I'm just a cock-eyed pessimist

Welcome to the first day of autumn. Where do the days go? It seems that just a short while ago I was filling three giant suitcases full of the stuff I'd need to live in England for two years, and now the two years have come and gone and I still have no idea of what the future holds (but I've managed to aquire a few more suitcases). The leaves are still green out and it's been warm but I can tell by the way the shadows fall from the bridge into the river that summer is truly over.

I always think of this song as fall goes on:

"The falling leaves drift by the window
"The autumn leaves of red and gold
"I see your lips, the summer kisses
"The sun-burned hands I used to hold"

"Since you went away the days grow long
"And soon I'll hear old winter's song
"But I miss you most of all my darling
"When autumn leaves start to fall"

(Song by Johnny Mercer, my mental jukebox plays the version from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. He based it on a French song, apparently.)

Wow, in fairly short order I've discovered there's not one, but two Mexican eateries near Goodge street. Now I have to make visits to both El Burrito and Benito's Hat. This really is the kind of research where everyone wins!

After a day that was actually a little more than stumbling from one meeting to the next (hey! I went to volunteer training for a program where I'm going to help elementary school kids to speak French! and I did an employee review! and I made Emergency Stuff happen! and I did Coordination because we're understaffed and have more work than we have people!), I went to Soho to meet up with my friend Josela for dinner at Assa, a dumpy little Korean restaurant in that strip behind Centerpoint. Now, Josela is a GREAT person to have dinner with, because he likes the hot stuff, including Korean, which about nobody else I know likes. And we went balls to the wall with the hot stuff; rice dumplings with chile sauce; sauteed pork belly with tofu and more chile paste than you can shake a stick at; beef bulgogi with rice; more beef with mixed vegetables; pickled seaweed; bean sprouts with sesame oil; kimchee; and we ate it all. And the grand total was just under 30 quid. We will be back, and we WILL have hot pot.

Afterwards we went over to Josela's apartment and chatted and finally packed up the Mexican food goodies he'd had shipped over her for me ... AND the huge box of tea I'd ordered from the Perennial Tea room that he'd brought in his luggage back from Seattle. What a champ! We were just running out of almost every kind of tea I have so this is a huge relief.

On my way back home I was feeling so excited about a world in which people randomly invite me to go out for dinner after work. God, I like living here. And now I'm sitting in my living room eating some fantastic cheese wechsler brought back from France for me (Coulommiers, for those of you that speak Cheese), and life seems good. Yep, I bet I'm nearly over with this cold. Tomorrow: why Proust is like Star Wars, and a day of training in Sutton. It hardly gets better than this.

Now: back to the cheese!