The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Last night we had some fun with Windows Live Messenger and had a video chat with my parents, but mostly it was between my dad and Milo … I was in there too somewhere. To my surprise, we chatted for free for about 30 minutes. I am usually never that chatty! It must have been all the stories Milo had to share.

Milo can relax…at a pub. :-)

10:30pm and I just got off the Eurostar and am now waiting in the typically long taxi line outside of Guard du Nord. I would take the Metro, but I’ve never been to the hotel I am heading for. My usual one was full, as is most of the city due to some Rugby game(s).

House update: we now have hot water, but need a new boiler before we have heat in the house.

What you see here is a hole in the ceiling of our kitchen. That’s because we had a pipe that wasn’t soldered together and it broke loose, spilling water all over the kitchen – through the ceiling. As it turns out, there were three pipes that were not soldered together, and one of the was the gas. If that had come lose, we would have blown up the flat and probably the entire block according to the guys who fixed it.

So here’s the ingredients for a difficult day:

1. Have a really bad head cold and lose your voice a bit.
2. Have your big energetic dog in a cone with stitches in one leg. He has figured out how to use the cone to push people down the hallway.
3. Have water raining through your kitchen ceiling
4. Have your kitchen torn apart to fix it, thus leaving a mess of a kitchen with water damage everywhere.
5. Learn that you could have blown up and that it was dumb luck that we didn’t. Although, never cooking turns out to be a smart thing in this case.
6. After all this, we still don’t have hot water. "Thankfully", we are still paying rent through the end of the month at the place we were living in, and it does have hot water for taking a shower.

Hopefully next week will be better!

My taxi ride from the Microsoft office in Munich tonight included another Microsoft guy originally from Venezuala (sp is way off), speaking Italian to the taxi driver… in Germany. I realy wasn’t sure where I was! I love it, but wish I knew a few more languages.

Since it is midnight, I just got to my hotel, and I won’t be seeing anything before flying out tomorrow, I felt obliged to sample the local goods. Thankfully, with this being Germany, the hotel room mini bar includes a decent beer and a proper beer mug to enjoy it. Only in Germany do I see this, plus 2 types of peanuts and a sausage snack all as part of the mini bar.

With the boxes at home unpacked and our stuff sort of organized, I am off to Munich for a night and full day of meetings. I wonder if the Oktoberfest beer is flowing yet? :-)

Not that it matters for this trip though, since I won’t be there long enough to even get into the city. I need to get back to attend the 2nd day of ReMix UK For yiou non-Microsoft people, it’ a geeky software designer & developer event.

We are busy unpacking boxes and figuring out how to fit into our massive flat…. with no closets. It’s an English thing. We have quite a few hooks, towel bars, and paintings/pictures to hang.

Even though we are only about 3 streets away from where we have been renting, we now feel a bit permanent here. When you visit, here is what you will find in our neighborhood:

• The Fulham Palace
• The Fulham Palace Road Cemetery (always an interesting quite walk with lots of squirrels to get Milo excited)
• A place to buy plants
• Craven Cottage where the Fulham Football Club plays
• We live in the neighborhood (or neighbourhood) of Hammersmith & Fulham
• And of course Bishops Park where we take Milo to run all the time

This is our home for the next few days as we SLOWLY cruise up the canals. We are now in the small town of Hebden Bridge enjoying a couple pints.