reflections on the month in some fragments
- Meg got into town around Holy Thursday. I hadn't seen her since 2006, and so we have done a lot of catching up and getting back to the status quo of just talking about plants and birds. She is getting married to another guy named Jason (not that she has ever been married before), and she's writing her dissertation on things that require her to be over here and to go to a lot of museums and libraries. It also involves a massive database, which makes me wish I was doing something that required me to assemble a database (memories of Filemaker and the summer of 2004 have floated to prominence, but they remain cloudy--surely my life did not have more purpose when I made seven dollars an hour building a tech support request logging database for the district's Web site). She'll be gone in a week, and I won't have anyone local to obsess about birds with.
- Good Friday was a walk with Meg around St Pancras, then Finsbury, then the Tube to Hampstead, up Spaniards Road to Kenwood House for an Easter egg hunt (I have never seen Kenwood House so lively!). It started to rain, and we had pureed leek and potato soup at the Spaniards Inn. The Passion play by the eighth graders at church was just as uncompelling as it was last year, and I was reminded that I don't like kissing crucifixes. Dinner at Shanghai Blues because the Polish bar was closed. I was reminded I don't like big prawns but despite that and the potential deliciousness of scallops, it is often better to go with a known commodity. I kind of wanted some duck but duck is meat. Jesus died for our sins.
- Holy Saturday Meg and I ordered Deliverance and played triominoes. I ate cheese. Jesus had already flown the coop when everybody came looking for him--I thought about how maybe the Gospel was more Easter-Sunday-like than I recall it being in previous years, but that obviously has more to do with my poor recollection than any novelty in the Gospel.
- Easter Sunday I took the train to Enfield for dinner with Tom and his parents and uncle and Tom's neighbors. I took the train up from platform 11b. On the way I saw a long-haired black cat sitting on the far tracks, and when we took off from Palmers Green I saw a very dark and skinny fox running along the side of the tracks and a jay. It was exciting for me. Tom greeted me at the train station and took me to a fake river to see ducklings. I had brought Pimms, strawberries, ginger ale and a cucumber (fortunately, Tom's parents already had blood oranges and apples--what a relief!), and I gave Tom a Thomas the Tank Engine Easter box that I got for 2.99 at Waitrose. His mom was pleased because that's what she bought him too. Then Tom had to show me his parents' curio full of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise. Apparently they really got a kick out of the fact that they decided to name their kid Tom and then discovered that someone had already done it, only with a train. Tom was really geeked out about these model airplanes that Jess had gotten him for his birthday. I flew them into the yards of two different neighbors, which allowed Tom to show off his wall-climbing skills. When Tom got tired of that, we went to the local pub (the 'nice' one--it wasn't very nice, and it reminded me of Saginaw, but like what Saginaw would do to try to be nice) to watch Fulham play Man City. Man City scored a goal, and Tom lost interest, and we went for a walk and eventually ended up in Tom's parents' garden flying the model airplanes again. Tom's dad and uncle were going to play a game of Scrabble, and so I joined in, and Tom went into a corner somewhere to watch DVDs. Then I got a message from my downstairs neighbors that their ceiling was leaking, and I had to go back home. The next 18 hours or so mostly just involved sleeping or dealing with leaks, and also talking to my landlord, who happened to be in Africa. Franco reprised his role as the Albanian handy-man who doesn't drive into the city when the congestion charge applies.
- Easter Monday I didn't work. Meg and I had salmon for dinner. As Franco was pleased to find out, there are no congestion charges on Easter Monday.
- The second Sunday of Easter Meg and I went to Kew Gardens. The xstrata treetop walkway was lame. The redwoods and sequoias were cool and worth the trip on the district line. By the end of the day I was exhausted and losing the will to live, and so I took a nap. Meg came back for dinner and we had a salad and rolls. We probably played triominoes.
- My boss got back from vacation last Tuesday, and she's been fairly loopy and jet-lagged since then. Today she made a really funny joke on our weekly call at the expense of a lawyer on the other side of one of our deals (fortunately, the phone was on mute). Later on I told her I won £15.40 on the Euro Millions drawing on Friday, and she said congratulations, which was very much out of character--usually, she would just say, "And how much money have you spent on tickets overall?" Don't waste her time with triflin' ups and downs--give her the net. I had a bit more fun with the idea that I had bought a clumber spaniel, and she just kind of nervously smiled at me. Then I told her it was a joke and that I didn't actually have a clumber spaniel, and she seemed sort of confused, but relieved.
