Oaxfudd

Here is where I shall live.  Staying in a wonderful place, The Old Bank Hotel, with a shower AND a tub, both man-sized and with plenty water pressure.  What luxury!  Still propping windows open and walking well behind the others, but only another day of the antibiotics, so we may be able to have open flames about us again.  Climbed a church tower built in 1290.  Had lunch in the White Horse pub from 1530, supposedly Bill Clinton's favorite hangout when he was here.  Walked through Christ Church, and the great hall where Harry Potter and his lot dined.  The Christ Church enormous bell, Old Tom, tolls 101 times every night at 9:05, as when it was first rung, there were 101 students in the college.  Oxford is 5 minutes (longitudinally speaking) west of Greenwich (London) and so all time there is kept five minutes later than the rest of the town.  Class start times, curfews, etc.  Pretty cool for an anachronism.  In the History of Science Museum is the blackboard preserved from Einstein's seminal lecture of 1931 on which he wrote in seven succinct lines a description of how to determine how old the universe is, and at what rate it is expanding.  Right there on the wall.  His writing.  At Christ Church is a structure called The New Building.  It's only 900 years old.  I'm in heaven. 

London Dairy Air

Maybe it's derriere?  We're staying in the Blades, in a fourth floor walk-up with a shower you can't turn around in.  It does have hot water, putting it a step or two above the flat in Paris, but K is unhappy.  So I'm unhappy.  Betty & Chuck went off to do the Stonehenge tour this morning, and we all met back at the top of the stairs and then took off for a Big Red Bus tour of central London.  Much nicer than a BRBT of L in January.  Also much more sociableizing for me, since the combination of antibiotics for my abcessed tooth, the pheasant pie, and nine different brand new takes on the idea of lager, and a glass of wine or two, have combined to make me noisy, noxious and occasionally downright spectacular.  Had the upper level of the bus pretty much to myself.  Pigeon started to land then took off in as much a hurry as a pigeon can muster.  Not as quick as K however.  "Look! You can pick out our flat!  The one with the window propped open with a magazine!!"

Hakuna Matata

Our 747 left Phoenix only an hour late, and the flight to Heathrow was fine except the light above my seat didn't work, so I had to lean into K's space to read.  Slept much of the 9.5 hours, and the four of us were met at the gate by our driver.  Seemed like a nice enough guy, and wanted to talk about science, specifically calcium carbonate, so I obliged him.  Turned out to be a real nut who would talk about nothing else.  Him, I mean.  Has the idea of drilling holes in the beds of the world's major rivers deep enough to recharge the aquifers.  Got to the point when we would try anything to jog him off the subject of calcium carbonate "Is that a baby chair in the back?"  What kind of car is that over there?"  "How 'bout them D-Backs?"  Nothing worked.  On and on and on he went.  I began banging my head on the window - He looked back quizzically, too a breath and carried on.  Longest damned ride of my life, and in a turbo-diesel so the fumes, the erratic driving and the goddam calcium carbonate combined to bring me to the edge of effluvia.

Sunday morning we went to the Tower of London, saw the crown jewels again (a 500 carat diamond - what's that, 10 times bigger than the Hope in the Smithsonian?) and then tradfatted off to the Lion King at the Lyceum near Covent Garden.  Pretty good for a musical, I guess.  First musical I've not fallen asleep in.

Better get back to the Blades Hotel here in Westminister and pick up K.  We're off to ride the London Eye before hooking up with Betty and Chuck at about two, our time.  That's four a.m. in Phoenix.  I don't want to think about it. 

Hall Of Flame

Gabe has wanted me to take him to the "fire truck museum" so K & I picked him and Bella up from school, took them to Mickey D's for a nutrient-free lunch, and then split up, men to the Moose See-Um and the ladies off to Schwoopieville for their beauty rest.

Let me just say that no reasonable person would put within easy reach a dog-house size bell with a rope hanging from its not insubstantial clanger, and then expect a simple "Please don't ring the bell" sign to have any effect whatsoever on a husky, athletic and enthusiastic five-year-old.  Damn! that bell took a licking and kept on resounding long after the place looked like somebody had kicked over an anthill.

It's a really cool almost 50,000 square foot exhibit of fire fighting apparatus going back to the oily 1700's.  I'm going back as soon as I won't be recognized. 

Rule of Thirty-Eight

Got my world-wide Freecell ranking to 48 out of 6300 by hitting a streak of 138 consecutive wins.  Shot a 38 on the back nine at Kenny MacDonald last Sunday.