OK, there are a few of you dedicated types who haven’t given up on me. I’ve been busy/tired and I’m finally getting a chance to catch up. I have at least 5 posts (yes ‘timber’ one of those involves my kitties!) that I’ll start putting up on Wednesday. In the meantime, my friend Dan is an artist. He has been drawing as long as I’ve known him (which is about 25 years). He’s made some cool shit that’s been put on the web and he published something recently. Sooo, here it be:

So I come back from lovely Paris to find that 2/3s of the underground will effectively be shutdown for three days due to a strike. This is due to the fact that England, like a lot of industrialized nations, has been screwing around with public services by privatizing them. Unlike, say the US which cut the cord entirely, causing corruption, higher prices and terrible service, the UK went the public-private route. As a result, you have companies with many restrictions on them trying to make money off of things that shouldn’t be thought of as being profitable and now one went bankrupt. So the workers, afraid of losing their jobs and pensions, are striking (although the government seems to have agreed to all their demands. weird). Anyway, all I can think of right now is ‘Thankfully, I take the bus!’ 🙂

I do wish countries would stop thinking about profitability when it comes to public transit. The whole point is that it’s subsidized and should never run at a profit. Now, running efficiently, that’s another story, but I personally think the idea that corporations can run things more efficiently than the public sector is a myth. They both have their bloated inefficiencies, they’re just different.

For those of you curious, this is what it looks like when the tube is shut down at rush hour. Although they’re claiming the Northern and Picadilly Lines aren’t supposed to be shut down. Wow!

Man, I’ve been bad. Well, this time, it was because of a last minute trip to Paris. Yep, I’m writing from Paris. I bought a ticket on Monday and hopped the eurostar on Tuesday night. Yes, the tough life. Hopefully, the work part won’t be as bad as I’m expecting. If so, then I get a day or two of free time to see the city. Alas, my digital camera died about 4 days ago, so I might not be able to post any pictures for a bit (I’m gonna look into getting some sort of single-use camera in the meantime). whee!

Well, it’s been more than a week, which I believe is the longest I’ve been blog-silent since I moved to London. A touch of writers block. I’ve been busy, but there’s plenty to write about. So let’s write.

Last week consisted of a lot of work and a lot of going out and being social. One of my favourite people in the world, Jess, was around for many days and it meant that I got to see her multiple times for what may have been three years. She’s on a grand work tour which included Australia, New Zealand and London. It ends with her going on her honeymoon (congrats Jess and Amit!). But, before she could relax in Italy with Amit, she was stuck hanging out with me.

Last Monday, she wanted to come up and see my neighbourhood a little bit and see my cute kitties who had arrived three days earlier (clearly I’ve been bad about writing in the blog — there’s no cat entry!). Before that, I decided she needed to try the Marquess Tavern. It’s a pub about 15 minutes from me that has a nifty little niche in the pub-food world. They have some sort of room in the back where they store racks of beef. They keep a running list of what they’ve got in back on a chalkboard. The sizes range from about 2.5lbs to about 10lbs of beef (I’m planning a big trip with many people to tackle one of those larger pieces of meat). If you pick one of them, they take it off the board since they only have one and the meal is something of a roast with gravy, potatoes, yorkshire pudding and some sort of vegetables. It’s very tasty. And the beef is right off the bone. Look!

It also has a nice selection of ales and a friendly atmosphere inside. The surrounding area is a fancy part of Islington called Canonbury, with lots of beautiful homes and greenery. The exterior of the pub is nothing to be ashamed of either. I believe it’s Listed (some sort of British distinction to preserve things of historical interest).  Look:

(bad picture — but it’s beautiful).

Anyway, that was one evening of Jess. The following days were fun as well and even included one night of Dina! But I lack photos of most of it. I’ve been a bad travelling Matt.

So I’m back in the lovely realm of London. I’ve got my cats and work should start being more normal. So, to get myself back in the blogging saddle, I’ll give some more fun with Frankfurt. This was a quick 2 day business trip, but I tried to have a little bit of the German experience.

Frankfurt is an odd city. It was pretty much levelled in World War II, so a lot of the old German charm was destroyed. As its become the financial centre of Germany, it’s got a lot of modernity to it. But there are definitely rebuilt buildings that retain an old-world charm to it. My company’s Frankfurt office is currently on the 27th floor of the Maintower, which is a nice building with a shitload of cool views.

Anyway, here’s a little of Frankfurt in pictures:

My office (the taller one) and my hotel (the shorter one). Easy commute and nice views!

The view from my hotel room. Alas, it was mostly rainy while I was there, but here’s a moment of clear sky.

Here would be a “typical” Germany meal. A whole lot of yummy pork. Mmmmm. In Frankfurt, this would be accompanied by Apfelwein, a fermented apple cider type drink. It’s dryer than a English cider.

