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.