The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

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.

This morning, Lorie and I went to Leicester Square and took part in the attempt to set the Zombie Walk World Record. We needed over 894 people dressed up (bloodied up) like Zombies, but I don’t think we made it. Lorie and I were zombies number 148 and 149, but Lorie stood a ways behind the crowd with a Starbucks coffee in hand and I stood at the back of the crowd with my arms in the air, like a zombie, and a hooded sweatshirt on to hide the fact that I didn’t have any makeup on. So I guess we were lame zombies. Afterwards, we saw the Zombie Diaries movie, but neither of us thought it was was very good.

The fun part was seeing a group of people obviously from a tour bus standing outside the fence at Leicester Square wondering what was going on. The picture is of zombies posing for other zombies who are taking their picture.

Thanks to Lars who introduced us to The Chocolate Tasting Club a few years ago, even though we could never join while living in the US. However, now that we live in London we are happy members who wait for our box to arrive each month. What this means is that once a month we get a box of chocolate in the mail with different types of chocolates from different chocolatiers. This month we got a truffle with rhubarb flavored creme, which sounds disgusting, but was surprisingly good. Anyway, it’s a small bit of entertainment that ruins our dinner at least once per month. Plus they are good and ethical regarding who and where they purchase the ingredients, which is a nice thing to support as we pig out on the chocolates. 

Last night, Lorie, Anne, Cullen and I went to the Rolling Stones concert at the O2 in London, which used to be called the Millennium Dome. The sound wasn’t that good so we couldn’t hear the vocals all that well, at least where we were sitting. But when they play songs like Start Me Up, Sympathy for The Devil, Paint It Black, and many other hits, everyone is singing along anyway so it just doesn’t matter if you can clearly hear Mick. I have to admit, experiencing the Rolling Stones play Paint It Black is one of my best concert experiences ever! And of course, this being England and all, we had chips (french fries) and beer as we waited for the show to start.

They opened the show with Start Me Up, which made me wonder if I was back at the launch of Windows 95. Only you Microsoft geeks will understand that one.

Oddly enough, as we caught the last District Line train home from the Westminster stop, we met a TV news anchor from San Francisco that works with a guy Lorie went to high school with. He and his son had also been at the concert.

UPDATES SINCE I FIRST POSTED THIS:

1. We saw Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood light up and have a smoke on stage, but it is now illegal to smoke indoors in London. This has now hit the news and the Daily Mail in London is reporting that there will be fines to pay.
2. This is the last tour that the Rolling Stones will do (probably) and the last 3 shows at the O2 will be their final ones. They have been touring since 1962! At least this is what the Daily Telegraph in Australia is reporting.
3. The Times has a write-up of last night’s show.