Dinner by candlelight

Tonight we're having dinner at the Thai place next door. I can't figure out why we don't eat here more often.

You have to love London

Today Jenna and I spent the morning in Hyde Park. It was a lovely day, and we got our fill of surrealism in the few hours we were there. First we went over to Speakers Corner and listened to the crazy people argue with each other. Amazingly for Jenna and I, this was the first time we had ever been there. While we enjoyed the banter, we didn't really find a speaker who had a real argument to make. Most of the people we saw fell into two camps. Either they were religious nuts who wanted to tell us that we were all going to Hell, or political nuts who didn't have a thesis in their argument, but enjoyed using shocking language. We stayed and listened to one of the latter for awhile. We went for ice cream after that, and saw an old man who ordered a scoop for himself, but didn't realize that what he ordered was £2.50 instead of £1.30. He had a fiver with him, but didn't look like he could go as high as £2.50 and told the guy behind the counter to never mind. He walked off muttering to himself about how expensive everything had gotten. A few minutes later I saw a young family man walk over to the old man with a two scoop chocolate cone (with flake), and hand it to him. I couldn't hear what the young man said to the old man, but as he left the old man looked at his new ice cream and smiled. It was a smile of utter happiness and gratitude. He looked over to the young man, who had now rejoined his family, and mouthed the word, "thank you" while giving them a little salute with his treat. After we finished our own ice cream we walked back to Hyde Park corner and saw two (not one, but two) people walking ferrets on leashes. It's amazing how even short grass seems to be high enough to make the environment interesting for a ferret. Finally, we saw about a thousand people leave Hyde Park corner on Rollerblades in the second biggest groups of people on individual wheels that I have ever seen (the first being a city wide roller blade protest in Paris last year). From there we crossed the street and caught a bus back home. All of these are reasons to love London in the Spring.

Jenna waiting for the bus

Waiting for the bus home after a wonderful morning in Hyde Park.

Andrew

This is my officemate