Last night of the Adventurer's Club

Inside at last! Last night of the Adventurer's Club
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

We barely made it into the last night of the Adventurer's Club ... after a great dinner at Ragland Road with aunts (Rita, Mia) and uncles (Joe, Marty), Rita, Joe, Laurel and I waited 4 hours in line to get in. They initially closed the line right behind me and Laurel, but I got them to let Joe and Rita in. They eventually let in six more people, but that was in for the next 3.5 hours, when they finally let everyone else who had been milling around waiting to at least get a chance in line ... no idea how many of them actually made it. Once we got to the front, they only had room for three of us (they were only letting one person in for each person that left, and each person that left got a mighty cheer from the folks in line), so I waited outside while the others went in. Fortunately, a Disney employee with some compassion just waved me in, so I wasn't stranded at all. The place was packed, and we got in with only two shows left to go (if you haven't been to the club ... well, you never will, but the shows are all about 20 minute improv skits based on a general theme). We got into one show, but we really wanted to see the final one, called the HOOPLA, but it filled up in seconds and we were left in the waiting area, where fortunately they had a big screen up so you could see what was happening in the show. We finally made it back to our hotel at 3 a.m.

Sam'mich Slingers

West Seattle is about to get a new BBQ place called Sam'mich Slingers. Not only is the name awesome, but I just found out that it is owned by Otis of Greenwood's OK Corral BBQ -- a man so large, he calls me "Tiny."

Last Days of the Adventurer's Club

Literally packed
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

Laurel and I are in Orlando this weekend to witness the last days of the Adventurer's Club at Pleasure Island in DisneyWorld.

Tonight is the next-to-last-night, and this picture is from around 8:30 p.m. -- about 1.5 hours after opening. The entire bottom floor was packed; we were able to get in with no wait and find great seats on the upper floor, but you can't really enjoy the improv-style show from up there -- plus, even upstairs was starting to get crowded when we left around 9 p.m.

We walked by the club again around 10 p.m., and the line was snaking far out the entrance.

Tomorrow is the big night with the final Adventurer's Club inauguration ceremony. We hope we can get in!

Silverlight with style

Casey Stein has started a new blog about Silverlight that already taught me something I didn't know (not that that's hard with Silverlight, but knowing this is going to save me lots of time and aggravation, I can tell). Thanks, Casey!

I'm not the only one who thinks so ...

The local Seattle "alternative" weekly paper says reading "McCain's Promise" by David Foster Wallace should be required by law before election day.

If you don't mind reading online (or can spare the printer paper), you can read it right now at Rolling Stone's website

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

My version of the famous David Foster Wallace sketch by Harry Aung in Salon Magazine.

Before you vote ...

You really should read David Foster Wallace's "McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope" aka "Up, Simba!" aka one of the chapters in "Consider the Lobster" -- no matter which one you read, it is an incredible report on McCain's year 2000 presidential run on the "Straight Talk Express." Definitely a worthwhile read if you are, like me, conflicted by McCain's undeniable war heroism and leadership qualities vs. being pretty sure he'd be a terrible president.

Some bad news to come home to

I got home from London just fine -- 19 hours of total travel time, exactly. While working on getting my computer updated (new iTunes and iPhone firmware this week, and all that), I happened to notice a headline on Yahoo.com that literally made me gasp out loud: My favorite author, David Foster Wallace, killed himself. Infinite tragedy.

Thanks, Tyler Olsen!

What's better than opening your MacBook Air in the airport, firing up iTunes, and finding someone's iTunes library with the song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua shared out? Lots of things. But that's all I've got.

True lies

I love the radio show "Seven Second Delay" (search for it on iTunes; you can get the podcast soon after the show airs on Wednesdays).

The premise of the show, such as there is one, is that they come up with an ill-advised radio "stunt" and try to fill an hour of air.

This week, they tried to reunite the Beatles by calling four guys named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard Starkey.

While waiting to talk with one of them (and they did accomplish the task), this little side-exchange cracked me up:

"Yoko Ono, in Japanese, means 'one egg.'"

"Really? That's interesting!"

"Yeah, sometimes facts like that, that aren't true, are the most interesting."

A guest in the house of (hero) worship

While I was in Kansas last week, I was a guest on the Hero Worship 2.0 podcast. Check out Episode 203. I'm "Seattle Dave." It was lots of fun, thanks to Ian, Jill, and Kevin who are the real hosts of the show for letting me play along.

Because the podcast is completely unscripted and unstructured, Ian ended up having to cut out about 23 minutes because we digressed (even further than you hear in what he left in) into old memories from 20 years ago and named names of folks who we were scared might accidentally listen.

I also say a bad word, so cover your ears at the mention of Beverly Crusher.

Otherwise, my trip to London is almost over ... it is Friday night here, around 11 p.m. right now. I leave tomorrow at 2 p.m., which means I'll have to check out of the hotel in the morning and head straight to the airport. Then it is an 11-hour flight to San Francisco and a 2-hour flight to Seattle, arriving at 9 p.m. Pacific.

