Cupcakes!

Yesterday I had lunch at One Aldwych, which was lovely and posh. Finding it was problematic which, given that it's quite a big hotel, isn't something that one would have thought to be an issue. I did my usual research on Google Maps, and got directions, but the Google Map isn't exactly right. And the hotel map on it's own website isn't exactly right either – both are close, but on the other side of the road, so I looked on Street View to see what that side of the road looked like.

I wandered up the Strand failing to see what I was looking for. Walked past St Mary's (big centuries old church that went awry in the planning stages as they put it in the middle of the road), thinking that I'm sure it wasn't this far. Kept walking anyway until I got to the next junction and found 97 Aldwych.

Followed Aldwych back to number one and found destination very easily. Turns out that the (wrong) building I'd been looking for was lurking behind construction boards. One Aldwych on the other hand, is a very discreet doorway that you wouldn't know was there unless you were looking for it.

Sometime between me arriving and lunch arriving, another attendee managed to throw orange juice all over me, so lunch was spent feeling uncomfortably sticky even after a visit to the bathroom. Guilty party was very apologetic, and it was definitely an accident. Threatened to send him my dry-cleaning bill.

Lunch itself was gorgeous. Departed to return home by train. On train opened goody bag to see what was in it. Among serious stuff there was a box of cupcakes. I couldn't eat them all myself, they wouldn't keep, and they probably wouldn't survive the trip into the office next day. There were only a half dozen pensioners in my carriage, so I offered them out. All the people who weren't on gluten-free diets were very happy.

Work otherwise has been a total pain - we have new group manager who decided that sales hadn't done enough work. Now, our pagination depends on how much sales have done. So we'd planned the issue based on sales, but then, with one and a half working days until final edit, he decided that we needed to have eight more pages - grrrr! And then Monday, final edit day, after boss and I had been working through the weekend to make up the adjustment, he decided sales couldn't sell the eight so we wouldn't have them after all. At least he apologised to us! Still pressweek is done!

Oh, and the mail-room had a bureaucratic moment - they came around and checked everyone's trays. Mine passed inspection, but other didn't. They were checking for illicit red trays - only post trays are allowed to be red, apparently. One of my desk neighbours had red trays and now that they've been confiscated the desk look very dull. Moo.

 My current project is ripping all my DVDs to digital format. A very long process given all the DVDs that I own - I took me all weekend to do all the movies from A to K. Then there are the box sets, and I'm not even thinking about the vast quantities of TV Shows.
 
Have had a to-do with the TV Licensing people at the moment. My sky box finally died after 10 years of good service, and I was going to get another one when it occurred to me that in the last ten months I have watched television a grand total of once. So I've decided not to hook back up to 'the system' - but the TV Licensing people really don't like it - they have a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude. Although that's changed now and they were scarily polite yesterday - looks like I win. Will now see how doing without 'live TV' fares.