- It's cold tonight. It's dark now. I am reading Guy Mannering and I think it's really good but it puts me to sleep a little more than Dickens maybe. It's certainly less suspenseful, but it certainly is the case that not everything must be about hiding the ball. Stay ever vigilant-- /B/
- Good Friday was a walk with Meg around St Pancras, then Finsbury, then the Tube to Hampstead, up Spaniards Road to Kenwood House for an Easter egg hunt (I have never seen Kenwood House so lively!). It started to rain, and we had pureed leek and potato soup at the Spaniards Inn. The Passion play by the eighth graders at church was just as uncompelling as it was last year, and I was reminded that I don't like kissing crucifixes. Dinner at Shanghai Blues because the Polish bar was closed. I was reminded I don't like big prawns but despite that and the potential deliciousness of scallops, it is often better to go with a known commodity. I kind of wanted some duck but duck is meat. Jesus died for our sins.
- Holy Saturday Meg and I ordered Deliverance and played triominoes. I ate cheese. Jesus had already flown the coop when everybody came looking for him--I thought about how maybe the Gospel was more Easter-Sunday-like than I recall it being in previous years, but that obviously has more to do with my poor recollection than any novelty in the Gospel.
- Easter Sunday I took the train to Enfield for dinner with Tom and his parents and uncle and Tom's neighbors. I took the train up from platform 11b. On the way I saw a long-haired black cat sitting on the far tracks, and when we took off from Palmers Green I saw a very dark and skinny fox running along the side of the tracks and a jay. It was exciting for me. Tom greeted me at the train station and took me to a fake river to see ducklings. I had brought Pimms, strawberries, ginger ale and a cucumber (fortunately, Tom's parents already had blood oranges and apples--what a relief!), and I gave Tom a Thomas the Tank Engine Easter box that I got for 2.99 at Waitrose. His mom was pleased because that's what she bought him too. Then Tom had to show me his parents' curio full of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise. Apparently they really got a kick out of the fact that they decided to name their kid Tom and then discovered that someone had already done it, only with a train. Tom was really geeked out about these model airplanes that Jess had gotten him for his birthday. I flew them into the yards of two different neighbors, which allowed Tom to show off his wall-climbing skills. When Tom got tired of that, we went to the local pub (the 'nice' one--it wasn't very nice, and it reminded me of Saginaw, but like what Saginaw would do to try to be nice) to watch Fulham play Man City. Man City scored a goal, and Tom lost interest, and we went for a walk and eventually ended up in Tom's parents' garden flying the model airplanes again. Tom's dad and uncle were going to play a game of Scrabble, and so I joined in, and Tom went into a corner somewhere to watch DVDs. Then I got a message from my downstairs neighbors that their ceiling was leaking, and I had to go back home. The next 18 hours or so mostly just involved sleeping or dealing with leaks, and also talking to my landlord, who happened to be in Africa. Franco reprised his role as the Albanian handy-man who doesn't drive into the city when the congestion charge applies.
- Easter Monday I didn't work. Meg and I had salmon for dinner. As Franco was pleased to find out, there are no congestion charges on Easter Monday.
- The second Sunday of Easter Meg and I went to Kew Gardens. The xstrata treetop walkway was lame. The redwoods and sequoias were cool and worth the trip on the district line. By the end of the day I was exhausted and losing the will to live, and so I took a nap. Meg came back for dinner and we had a salad and rolls. We probably played triominoes.
- My boss got back from vacation last Tuesday, and she's been fairly loopy and jet-lagged since then. Today she made a really funny joke on our weekly call at the expense of a lawyer on the other side of one of our deals (fortunately, the phone was on mute). Later on I told her I won £15.40 on the Euro Millions drawing on Friday, and she said congratulations, which was very much out of character--usually, she would just say, "And how much money have you spent on tickets overall?" Don't waste her time with triflin' ups and downs--give her the net. I had a bit more fun with the idea that I had bought a clumber spaniel, and she just kind of nervously smiled at me. Then I told her it was a joke and that I didn't actually have a clumber spaniel, and she seemed sort of confused, but relieved.
- It's cold tonight. It's dark now. I am reading Guy Mannering and I think it's really good but it puts me to sleep a little more than Dickens maybe. It's certainly less suspenseful, but it certainly is the case that not everything must be about hiding the ball. Stay ever vigilant-- /B/