What I did on my last summer weekend

Reporting from Winston-Salem, NC:

I ate well. I had shrimp and grits at two different restaurants, some delicious fried pickles and...well, what I'm about to tell you is in no way made-up. I ate a {pause for emphasis} Krispy Kreme bread pudding. It made my knees buckle. It made me swoon. It made me hallucinate slightly. It was very very very good.

I went to a symphony. Let me just say in all seriousness and as much objectivity as I can muster when my parents are both very involved: the Winston-Salem Symphony rules. Bob Moody is as much of a rockstar as a symphony conductor could be, and both times I've been have been as much fun as just about any show I could imagine this side of LCD Soundsystem. Saturday night saw me seeing a world premiere, an Elgar piece, and—a bone tossed for those us who are classically ignorant—the 1812 Overture, which was made amazing by captions on a screen behind the orchestra saying which part of the Moscow invasion each part of the piece represented. What a great night. For those of you who spend time in the Triad, it's a highly recommended night out.

I went shopping. My little sister Mary is the BEST shopping companion ever. First of all, she's the only one with the strength to tolerate me at my shopping grumpiest, and she's also has enough sense of style and strength to tell me, "Ummm...no."

I took a road trip. For the last year+, I've been flying back to Winston, but this time, I got to drive down in a rented car with my dear friend Rebecca. I'd forgotten how much fun road trips could be, picking out songs on the iPod, expanding on conversations that would have been 10 times shorter if they'd taken place anywhere but a car. Plus, we took a back route to Winston and I got a short tour of Reidsville, where Rebecca grew up, which afforded me a chance to make the kind of joke that only I find funny:

Rebecca: Oh, coming up here is the big "Jesus Saves" neon sign on this church up here.

As we drive by...

Rebecca: Oh, it's not turned on now.

Reid: Maybe it's like the Krispy Kreme "Hot Donuts Now" sign: Jesus is only saving when it's turned on.

I crack me up. And yes, that's the second Krispy Kreme reference in this post and the third in the last week. Serendipity.

And thanks to Rebecca for her patience and she discovered the levels of babble I'm capable of when I'm in a confined space and pumped full of caffeine. It scares even me.

Nothing turned itself inside-out

It's my last day at the beach and I'm a little nervous. I have a whole lot of nothing to do and only one day to do it in. I'm normally really good at doing tons of nothing in an extremely short amount of time, but that's normally. This is the beach. Nothing takes more time here than it does at home.

My dad was talking to me a few days ago about how, when we lived overseas, we would come to this beach for two weeks, and he wouldn't truly feel the beach spirit until about Thursday of the first week. Translation: it takes about four days for your brain to completely shut down. The problem with that, he told me, was how painful it was at the end of those two weeks to trade his bathing suit for a business suit and take the flight back to Greece. I may only have an hour-long flight and I can dress more casually to work, but I still know it's going to hurt.

This concludes the last something of the day. Nothing will now commence.

I may be working, but I'm practically naked

Maybe it wasn't the wisest thing in the world to spend a few bucks to get online while I'm at the beach. Maybe it puts me back in contact with the world that, for a couple of days at least, I was avoiding so well. And maybe I have answered a few work and personal emails that could have just as easily gone unanswered. But I think I can be forgiven when you look at my work area:


There's only one thing wrong with this picture. See if you can guess what it is.

London roundup: PIES!

Traveling and only-periodic access to a connection kept me from doing posting dispatches from days 4 and 5 of my London trip. My editor is going to kill me! Besides a day trip to Oxford, though, there's not a whole lot of events to fill you in on. It was more hanging out with my sister and some casual, quality London time.

In the interest of closure, though, let's sum up four days with everyone's favorite cultural calculator: the Gross Generalization.

The Best Part of London
Besides the amazing neighborhoods that seem to stretch on without end, my favorite part of London is exactly the part that they get so maligned for: the food. Yes, it's easy to talk about how much cultural diversity has improved the cuisine, but it's the junk food that I love. The pies...ohhh, the pies. They'll take pretty much anything and stuff it into a fried pie, and every one that I had was delicious. Their chips (which they call "crisps", which doesn't make any sense at...oh, wait...now I get it) come in flavors that no American mind ever would have dreamed. The pre-packaged sandwiches are combinations that seem so logical, but yet aren't everywhere. Clotted cream? I mean, come ON! It's a flavor paradise.

The Worst Part of London
By Monday, I was thinking how funny it was that the stereotype of New Yorkers is rude and unpleasant and the Londoner stereotype is witty and charming. In fact, I've found that New Yorkers are actually pretty calm and helpful but Londoners? They are a irritable and angry people. I stopped trying to count the number of times we heard someone yell out "Fuckin' 'ell!!" The bus drivers are--without exception--placed on earth by Satan. There's a hooligan hostility seething underneath too much of the nightlife. It's a beautiful, historic, incredible city, but there's very little about it that feels very friendly.

