Sunday March 29th - Why isn't Spring in the air?

Yesterday turned out to be one of the most bone-chilling and wet days I've seen so far, and it's supposed to be Spring now, and April is 3 days away. Can't say I'm too pleased with that situation. Granted I still feel blessed to have missed the NYC winter, but now New York is starting to pull ahead in the race to Spring. I'll stop complaining.

I started the day seeing the visitors off around 6 a.m. Stayed up and killed some work/laundry/writing. Enough productivity for a Saturday. Afterwards I had lunch with some coworkers who were visiting from California, and started boozing.

My next task was to pick up my cell phone from Wimbledon. Allow me to explain this bizarre situation.

So Thursday night, after a bender in Camden Town (involving Justin and I stumbling through a deserted Egyptian nightclub), I lost my phone. I am 99 percent sure that it was in my lap, and simply fell onto the floor of the taxi that we took home. I THINK.

So, the night ends with me assuming my phone is in the back of the cab. I call it a couple of times that night, it rings, but no answer. I figure since it's on vibrate, the cabbie doesn't hear it, but hopefully will find it the next day when he gets ready for his next shift. I go to bed.

Friday, much of the same. I call my phone several times, with it ringing all the way through to voicemail a dozen times or so. Still nothing. I do however hold off on contacting our cell phone ops and requesting a cancellation of this account + requesting a new device. Good thing I held off because ...

Saturday morning, I give it one more shot, just in case. Much to my surprise, a lady answers the phone. We quickly establish that I am the owner of the phone I am calling, and that she missed a couple of my calls on Friday, and that I am glad she held on to the phone. Next comes the interesting part.

So this lady tells me that she found my phone in her foyer around 6 a.m. Friday morning. Apparently someone had put it through her mail slot. Not that crazy, if she lived near me. That would make perfect sense if I had actually dropped my phone near my house, someone walking down the street sees it, figures maybe someone knocked it out of their pocket while fumbling for keys, so they assume it belongs to the inhabitant of the house it's closet to. So they put it through the door.

However, this lady lived about 10 miles from where I would have "lost" the phone. There are a couple explanations for this:

1) Cabbie eventually finds phone in back of car, decides to put it through the nearest mail slot when found. Highly highly unlikely.

2) Someone in the back of the cab takes it, and after getting out, decides to put it in someones door. Semi-likely.

3) Someone in the back of the cab takes it, walks down the street for a bit, trying to use it, can't figure out the password, has a moment of clarity and thinks that the right thing to do is to try and locate the owner, but doesn't want to invest the time and effort, therefore decides to put it through someones mail slot in the hope that they will track down the owner, rather than toss it in the garbage or break it. Pretty likely.

I think #3 is the answer. The only reason I hesitate to give that one a hundred percent probability is the fact that I know drunk people. I am a drunk person. As nice of a guy as I think (hope) I am, in that situation, depending on the number of drinks I had, I may have just broken the thing. Is this a karma warning?

Either way, I have my phone back, and the creepy thoughts about who was playing with/touching my phone on Thursday night. The things we will never know.

March 29th - house empty

So mom/dad/Rick/Candy/Justin all left this morning. Sadness. The house was quite full of life while they were here. Not that it isn't usually, but you know what I mean. Now I'm left with a boatload of linens and towels to wash, and 4 days to recover before my brother shows up.

March 27th

Hey-o, two boring days.

March 25th

So time to get this show back on the road. I've been away too long. I COULD try and recap what has happened in the past month or so, but that would be silly. I can promise you things were good, lots of interesting things happened, and I worked myself to death. Fairly common synopsis of my life in general, but for now, I'm cool with it.

So last Saturday a.m., I was delighted to find my mother, father, Rick, Candy, and Justin (the latter 3 are old friends from Ohio) descend upon my doorstep for a weeklong London adventure.

Saturday was spent resting, followed by a disjointed pub dinner. The disjointedness was caused by myself having to deal with an emergency work issue for 2 hours, so the old people did dinner together, while Justin and I followed soon thereafter.

Got them Fish and Chips, ate at a pub, they were officially acclimated. We then took a quick trip up to Soho to gawk at the assortment of sex shops, watched with wonder at a dude dancing in the window of a bar, saw a Hare Krishna parade skidaddle by, and saw a man with a nice jacket and no undershirt pee on the sidewalk. Good intro.

Sunday was spent walking everyone to death, by taking in Buckingham/Green Park and having tea at Fortnum and Mason's. I had strudel. It ruled.

We ended the evening with an East End stroll, doing a self-guided walk of Jack the Ripper's trail. It wasn't as scary as expected, but we still had a good time. We also had some fantastic Indian cuisine on Brick Lane, as we decided on the 4th different restaurant that claimed to be the oldest on Brick Lane.

Monday, I worked my face off, and they took in Westminster Abbey, which to my surprise, is more than an old church. Henry the VIII, Darwin, and other important people we should all probably know more about are buried there.

Tuesday, they did Tower of London. Worked my face off again.

Today, we did Paris. It was a whirlwind, as we took the first train out of London, which departed at 5:25 a.m. Not so much fun.

We had an interesting experience to start the day. Candy's daughter had a French father, and both he and her grandmother had passed away several years back, but it took the Paris authorities over 4 years to find her. So it was an opportune time to go and see the property that was hers, and put the final stamp on the succession process.

Well, I got to practice my French that hadn't been practiced in 6 years or so, as I played translator for everyone and the caretaker of the grandmother's apartment complex. I am pleased to report I can get by. I looked very cool to the other Americans, so all in all it was OK.

We then scurried about the city, seeing the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, academy of music, opera house, some Napoleon monument, the Arc de Triumph, and some other important looking builds. We drank plenty of wine and ate plenty of French food, and were pretty dead by the end of it. I'll be back in Paris in a few weeks to get a more social view of the city.

So that is that.