Tales from the Hibachi

Last night's dinner was fun. Getting there was not half of that fun. Actually, strike that: getting there was just not fun, full stop.

It should have been so easy: get the 46 from High Holborn directly to Swiss Cottage. However, when I got to King's Cross on this stupid overcrowded single-decker monstrosity, I found that the road we should have been taking past King's Cross, and several roads nearby, had been roped off by police. The traffic around King's Cross at 6 pm on weekdays is pretty severe at the best of times. This? This was stupid. This was "Everybody Hurts", seeing people's thoughts in Courier New font, abandon your car and bloody well walk home traffic. Well, nothing was blown up or on fire, so I suppose it wasn't too bad.

Got to pub, sat and chatted with dodgyhoodoo and weaselbitch for awhile, then we went for food. The food was stellar as always, but I think we got a new guy manning the hibachi. These suspicions arise from a) the fact that he did very little in the way of flashy stuff and b) the fact that there were stone-faced Japanese people watching the poor guy every time we turned around. Seriously, I thought that the one little guy in the suit who all but had a big neon sign reading MANAGER over his head was going to do the thumbs-down thing and have a bunch of bus-boys drag him off and throw him to the lions or something. The guy cooking for the next table was flashy, though -- bit of a pyromaniac, too. He made this little hollow conical mountain out of carefully arranged onion, filled it with cooking oil and set it on fire. Then played tribal drumbeats with his salt and pepper shakers while the onion volcano burned. It was neat.

Fading Suns, though. Yay. I'd sound more enthused, because I am enthused, really ... it's just that I'm tired and depressed and hacked off. And it's only Tuesday. *sigh* Roll on, weekend. Because after that, it's only a week until I have my holiday. Maybe I'll get some decent rest during said holiday.

Running About Knees Bent Advancing Behaviour

I meant to go out and get some herbs and such at Neal's Yard, but of course, this was one of my spontaneous whims and I didn't bring my herbal with me, so I thought I'd pick up another herbal -- something a little more comprehensive on the infusions / tea side -- and some herbs as I went. But first, I decided, I'd go to Forbidden Planet and pick up Battle Royale 14. Wouldn't take five minutes, I figured, and then I'd probably have time to find a new herbal and some herbs etc and still be able to grab lunch and be back to work on time.

Not really, no. First of all, when I got to FP, they seemed to only have Battle Royale as far as 10. Suckage. However, they did have Walking Dead 4 and, as I found when I decided, "Hell, worth a look", Rising Stars 3. I knew dodgyhoodoo was waiting relatively patiently (with outbursts of "MUH!") for Rising Stars' finale, and he was saying just the other day how he'd looked for Walking Dead 4 at Gosh and not found it, and he's not in a great mood today so I thought I'd pick them up. I'm about 2/3 of the way through Rising Stars now; being able to read while walking and still not walk into people / lamp posts / cars / street detritus is a bonus.

Anyway, stopped by Mysteries to try to find a good book on herbs. Not really; apparently the one I picked up a month or so ago was the last of the halfway non-silly herbals they had. All the rest was basically "Ode To Tree By Fluffy Wicca" and homeopathy, which sounds to me like the placebo effect plus squat all. I much prefer Watkins, when all's said and done. At least their stupid Fluffy Wicca or Ol' Black Magic stuff is interspersed by stuff that might actually make sense. Mysteries, on the other hand ... I mean, come on -- "Teen Witch"? Feh on the lot of it.

Of course, by the time I was done trying to rake gold out of the muck in Mysteries, time had got away from me and I just about had time to scoff lunch and only be a few minutes late back to work. And this is despite never having to wait more than two minutes for a bus either way. *sigh* I think there's just not enough time in a lunch hour to get anywhere with actual stuff in it and get anything done. Feh.

And a note to a total stranger:

Dear little old lady in the funny hat,

Do. Not. Touch. Me. I don't care if you did embroidery at school. Stroking the embroidered satin inlay on the part of my skirt stretched across my right knee is not on. It's called personal space; look it up.