The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Cider: I usually drink the Aspall Cyder at our favourite Friday night pub (Spencer Arms) and I just discovered the half-pint. Most beers and ciders in the UK have their own glasses, except half-pint servings are often in a generic glass. Not so for the Aspall Cyder at the Spencer Arms.

Space Junk: Earlier this week, Lorie and I met up with a friend of a friend named Casey who works at Boeing and was in London for work. He does military-related stuff these days, so he couldn’t tell us much about his work, but at a previous job at Boeing he designed the emergency exit doors for Boeing 737 planes. His dad used to work at Boeing too and some of his work is still sitting on the moon! Apparently the antennas of the moon rovers are his.    

Milo: This is for Alex’s benefit, since he calls this the "dog blog". This picture was taken in the Barnes Common field near what we call the "creepy hospital". We call it that because the hospital is closed, but sometimes lights are on and we once saw a nurse near the back entrance late at night.

I have been a bit slow to post anything recently, because I have been busy building and releasing Messenger TV. If you are in the US though, you don’t get to have fun with it. We hope to change that in the future, but for now you can enjoy the screenshots and see the videos that will eventually be available in Messenger TV in the US by going to http://video.msn.com.

Here are a few interesting things to read about it:

1. Announcing Messenger TV for Windows Live Messenger (our pre-press release)
2. Microsoft Switches on Messenger TV (the press release)
3. Messenger TV in the news (the results of the above 2 links)

Meanwhile, Milo has been enjoying the warm weather.

Despite the forecast for rain, the weekend turned out to be warm and sunny. We took Milo on a walk around the Thames from Hammersmith bridge to Putney bridge during low tide, so we were able to walk along the water and let Milo drink from the river. Hopefully the water wasn’t too toxic.

We also ended up at a friend’s party in Soho, where we were supposed come as Vikings. I figured being all Norwegian (a few generations ago) was good enough. You can see the BT Tower in the background from their deck, which is on the top of the building. It makes for a great place to have a party, especially when it is warm out and all the pubs down on the streets around the building are overflowing with people.    

Thanks to a bank holiday, we had a 3-day weekend. No, I don’t really understand bank holidays yet, but who cares – a day off is always a nice thing. This of course meant that Milo got a few more walks, such as through the Fulham cemetery where he sees foxes and squirrels. The photo is a pathway in the cemetery that is full of pink petals off of the trees.

We also found time to visit a pub we hadn’t been to called the Nag’s Head, pictured below. It is a strange little pub, but with lots of character. We also got to have dinner at the very fashionable The Thomas Cubitt. I basically had pub food (Shepard’s pie), but it was good. The restaurant is right across the street from Milo’s 24-hour emergency vet, but thankfully we didn’t need to visit it this weekend.     

Hello friends and family. I see that you are located in Salt Lake City, London, California, Minnesota, Bellevue, New York, Gig Harbor, and a variety of other locations. Usually the name of the location is related to where your ISP is located, but it is close enough that I can guess who you are, since I do know many of you. (I can’t figure out which one is for Longview, WA though).

How does it work? I have a little IP2Map icon at the bottom of the right-hand column of my blog. When anyone visits http://GrothAdventures.Spaces.Live.com that icon is loaded from the IP2Map site and it records the IP address of you, my visitor. It then looks up where all of these IP addresses are located and puts them on a map. Scroll down to the bottom of the right-hand column and click on the IP2Map icon to see the map and list of locations.

I’m sure everyone reading this has wondered "is bowling the same in Belgium as it is in America?" I can now report that yes, it is exactly the same. Same shoes. Same balls (we had coloured ones). Same lanes & pins. Same types of machines to keep score. And of course, most of us were terrible – I was there with about 20 co-workers. The big difference about bowling in Antwerp is seeing stuff written in Dutch, French, and English.

With a planned strike of all railway workers in Belgium now canceled, I am off to Brussels for some meetings with a bunch of other Microsoftees and maybe a customer too. Taking the Eurostar is much more relaxing than flying! It is also easier to get work done on the train too, which is good since I have to prepare for my presentation later today.

I didn’t see much of Budapest – 2 days of meetings and one night out. But, at least I did see the Nyugati Railway Terminal, Saint Stephen’s Basilica, and the Hungarian Parliament Building (pictured). All of these were at night in the rain, but they were nice to see anyway. I never saw the river or the bridge which are also famous. Check them all out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest 

A bit more fun is the growing list of cities we’ve visited since arriving in London a year and a half ago. We are up to 18 (give or take) assuming I’ve not forgotten any of them.

We walked around Helsinki on a cold (6 Celsius), but sunny day today seeing the mix of architecture and cultural influences. We have seen restaurants that are themed around Latin America, Texas, Memphis, Russia, India, Japanese, Chinese, and of course Finland. It is certainly a different mix of culture than Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen. Even if you do see some of the same restaurants in those cities, you get the feeling that Finland is much more influenced to the Eastern Europe cultures than its Scandinavian cousins to the West.

I have posted a few photos here.

We spent the day walking around Stockholm today, mostly in the old town, then caught a flight to Helsinki. During the flight we saw about 1 million islands off the coast of Sweden then again off the coast of Finland: maybe it was about 10 million little islands. I’d love to have the time to explore them one day!

While walking around in Stockholm, I saw two games of Bocce Ball like we play in Minnesota at the lake cabin. However, the balls were metal so that could get dangerous. I uploaded a few new photos here.

This evening in Helsinki we had some reindeer meat for dinner, but most of the meal consisted of mashed potatoes and red currents. Reindeer tastes sorta like steak and the potatoes tasted like… potatoes.