Patron of the Arts: The Review

Eh, not so good. The best part of the play was the same thing you get with every play in London: An exactly on-time start. I realize now that sitting in the second row, rather than being a good thing, was the bad seats (I wondered why the woman who sold me the tickets said, "I'm sorry that's all I have.") ... at any rate, it was fun to go out. Before I went to the play, I stopped at a get-together for some of the folks at work; it was only steps away from my hotel, so I decided to stop by after the play to see if anyone was still hanging out. EVERYONE was still there. Amazing -- these folks have the ability to socialize like nothing I've ever seen.

10 years later

It's been almost 10 years since I first came to London as part of my three-week European honeymoon with Laurel. When we were here the first time, the only restaurant we ate at twice was the Delhi Brasserie in Kensington. So I had to trek out there on this trip. It was easy to find (sadly, a Burger King right outside the tube station was main the landmark I remembered), and it turned out to be fairly empty -- just me and one other person eating alone, a woman from Zurich (I only know this because the head waiter basically stood at her table and talked to her the entire time she was eating). I had somasa, chicken tikka masala, rice, and garlic naan. I have to say, it wasn't as good as last time, and not just because Laurel wasn't with me -- the food just wasn't as tasty.

Patron of the Arts

This evening, I took a tube to the Camden Town station, where I got a mocha and enjoyed the many punk-rock-style shops. Then I headed to Leicester Square, and saw a half-price ticket booth that was selling tix to the play Under the Blue Sky, which features actors from Dr. Who and the IT Crowd, two of my favorite British TV shows. So I got a ticket for tomorrow night, and it turns out it is in the second row!

The Old Bank

After work last night in London, a bunch of us went out to the Old Bank pub (one of several choices within a stone's throw). We drank for 4 hours and then went searching the streets of London for some pizza (we found a place that was willing to serve 12 drunk geeks and it was quite good, although expensive "trendy" pizza and not just simple slices).

I wish I could say this was a one-time thing that they did just for guests (myself and another Redmond Microsoft employee who is here), but apparently the only thing that made this different from a regular night after work was that instead of drinking till midnight and only eating chips for dinner, they got pizza.

We did get chips at the pub, and they were really some of the best French fries I've ever had -- except they were served with mayonnaise instead of ketchup!

Davy's Bung Hole

Davy's Bung Hole
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

I wondered where that was.

Fuzzy's Grub

Today for lunch, I was challenged to eat a "heart attack on a bun" at a local shop called Fuzzy's Grub. It was delicious -- basically, it's like a Subway sandwich shop except in an old pub storefront, and instead of meat and veggies for a sandwich, you basically get a loaf of bread with an entire Thanksgiving dinner on it (of course, they don't have Thanksgiving here, so they didn't call it that) -- you choose your meat, and then you get peas, carrots, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, butter, horseradish, mustard, gravy ... and probably several other things I just said "yes" to because I wasn't sure what they were asking. Quite good. I picked sausage as my meat instead of roast beef, which the local folk were impressed by because it turned out to save about a Pound. Which is good, because I have a habit of just dumping my coin-based change in the tip jar, and ended up tipping about 1.50 pounds for my morning coffee.

London Calling (I stay by the river)

Haven't blogged in a while -- as Laurel points out, the more your life is actually interesting, the less you're likely to blog about it.

I started out the trip I'm on now with a weekend in Lawrence, KS, for a rather impromptu reunion of University Daily Kansan staff members from the late 80s. It was an informal but very fun party at our former professor's house, pictures are here. Most of the more creative shots were by hostess Jill's daughter Alida.

Although it was fun to see everyone, perhaps the highlight of the trip was getting to be a guest on the Hero Worship Podcast -- it will require heavy editing thanks to me, but should be out this week; I'll of course post a link when it is ready (and if I feel it is shareable even after the edits!)

After that, I left from Kansas City to head to London. I got in at 6:45 a.m. London time, got through immigration no problem, got my bag right away, no customs check, and boarded a Heathrow Express train with a ticket I bought on the internet in the US.

That took me to Paddington Station, where I had to transfer to a Tube train, for another 30 minutes of underground riding before ending up at the Blackfrair's station near my hotel.

Upon checking into the Crown Plaza, there was some confusion about my reservation -- they thought I was supposed to check in four days ago. Fortunately, they sorted it all out and had a room already prepped for me. It took two hours to get internet working, and I had a little trouble figuring out how to turn on the shower, but everything worked out.

I got to work at 11 a.m. (it is just a short walk away) and the person from the US who I work with and who invited me out here wasn't around -- his plans changed and he arrives tomorrow. So I figured I could just go back to the hotel and crash, but as I was leaving, some folks who knew I was coming heard my accent and figured out who I was. They took me to Starbucks (no, they weren't being all "He's from Seattle, so let's take him to the one place he understands" -- they were going there anyway). Then they set me up with a desk in their area, where I planned the schedule for the rest of my week. We then went out for lunch at a place called Itsu that is apparently famous for being where the Russian Polonium poisoning happened (not at this location). I worked for a few more hours and then had to come back to the hotel and sleep ... slept for about 5 hours and here I am now!

My schedule for the rest of the week is basically two two-hour meetings each day to impart my vast wisdom (ha!), but otherwise just hang around to help out in general.

I haven't been in London since our honeymoon in 1998, so I'm excited that I should have some time to look around the city, too, although certainly not tonight as I need to get to bed and start a normal sleep schedule.

Till next time, here are some maps of where I am:

Hotel and work