I'm back now, and I brought chocolates and toffee. They're sitting on the corner of my desk, so stop by any time and help yourself before I put myself into a sugar coma that I'll never wake up from.

London, Day 3: You dim sum, you lose some

Today is what my trip has been about. It's a plot that doesn't make for the best stories. There's no debauchery or insane drunken stories. It's simply a heartwarming story of friends spending time together, of a trip to the British Museum, of meeting top-quality new people while eating riduculous amounts of food at dim sum in Chinatown, of having a great dinner with my dear little sister and then off to a drink on the Strand.

Well...that's pretty much the whole story, actually.

London, Day 2: In which our hero rocks down to Electric Avenue, but elects not to take it higher

Test your trivia!

Q: When you go on vacation to a scenic, picturesque place, what's the one thing you don't want to forget?

Come on, now...

It's not hard...

Oh, come on!

Give up? Alright, it's....

A: Your camera!

Now, as a follow-up question:

Q: What's the one thing that Reid forgot on his trip to London?

A: Oh, dear God, I'm an idiot.

If it wasn't for my need to pack with one hand and answer work emails with the other last Thursday, you'd be looking at a grand parade of snapshots from London. But as it is, I'll just have to describe them.

Here's a shot of my sister Mary, my friend Irene and me walking down Electric Avenue in Brixton. I'd only ever been to Brixton once before, 14 years ago to see the Lemonheads, but I'd never seen the markets, filled with Jamaican accents, halal butchers and reggae CD sellers.

Here's one of Mary and me enjoying some sort of supposedly-Sicilian fried mushroom pie-type thing from a outdoor vendor in a charming neighborhood called Angel, another part of London I'd never seen. As you can see from the picture, it's pretty messy, with cheese going all over the place. Look at the expression on Mary's face! Anyway, it was delicious.

This is a picture of us at some sports pub watching the FA Cup match between Chelsea and Manchester United. We were there with Mary's school friends Oren (Canadian) and Jelena (Londoner). Jelena is hilarious and hates Chelsea with a seething passion. Unfortunately, Chelsea wins and, as you can see on her face, she's pretty dejected, almost as though Chelsea had beaten her beloved Arsenal.

Here's Mary, Oren, Jelena and me sitting outdoors at a leafy pub in Angel, enjoying a(nother) pint. It was a pretty day, but you can probably tell that we're shivering a little in this shot. Time to head inside to...

...a nice dinner at a delicious semi-fancy restaurant in Angel. That's polenta in blue cheese sauce on Mary's and my plates, and Oren's enjoying some sort of steak sandwich. We're laughing at the fact that British people use all of the French names for food: arugula is called rocket, eggplant is called aubergine, and zucchini is called courgette. Crazy Brits! That's not right at all!

Oh, here's one from the night before. It's Mary, her hilarious and charming friends Morgan and Jelena and me walking across Waterloo Bridge after closing down a pub (not hard to do, since they close at 11). It didn't come out very well, and it doesn't do the scene justice, but those are the lights of London: the blue lights in the trees on the South Bank, the lights on the big "gherkin" building, the neon of the old OXO factory. It's gorgeous. I wish you could see it a little better.

Note: Please do not Photoshop or otherwise manipulate any of the above images. © 2007 Are Seven

R7 Travelogue: London, Day 1: Zombie Day

Ever seen 28 Days Later or Shaun Of The Dead? I'm like those zombies in those movies, walking around London in a jet-lagged state. I think that I've just been kind of tired and zoned-out, but I can't say with 100% certainty that I have NOT eaten any human flesh. That's how tired I am.

But I was eating a lot, since Mary and I took the day to go to one of the greatest places on earth: Borough Market. It's just a few blocks from her, and is a huge, crowded festival of gourmet food vendors. Amazing cheeses, meats, desserts and just about anything that could be called gourmet (again: there may or may not have been human brains. Not sure). The only bad part of this place is that it's deadly to indecisive people like me, as I tried to figure out which delicious, exotic lunch to get, knowing that I can't just go back there any old time. The wrong decision could prove to be fatal to regretful people like me.

More London news as it develops.

There was London, giddy London

Hello, areseven.com readers. I'm back from my vacation. Thanks for not burglarizing my place while I was gone.

There's so much to tell you, not in the least that I got to fly first class both to and from London. It wasn't without a little stress that I was able to, but I did, and I'm only slightly ashamed to say that I loved it. I'm pretty happy with my modest middle-class life, but every now and then, I find something that sets off the greed machine inside my head, and first class is one of those. The food is great, there's movies on demand, the flight attendants are about ten times nicer, and the space...you could fit two rows of seats in the one they give you, and the only thing that would have made the chairs better is if they were massaging chairs. Awesome.

I hate to leave you with just this, but there are more details coming. Right now, I have to go take a huge slapping bellyflop back into the stress I left behind last week. Pray for me.