I mentioned that not all of Frankfurt is new, corporate architecture. Here is the rebuilt opera house.

So I’m writing this from our office in Germany. I had to buy a plane ticket on Monday for a flight on Tuesday to come to Frankfurt for a quick jaunt of a work related nature. The office is on the 27th floor (cool!) and the hotel is it’s ‘twin’ accross the way, but my room is only on the 26th floor. hee hee. I’ll post more about it later, but here’s my spiffy hotel room:

So I have a post about my previous day on my Chicago trip, but I checked the news this morning and saw some baseball related info that seemed relevant to another activity I partook of whilst in Chicago.

The previous evening, I went out with a whole lot of people and braved the rain and lightning to see the Decemberists play in the Frank Gehry designed bandshell. Our friend Sof was there and, as we were leaving, he mentioned that he had a free ticket to see the Cubs the following afternoon and hinted that they were pretty freaking good seats. With everyone else having to work and stuff, I gladly took him up on the offer.

The day started out beautiful, but kept looking ominous and cloudy. They called for rain, but all that happened in the end was a little sprinkling of rain and some nice cloud cover from the sun.

Welcome to Wrigley!

After a little bit of missing each other in the crowds, we met up with two of Sof’s friends. Their dad had managed to pick up some box seats from work for free and couldn’t go, so he passed them on to his daughters and, eventually, I ended up with one! Well, these seats were about 20 rows back and slightly to the left of home plate. Very very nice. See for yourself:

Very nice view of the game. Which just meant that I actually had to watch it. So, while I did imbibe some alcohol at the game, I can actually recall what happened. It was a high scoring affair, with the Cubs jumping out to a big lead and squandering it. The big highlight (or lowlight, depending on your perspective) was Barry Bonds hitting homeruns 752 and 753.

Which brings me to why I’m writing about this today instead of the Decemberists concert. I’m not going to try to go into the obvious fact that Barry Bonds has been cheating for many years in order to reach a milestone that is one of those records that has and should be hard to break. I just think it’s a shame that major league baseball has appeared to wash their hands of it. He’s going to break the record very very soon (now that he’s tied it), and it doesn’t look like, short of them catching him taking steroids or HGH, there’s not much anyone can do about it. Which is kind of sad. Hitting that many homeruns is an impressive feat, but it appears as though he repeatedly tried any means he could to take things to enhance his game while not getting caught in the act.

I’ll leave it to someone who knows better than I to say a little more about it. Bob Costas, while he can get on my nerves, has a great interview here where he lays out the (circumstantial) reasons why it’s pretty obvious that Bonds has been using steroids (or other shit to make himself a gigantic man). Ok, no more rant. I think, in the end, that Major League Baseball deserves a whole lot of the blame for basically approving of these kinds of actions.
Anyway, I was really happy to have a chance to enjoy a day at a baseball game. I am not the biggest sports enthusiast, but I always like to catch a game or two every summer. It’s always a fun time.

OK, I was able to leave the office at a reasonable hour, have a leisurely dinner and decompress by sitting on my ass in my flat for once. Let’s start up the blogging again with these cute little critters:

Anna looking pensive

Chewy zonked out

Now I’ve said I wouldn’t dwell too much on the cats, but there’s developments afoot! In one week, these sweet little creatures will be crated up and take a crazy ass adventure across the Atlantic to join me in London. Just writing this makes me incredibly nervous. It was wonderful to see them again in Michigan (I’ll get to that in the next week), but when I think about the 12 hours of hell they’re going to go through just so I can be with them again, I worry. OK, first of all, I hope it’s not hell. And when the come out of their crates, then they will be home again. Even if home is a long ways away and nothing like the last two homes they were in. But I’ll be there.

Anyway, Anna and Chewy are coming soon. I’ve got a lot to do to prepare for their arrival. Woo hoo! 🙂

Howdy. It’s been a silent week for me. That would be because, since returning to the UK, I’ve essentially been working. I worked 30 hours this weekend alone. If I can make it Friday, then I can catch up on all the fun things in my life (my Chicago trip has been woefully under-reported). More later this week!

