And We're Back!

Kat and I got home from London around 1:45am Sunday morning, exhausted but very happy to see our kittens (who seemed disoriented at being woken up so early in the morning). They've hardly left us alone since then.

In brief: London was incredible. I'll be posting a day-by-day of our trip, now that Kat is working on uploading the many, many pictures we took, so stay tuned for that. However, in the meantime, here's a short run down of the coolest things we did or saw while there:

1) Stratford-upon-Avon. My #1, definitely, was seeing Shakespeare's birthplace. It has a kind of mythic resonance to it and was a must-see for Kat even more than me... but it was my favorite stop on the trip. (BTW, "avon" means river so "upon Avon" translates as "upon the river"... which happens to be named Avon.)
2) British Library. Their "treasures" room is absolutely not to be missed, for its manuscripts and its music. A Gutenberg Bible, one of two first-ever print copies of Beowulf, pages from Leonardo daVinci's notebooks, hand-written lyrics to classic Beatles tunes by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and--oh yeah--one of four surviving copies of the Magna Carta. Mindblowing.
3) Hanging out with Mike Carey. One of the nicest guys we know, Mike was exceptionally gracious about our 45-minute lateness and made our first day in London unforgettable, just by sitting to chat in a favorite pub.
4) Notting Hill and Portobello Market. We did a walking tour on our last day (Saturday) and absolutely loved it. We saw a bunch of sights featured in "the movie" (as our guide Richard called it), including the travel book shop owned by Hugh Grant's character. We also learned where a lot of the scenes were shot, most of which were not in Notting Hill at all. And you really can find just about anything in Portobello Road...

More later, plus pictures!

While the Kat's away...

She's in California until Thursday night (late).
I'm home with the kittens and the DC rain (which they say will let up but they're always wrong).
Ah well.
Gonna be a lonely few days.

Health Update

Looks like I'm going to live awhile longer.
The doctor seems to think I had more than one kidney stone, and had me scanned to see if there are more. If it's really bad, I might need surgery to clean them out--but otherwise, I'll just have to hydrate and down painkillers.
Could be much much worse.
So that's the news on the health front.
Tomorrow, off to Denver for a three-day business trip. Looking forward to seeing Nancy and Ed (my aunt and uncle) while I'm out there.