What we've been up to

Other than the pics I put up today, it's been awhile since we've checked in. We've been busy. We had a great trip back to the US. We had to return to get our work permits finalized. So we are no longer "on vacation" while in London - we are official workers.

We spent four days in NYC visiting Erin's college friends and celebrating the coming birth of Cindy and Shamil's first kid. It was a great time seeing everyone, meeting Laurel's boyfriend Mark and generally having fun. Mark, Shamil and I avoided most of the baby shower stuff since Shamil hooked us up with tickets to a taping of Conan O'Brian and then a trip to the Bronx for a Yankee game. We were also lucky to stay in Greenwich Village at an apartment of a friend of Cindy's who was out of town. So cool to hang out in NYC for a few days, even though it was so hot outside.

After NYC we went to Seattle for a week. It was a little weird to drive by our house and stay at Brian's house a couple of blocks away, but it was great to be back in Seattle. It definitely felt like home. We had an extremely busy week of work, meetings, dinners, catching up with friends etc. The highlights included meeting Kirk and Jen's new arrival Zoey, hanging out at Brian's house including a weekend BBQ he hosted for us, a great dinner at Jen Wells' house in the garden with other Hitachios, hanging out at the Morris house and meeting new arrivals Elle Tindall and Bailey Morris. We spent Saturday morning with Dick and went to our house to "check-in" on Heather and Atria. They are doing a phenomenal job taking care of our house. Best renters we could have possibly gotten. Atria recently made screens for the windows and asked if it would be okay to strip and refinish the doors between the dining room and sun room....absolutely! Thanks Atria. Oh, and I also bought a new suit. Now I can really fit in in London.

Now we're back in London and officially over the jet lag. While I loved being home in Seattle, it reinforced how important it is for us to take full advantage of the time we have in Europe. To take advantage of the slow business time in August we've booked plans to go to Prague next weekend for a long weekend and are nailing down plans to go to Scotland with Cimp when he is in town in September. Golf and distillery tours, plus all the historical sites Erin will make us go to :) will be a blast. I also finally bought a bike. A week back in the sweltering tube made biking to work and elsewhere seem mandatory.

Sorry for the posting delays. I know some people would prefer briefer posts more often, so I'll try.

Ted