At Home in London with JR
Wednesday evening I took the train up to Cambridge and met Jason for the
RedHat Cambridge office holiday party. This year's was held in The Cellars
at Number One Kings Parade, across from Kings College. It was a nice place,
with a cheery fire and low ceilings to make it feel cozy. The only real
problem was that they put us in two adjoining rooms for dinner, without any
real cocktail hour, so there was very little opportunity to talk to anyone
except our tablemates. Those were generally fun people, so it was a good
evening, but didn't quite feel like a party. We managed to catch the last
train from Cambridge and the last tube home, so we felt very lucky.
Jonathan arrived on Thursday afternoon and we've been having fun together.
Generally he's gone off during the day to explore various bits of London and
to continue his quest for the best bitter in England and then come home for
dinner in the evening. It's great to catch up and hear how life's been
going for him in Colorado in the past year.
On Saturday he was spending the evening with Barbara, so we were on our
own. We headed down to Leicester Square around noon, with the vague idea
that we might see a show. When we checked at the box office for The Royal
Family, they had two returns in the 8th row center for the matinee at 3pm,
so we went to that. Dame Judi Dench was headlining this 1927 play sending
up the Barrymore family. I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece of playwriting,
but the characters were zany and fun and the actors generally did a good job
with their accents and roles.
After the show we decided to go for a walk down Picadilly and ended up in
Knightsbridge. When Jason reminded me that he'd never actually been inside
Harrod's, we had to go explore the food halls. Their sushi counter is the
only place I've found in London that serves hamachi, so we treated ourselves
to a few pieces of their insanely expensive, excellent fish. We picked up
some wild boar meat, a package of meat tortellini (odd the things one
*can't* find at Sainsbury's), some Stenwood (a sheep's milk cheese whose
description intrigued Jason) and a mangosteen. This is an Asian fruit we've
heard of from various friends, but had never seen or tasted. So now it's
sitting on our fridge, waiting for us to get brave.
We had hoped to get out and about again on Sunday, but I didn't get enough
sleep and ended up napping most of the day. I had good conversations in the
late afternoon with various folks and I made the best version of my tarragon
chicken with chanterelles that I've achieved to date. The intermittant
failure of our boiler to provide hot water has gotten more persistent, so I
wasn't able to do the dishes.
One of the people I called before I went to bed was Alicia, in California.
She called me back saying "I hope it's a reasonable hour," at 5:19am. I was
so pleased to hear from her that I didn't mind, so I got up and we chatted
for over an hour, after which I talked to steve for a while. I really
needed a shower and the hot water was still AWOL, so I heated up some water
in the cordless kettle and used a combination of that and the ice cold water
from the shower to wash my hair. By then I'd been up for hours, so I woke
Jason up and went back to sleep for a while.
We're heading out shortly to meet JR at Yo! Sushi, the wacky conveyor-belt
sushi place near Oxford Circus.
RedHat Cambridge office holiday party. This year's was held in The Cellars
at Number One Kings Parade, across from Kings College. It was a nice place,
with a cheery fire and low ceilings to make it feel cozy. The only real
problem was that they put us in two adjoining rooms for dinner, without any
real cocktail hour, so there was very little opportunity to talk to anyone
except our tablemates. Those were generally fun people, so it was a good
evening, but didn't quite feel like a party. We managed to catch the last
train from Cambridge and the last tube home, so we felt very lucky.
Jonathan arrived on Thursday afternoon and we've been having fun together.
Generally he's gone off during the day to explore various bits of London and
to continue his quest for the best bitter in England and then come home for
dinner in the evening. It's great to catch up and hear how life's been
going for him in Colorado in the past year.
On Saturday he was spending the evening with Barbara, so we were on our
own. We headed down to Leicester Square around noon, with the vague idea
that we might see a show. When we checked at the box office for The Royal
Family, they had two returns in the 8th row center for the matinee at 3pm,
so we went to that. Dame Judi Dench was headlining this 1927 play sending
up the Barrymore family. I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece of playwriting,
but the characters were zany and fun and the actors generally did a good job
with their accents and roles.
After the show we decided to go for a walk down Picadilly and ended up in
Knightsbridge. When Jason reminded me that he'd never actually been inside
Harrod's, we had to go explore the food halls. Their sushi counter is the
only place I've found in London that serves hamachi, so we treated ourselves
to a few pieces of their insanely expensive, excellent fish. We picked up
some wild boar meat, a package of meat tortellini (odd the things one
*can't* find at Sainsbury's), some Stenwood (a sheep's milk cheese whose
description intrigued Jason) and a mangosteen. This is an Asian fruit we've
heard of from various friends, but had never seen or tasted. So now it's
sitting on our fridge, waiting for us to get brave.
We had hoped to get out and about again on Sunday, but I didn't get enough
sleep and ended up napping most of the day. I had good conversations in the
late afternoon with various folks and I made the best version of my tarragon
chicken with chanterelles that I've achieved to date. The intermittant
failure of our boiler to provide hot water has gotten more persistent, so I
wasn't able to do the dishes.
One of the people I called before I went to bed was Alicia, in California.
She called me back saying "I hope it's a reasonable hour," at 5:19am. I was
so pleased to hear from her that I didn't mind, so I got up and we chatted
for over an hour, after which I talked to steve for a while. I really
needed a shower and the hot water was still AWOL, so I heated up some water
in the cordless kettle and used a combination of that and the ice cold water
from the shower to wash my hair. By then I'd been up for hours, so I woke
Jason up and went back to sleep for a while.
We're heading out shortly to meet JR at Yo! Sushi, the wacky conveyor-belt
sushi place near Oxford Circus.