The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

This year for the US Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to get some lefsa since it has been a few years since I have been home to enjoy mom’s homemade potato goodness. What you see here is what I found and the store I bought it from, the Scandinavian Kitchen. Notice the bag of lefsa says “lomper” – apparently that’s a small lefsa (about 6 inches in diameter), which is designed to hold a sausage. I opted for my preferred butter and sugar instead, which tasted just fine to me. The store is mostly a cafe with a few shelves of Scandinavian foods in the back. I didn’t see lefsa as an option in the case with the prepared food for the cafe, so obviously they are confused. No dad, I didn’t see any rumagrout to purchase, but I wasn’t really looking either. 

I had another good tourist weekend in London (added to this photo album), which included:

1. Buying lefsa at the Scandinavian Kitchen – it tasted OK, but it had been frozen for too long
2. Sampling some very good scotch at Milroy’s of Soho 
3. A tour of the Royal Albert Hall, which opened in 1871 with a bad echo that was never fixed until 1969 when they finally figured out how to get rid of the echo: hang mushroom-like things (acoustic discs) from the dome.  
4. Talking to two large men dressed in drag who were in full black Victorian-era dresses just to be out on the town – no real special reason. (sorry, no picture). I asked if it was difficult to get around with the large hoops at the bottom of the dresses and they said not really and that people really get out of their way when walking down the sidewalk.
5. Visiting the Science Museum, and specifically Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine (I saw it 3 years ago with Daniel and Angelina) and his brain, or at least the right side of it.  
6. Visiting the new Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, where I learned about classifying bugs and plants 
7. And finally, a night of comedy with Anne.

Yes, it ended up being a rather educational and interesting weekend. 

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I had two things in mind for walking around London today: Visit a Christmas market near Oxford Street and see some rainforest tree stumps from Western Ghana. I never found the market, but here’s what I did find/discover/learn today:

1. Rainforest tree stumps from Western Ghana are much more twisted than Douglas Fir trees from Northwest America
2. Shelters for taxi drivers (cabmen shelters) have been in London since 1875, are no larger than a horse and cart, but can seat 13 with a small kitchen
3. Selfridges has been around since 1909
4. Walking down Fleet Street is a bit like an outdoor museum, which includes St. Bride’s Church – it was the inspiration for the layered cakes we’re all used to seeing at weddings.
5. Walking into a vast, empty, and completely dark space is a weird feeling. (the exhibit at the Tate Modern by Miroslaw Balka is a massive steel box that is open on one end, but no light is shining into it so everyone just slowly walks into it. Walking out is fine since you can see the light at the open end, but walking into the dark is very weird)

Click the pictures to see my highlights from today’s walk. Yes, I had rain and sunshine.

Have you ever wondered what I’ve done for the last 15 years at Microsoft? I just explained it on my work-related blog if you are curious. The thing pictured here (poorly) is my 15-year award sitting on my desk in London. It is a large chunk of glass with some orange colouring on it.

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We spent our birthdays in Munich being tourists by going to the Augustiner Bierhall and the Hofbräuhaus for traditional Bavarian food and beer. We also tried Mexican food in Munich, which turned out to be pretty good. The best part of our long weekend was touring the area on the way to Neuschwanstein Castle with Mike’s Bike Tours (but didn’t get any bikes at this time of year). We had beautiful weather all day, so it was a great time to see the countryside. We didn’t get in any skiing, but we did see snow as we cut through part of Austria. Maybe next time!

Lorie is now an official “Senior Unpaid Blogger” for the Seattle PI (that’s their globe pictured with Milo) along with 3 other people. You can usually find her entries on Monday and will focus on transportation and whatever odd thing pops into Lorie’s head. :-) For example, she just wrote about our local street car being attacked by mushrooms.

So visit http://blog.seattlepi.com/insouthlakeunion/ when you want to know what is going on in our Seattle neighbourhood. (spelled in UK English since I am writing this from our London neighbourhood)

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The trees are starting to change colours in London, so I took some photos of them to share, plus a few other interesting things I have seen this month. Including two guys sword fighting in Hyde Park with real swords. They each had on a metal glove too – sort of like what a knight would wear. They were just practicing, but for what I’m not sure. What better place to practice swinging a big metal sword at someone than in a public park? Click on the “View Full Album” to see all the photos I’ve taken in the last few weeks in London.

I was near the London Bridge for a meeting this afternoon/evening, so I decided to walk to Trafalgar Square where there were movies showing as part of the London Film Festival.

Along the way, I got a great view of the city on the Thames at dusk, heard a 3 piece band on the walkway that included an accordion. When I stopped in the National Theatre (free toilet) there was a good 3 piece band (Spanish guitar, base & piano) doing a great job playing Flamenco music – at least I think that’s what it was.

At the film festival, they were showing old films about London transportation, which I’m always fascinated by since it has defined London so much over the years. The one film I watched showed what London and transportation looked like in 1896 (bicycles and horse-drawn everything: buggies, double-decker “busses”, etc.). What was interesting for me was London itself: shops on the first floor and flats above them – the same things we see today, and probably the same exact buildings we see today. Plus people darting across the road in front of the vehicles, just like today. The film also had a lot of guys in bowler hats.

While walking through Leicester Square, I saw the fans and paparazzi for the world premier of Dead Man Running. I have no idea who is in the movie or who the stars were that I saw, but there sure were a lot of cameras and flashes going off. I finished the night with some good bangers & mash and a Guinness at a nice little pub.

That was my commute home on a Thursday evening. How about yours?

Here’s one of those little interesting things about living and working in London: Today during a fire alarm (it happens about once per week) we saw Bob Geldof leaving the building along with all the other people being evacuated. I don’t think he was meeting with Microsoft though; probably one of the other businesses in the building. He was looking like the picture here, only with a hat (a beret I think). So there you go: even celebrities even have to evacuate buildings during fire alarms. 

In late October 1999, five good friends and I sailed the British Virgin Islands on a boat we rented from The Moorings. If you get the chance to go sailing in the BVI, I highly suggest you take it!