february in london

It is cold and wet and dark here!  Our next destination needs to be somewhere WARM.  News: I got really sick for a few days but am now mostly better, Reba is bigger every day and the baby never stop wriggling around inside her, work is going pretty OK, our bass player dumped us for another band, I helped Eban put together his resume, Tasha and Keith are coming to visit, we got to see Parts and Labor, and our adopted countrymen showed a bit of class.

sick

Pretty much what you'd expect.  Not interesting unless you are an epidemiologist.

wriggling

There is a small baby inside of my wife.  In 2.5 months it will be outside the wife but still inside the apartment, and I will get to see what she looks like in the flesh.  The baby is always moving and kicking, I really can't see how Reba sleeps.  The other day I was laying with my face on Reba's stomach and I was talking to the baby when a tiny little foot kicked the wall of Reba's stomach right where my face was.  My own baby isn't even born yet and she kicked me in the face!  I suspect this is only the beginning.

dumped at age 39

Well, I can hardly blame the guy.  Apparently this other band has "label" interest and they are a hell of a lot better looking than us.  Plus, I think the "pregnant drummer" thing might have scared him off a bit.  :)  I happen to know for a fact that pregnant ladies rock the drums just as hard as non pregnant ones, even if they do have to go to the bathroom more than normal.  But I can see how that would just seem weird to a typical rock musician.  Oh well, maybe we'll find another bass player after the baby is born.

Eban's resume

My little brother is stepping out into the cold hard light of a recession, but he does have some darn good network operations manager chops and a brand new resume edited by yours truly.  You should hire him.

Keisha

Tash and Keith are coming to visit and this will be very cool.  We will go to tea and the club and sightseeing and drink a lot and bring the stupid.  We are even going to have a drinks night for them to meet some of our London friends.

 

P&L

What a darn great band: super crazy distorted effects pedal bass, even more crazy distorted effects pedal keyboard, neat fender twin reverb spacey effects guitar, and one severely kickass drummer.  The songs were pretty and also really fast but something slow too.  Sort of like a pop version of the Cripples I guess.  The best part: I saw the keyboard after they knocked everything over at the end, it's a total cheap-ass fred meyer model with tiny little keys and one was broken off.  I love that kind of thing.  I wrote the band after the show and told them that I think there is now hope for rock music.  I also need to buy more effects pedals.

 

just a bit

David Cameron is the head of the conservative "Tory" party in the UK, sometimes called the "opposition leader".   Gordon Brown is the head of the liberal "Labour" party, which is in the majority in the house of commons (like the US congress) just now, so Mr Brown is also the Prime Minister.  The job of the Prime Minister is to run the country just like Tony Blair used to, and just like a US president does.  The job of the opposition leader is to try and show the country that the Prime Minister is an idiot and failing at his job at every turn so people will vote the opposition leader's party into power and make him the PM.  Pointedly disregarding the sniping of the opposition leader is the PM's second job.  You see this constant stream of negativity in the newspapers on the radio and on TV, but nowhere is it as clear as in the "prime minister's questions" session that takes place every week.  In this event, the whole house of commons assembles, and folks get to ask the PM questions.  A more accurate way of describing this would be to say that folks get together and try to catch him saying something stupid, embarrass him for doing things wrong over the past week, and generally try to make him look bad.  Sometimes they try to get him to agree to stuff they want done.  The PM's job in all this is to dodge the questions and look good.  The opposition leader's job in all this is do take the first and nastiest swipes of the day at the PM, who in turn swipes right back.  It's great political theater, it can get pretty nasty, and it goes down every week, except for this week. 

That is because this week, David Cameron's 6 year old son died. 

This week, David Cameron wasn't there for PM's questions because he was mourning his son, and the PM himself showed up only to say some very touching and supportive words on behalf of Mr Cameron, who he continually referred to as "David" and not with the formal and often sneering "right honorable gentleman".  It was all the more moving because the PM himself had lost a newborn daughter only a few years ago.  I thought that this was one of those brief, beautiful moments where British culture and humanism shines right through all the crap and backbiting of day to day British life.  These guys are usually at one another's throats, but not today.  Everybody in the house just dropped the rhetoric and BS and reached out with support and warmth to a colleague, starting with the boss. 

Every once in a while these English step right up to the plate and impress the hell out of me.

snowy london

It snowed in London yesterday, so everybody got to stay home.  People in London are just as bad when it snows as people in Seattle are: total freakout.  No one went to work, and everyone piled into the grocery stores to buy food.  We went out to breakfast and caught a few snaps along the way...

front door of our apt

 

our mews (alley) all snowed in

st john's wood high street and some cute pregnant lady

settled into the sjw

We're moved in.  After assembling about 900 pounds of flat pack, trying to convince esl movers that they can park in our alley (more on this later) and fixing the flat for two weeks, we are mostly into a livable home. 

the flat pack

The flat pack comes into the picture for several reasons:

1. we have absolutely zero storage in this place... no closets, no cabinets, no bookcases, nothing.
2. you don't have to go shopping to find it, just to ikea.com.
3. it's cheap and shows up in a couple weeks.

Simple!  So now we have the worlds most matchingest lakvic (or whatever) bedroom set.  It is nice to not be living out of a pile of clothes on the floor however.

the alley

We live in an alley.  The english call this a "mews", and in fact ours has a name: Cochrane Mews, but to any red blooded American, this is an alley.  Of course our mews has a mews association, and they have already told me how I'm putting my garbage out wrong.  I guess that a couple of centuries ago, people kept horses in mews, but now that's all gone, and the old storage spaces and stables and whatever associated with those times are filling up with quirky little flats.  Our is one of these.  Really, it's pretty cool for several reasons:

1. We're 2 blocks from the tube stop that goes straight to Canary Wharf, this is very convenient for me.
2. This mews house is a recent conversion from office space, so it's all NEW, and everything works, even the water and heat.
3. We're right in the middle of St John's Wood high street shops, so everything will be close at hand for Reba when the baby shows up.

A slightly less favorable aspect of our mews is when we try to get anything delivered here.  The mews itself is probably 8 feet wide, so trucks have a hard time getting in, and then there's the getting out which is even worse.  This is why I had to argue with the esl movers, but they worked it out in the end.

fixing the flat

Renting just isn't the same here as it is back home.  Basically, tenants have zero rights, and landlords have all sorts of power over you. Plus, landlords don't really have to keep their places up, except in the most basic way.  So for example, if you move into a brand new flat assuming that the brand new washer and brand new dryer and brand new stove all are hooked up and work, you may be wrong.  You may also find that the landlord not only expects your to pay your rent promptly, but doesn't really feel that the unfinished nature of the flat is his responsibility.  This gets into the whole English "nothing to do with me, mate" culture.  Imagine this: you have a brand new stove on which one of the burners doesn't work.  The landlord's PA feels she isn't responsible for fixing it, the builders are.  The builders feel that it's actually the architects fault, because he bought the stove in the first place.  The architect feels it's the manufacturer's fault... and etc. but YOU'RE still paying rent.  I can only imagine that builders, architect, manufacturer and PA are all getting paid.  I looked into the UK landlord-tenant law, which seems to basically indicate that if the hot water heater and electrical supply are working, then the landlord has met his responsibility.  It actually explicitly says that it's not the landlord's responsibility to make sure that any of the things in the flat that USE the water and electricity work!  Really, fixing all of these things is simple and easy, but expecting the locals to do it out of any sense of responsibility to their clients/renters is way over the line.  So, I spent a couple days getting everything fixed, and now we've got a fairly good working order flat.

the snow

I guess it's snowing a lot outside.  Too bad London tube riders don't get snow days!