Well, I’m back in the UK now and only somewhat jetlagged. I had a wonderful time in Chicago and I’ll be trying to add entries about some of the more interesting things/days of the trip. For all the fine people I was able to see, it was tons of fun. Hopefully I’ll be back sooner rather than later! 🙂

Now, aside from wanting to propose to Carolyn, another reason for my visiting Chicago when I did was to celebrate her 30th birthday. It turned into more of a weekend long celebration, so I’ll write about each day separately. There might be a little overlap from other posts, but bear with me 🙂
The day started with a jet-lagged Matt, since he had just arrived the day before, waking up pretty much constantly from about 4am onward. Once I was up and about, it was time to begin a nice Chicago day. We first went off to Metropolis, which is home to the finest coffee in Chicago. I know it’s still an Intelligentsia town, but I much prefer Metropolis. They roast all their own beans in small batches and understand that making a coffee drink is an art. Once I was caffeined up, Carolyn and I did a little volunteer work. She has recently been spending her Saturday mornings at the Ginkgo Organic Garden near her apartment, so we went up there to help harvest vegetables (100lbs of it) and do some general weeding and maintenance of the garden. All the food grown there goes to local food banks.

After a little rest and cleaning, we began the first day of celebrations. We started by going to the Hopleaf. It’s an upscale bar with a wide selection of beers (on tap and in bottles). Their focus is on Belgian beer, but they have beer from all over the world. They also have food, but that wasn’t on the schedule this night. We met Dave and Melissa for a little pre-dinner drinks:

(That’s Carolyn and Melissa)

Eventually, we made our way a little further north to our dinner destination, Ethiopian Diamond where we also met up with Virginia and Carolyn W. We’d been there for Dan’s birthday the previous year and it was a fun group dinner. For those of you unaware, ethiopian food is typically eaten on a big platter with a sponge-like bread instead of utensils. This place is particularly tasty. We got a wide variety of food (chicken, lamb, beef, chickpea and okra dishes) and sampled the range of African beers they offer. Here would be the food:

And here is the birthday girl and her birthday ‘cake’:

After filling up on some good food, it was time to move down the street to Moody’s. It’s one of the more interesting bars in the city. The interior, unlike much of the city, is not air-conditioned, so in the summer, it’s very warm inside. On top of that, it’s got a very dark vibe and a fireplace which makes the inside a little scary. However, they have a gigantic beer garden (about twice the size of the inside bar) and is a great place for some beer and conversation. Their beer choices are limited but good (Anchor and Berghoffs on tap) and the price is ridiculously cheap ($9 for a pitcher of Anchor). On top of that, they have huge, cheap plates of fries and good burgers (people argue they’re the best in the city — I’m not convinced, but they are tasty). Anyway, we headed here for beer and conversation, as well as to meet up with some fine folks who couldn’t meet for dinner (Anne, Dan and Ryan). Here is an attempt at capturing the beer garden at night:

I personally started to crash after a few beers and fries and, thankfully, the night wound down. But, we all departed around midnight well fed and happy. For Carolyn, she still had more birthday fun to come the next day.

Most of you who read this site have at least heard about Carolyn and many of you have had the pleasure of getting to know her. She’s the wonderful woman I’ve been dating for almost 3 years. We’ve been separated by my move to the UK, which has been very difficult. But it’s actually made our relationship stronger.

In the four months we’ve been apart, it’s become clear that no matter what our future holds, it will involve both of us. So, on Tuesday 17 July 2007, we went to a beach we visited on our first date, had a nice picnic brunch and I proposed to her. And, for some strange reason, she said yes! Woo Hoo!

Anyhoo, for those of you I haven’t been able to talk to, let it be known that Carolyn and I are engaged (chances are, you didn’t hear it directly because I lost all my US phone numbers. Doh!). Here’s a picture of the happy couple:

And here’s where it happened:

There’s not much more to add aside from the general happiness. Life is good and you’ll be able to hear plenty more about it as the details (when, where, ETC) develop. Joy!

Just a quick hello from Chicago. I’m not too horribly jet-lagged. Since I got here, I’ve had dinner at the Heartland Cafe and Carolyn and I went and did some volunteer gardening and the Ginkgo Organic Garden. I also got some nice coffee at my favorite coffee shop in Chicago. And my apartment is unsold but still looks good. Everything feels very much normal, which is nice, but a little odd since I’ve been gone for 4 months now. I didn’t have my camera handy, so I’ll need to start taking pictures later! 🙂

Best of all, I’ve been able to see Carolyn! It’s very nice to see her again after all these months.

I saw this on the bus on my way to work. Two things made me fumble for my camera to snap a photo of it. First of all, someone got really creative with finding parking. I don’t see a ticket, so that’s even cooler. Second of all, you have three cars, each facing in various direction. Which makes me think of the whole issue of which side of the road people drive on in the UK. It was one of those things guaranteed to confuse. I adapted pretty quickly, but the tricky part are side roads. Now, in the US, they are pretty anal about which direction you parallel park. It would be helpful in the UK because you could use it as a guide to see which way to look. I hope this picture proves that is not the case 🙂

Anyhoo, I’ve been very lazy with my posting. I have three or four stewing that I need to put down. But in the meantime, hope you enjoyed this meaningless and random post.