was amazingly tired.

We had a pretty chill Friday and then headed to the airport. A few of us were on the same flight back. I slept for most of the trip.

We spend Monday evening with Tina and Amit as they came to King’s Cross to have dinner at Dishoom. We headed to the Camden Head afterwards and walked a little along the canal. The Camden head wasn’t too packed and we got a spot in the back for the comedy night. I enjoyed it and the good Spanish comedian was there doing his same bit with some more twists that we hadn’t heard.

Tuesday I had to work more than expected, and so I met everyone at the climbing gym. Amit was crushing it of course, and the good climbers talked to him some about the routes. We went to a newer bistro, and it had a ton of people working outside on their laptops in VC meetings.

Wednesday I had some presentations and I was absolutely dead after work, so I passed out early.

Thursday Steph and I caught up on some of the our shows, Lower Decks and Wheel of Time. I’m enjoying both immensely.

Friday Steph left for Berlin and I took a light day at work. I decided to do a game jam for the weekend, and it turned out pretty well. I didn’t get nearly as far as I would have liked, but all the systems are there and the game is decently balanced this time I think. Dragon Party.

I had lunch on Sunday with Nancy and Punit, then went to Carla’s birthday party. It was a decent amount of socializing and Carla’s party made me want to work on my Spanish. Steph got back late on Sunday and we spent the evening together before I tried to stay up really late in prep for my Seattle trip.

I took a trip back to the Southeast for Nana’s funeral. I was able to see almost the entire family, many of whom I didn’t recognize as it had been a very long time since I’d seen them.

I spent Friday getting to my parent’s house in Atlanta. Saturday morning Mom, Dad, and I went to the botanical gardens but the parking was full. Instead we went to brunch. Mom and I then went to see Jeff and family at their neighborhood pool. Elise was scared of me, with a big feeling of ‘stranger danger.’ When she gets older she’ll understand who I am.

Sunday we made it to the gardens early. They had some interesting troll statues made from scrap and trash. Mom and I also stopped by the market, and the neighborhood meeting / party for a short time. Sunday evening I went to see Kim at her place. We had a good talk, and I saw the amazing scene she was preparing for me.

Monday Kim and Grace came over and I showed her the Story Machine, and she loved it. I’m going to make changes that she wanted and get Kim to load it onto a computer for her. It should then save her stories and I’ll be able to publish them.

Tuesday I rode over with Jeff and had a good talk with him. Then we met at the church for the service. It was lovely. Fred did a reading, as did I. Lucas did an amazing Aria. Then we saw the ashes put into the final resting place. We spent time at the church talking and having some snacks before heading back to Nana’s house. Fred and Karin brought over a ton of food and we all ate and drank and reminisced.

Wednesday we headed back to Atlanta.

Thursday I grabbed lunch with Jeff and was able to see Kim before Mom took me to the airport. The flight back was better, and I went into work for a bit to do the performance reviews before heading back to my flat to cuddle the kitties.

While I was in Atlanta and Birmingham, Steph was cave diving in southern France. She sent me pics of the area.

It was another crazy work week, but I still had some fun. Steph reached out to the Westminster Speleological Society, and we met some of them for drinks, in the top room of a pub. We chatted about the trips they have planned and signed up for one. I am looking forward to it.

Wednesday we had the third and fourth rounds of the beat saber competition. It turned out pretty much exactly how I expected with making it past round 3, and getting destroyed in round 4. I had 4 of 5 songs with complete combos in round 3, but only got 1 of the 5 in round 4. Freebird was a hard one, and I didn’t do nearly as well as when I’d been practicing.

Steph and I played a bit more Frosthaven, and did pretty well. We had one scenario where my summons were great against bears and wolves. Then we went up against robots, which my summons were terrible at, and when we do more robot levels I’ll need to redo my deck to handle them better. Steph on the other hand was great and dealing with the robots.

I took a video of my walk to work, and then turned that into this gif:

Friday morning I went to Heathrow and Steph took the train to Paris.