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Tonight was my first ‘night out’ in London; I took leave of Azure and Emelyn to join my co-Googlers for after-work drinks. The occasion seemed special enough: the crew I work with is a frighteningly disciplined/workaholic bunch, so even when I leave at half-six on Friday to catch the 7:15 train, I’m usually the first out the door. The rest stay working until, well, who knows?
Anyhow, blame it on Christmas, Chanukah or just a cheerful holiday spirit, but today we all shut our laptops at six PM sharp, and ran out the door for drinks. And unlike Cambridge, where the choice of beverages varies between ale, lager, and warm ginger beer, tonight we wound up at some fancy London watering-holes that could actually mix a proper martini. (Eighteen dollars a pop, once you figure in the exchange rate, but I strive not to play that particular counting-game anymore. You can’t win.) Our office is an a ‘posh’ neighbourhood, I guess.
And so now it’s 11:30 and I’m still nowhere near home. Azure gets a gold star for actually encouraging me to do this — to skip out with my colleagues for the night — but the (sad? nah, not really) fact is that I’m happy to finally be on the train home, with less than an hour to go.
It’s a long day, this. Emmie woke me at six-thirty-ish this morning, with a few solid slaps to the face — rather sweet, to be honest. See, she sleeps well in her crib, now, but since she’s all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and super-talkative right around dawn, Azure sometimes brings her into bed with the hopes of getting her to calm down for an extra hour of sleep. Which brings me back to those face slaps - Emmie’s in a grabby mood, these days, and while she can’t move around much, if she’s lying right between Az and I, she can still wiggle over and flail her arms so that they hit us right in the nose. With some spririt, too.
I tried my best to sleep though E’s cooing arrival this morning. But no dice. Along with a few successful swipes at my nose, she also managed a respectable uppercut to my chin that actually woke me up (for a minute). Course, all she does at that point is stare at you, with a sort of innocent, “What’s up?” expression.
Yeah. No doubt I’ll be getting more of the same in a few hours. So I suppose sleep would be good thing, right now, on the train, but I’m too scared to slumber through the Cambridge stop.
Regardless, it’s time to shut the laptop. To mis-quote Zero Wing, ‘Main screen turn off.’ — indeed.
Happy weekend!
