Enjoying the summertime in London

What an amazing couple weeks... at the risk of sounding too cheesy, I'm so grateful for the great experiences we have been enjoying- and for some great weather too!

Let's start with a quick overview of the last couple weeks:

Upon my return from Lisbon, I promptly entered into HR busy season hell. I have my "day job" which is busy enough, but with our staff down and a hiring freeze going on, it is all hands on deck right now. What does that mean? Roundtables... and lots of them. We have roundtables once a year- and basically it is a forum where the managers and senior execs get together and discuss the performance of the staff and such. It is quite involved and being in HR means we moderate the discussion to ensure it is fair and bias free. In the US it was intense but people are generally PC enough that we don't have to step in too much. Here in the UK is another story. There is yelling. There is conflict. There is overt bias ("She spends too much time talking about her kids on the job, He was raised really wealthy and doesn't know how to communicate with others, This guy is like 40 and can't take direction from people younger than him") Yes, I'm serious. And, it is a total exercise in maturity and conflict resolution- how to figure out how to encourage more fair discussions of people that don't automatically favor white men with no families... all while being American (which they already don't like) and from HR (which adds to the fuel). I come home exhausted most days simply because I have to moderate or interject at almost every non male/white discussion!

So, on to summer... we've had a great couple weeks. The weather is great, the sun is shining and not setting until 10pm. Last weekend we had a low key weekend at home, just hanging out with friends. This week we saw Jack Johnson and friends in Hyde Park. Who were his friends? Well, we saw G Love and Special Sauce (throw back from the college days!), Ben Harper, Jack, and then Jimmy Buffett took the stage for one song during the encore. It was a great night, we took our friend Jamie and one of my co-workers Kelly. We enjoyed the great music, being outside with the sun shining, and cheap beer and wine. The one great thing about the UK is they don't mark up their drinks at big events, our beers and wine cost the same and almost less than the pub prices. From left to right- Kelly, Jamie and me:

Then, on Thursday night we crossed our fingers, went on to Ticketmaster, and scored one pair of 500 Wimbledon Centre Court tickets they release each evening. Talk about luck- our tickets, which incredibly pricey, enabled us to watch two huge matches yesterday- Nadal and Federer both clinched the two seats in the finals. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Wimbledon stadium is great, most the seats are decent, ours were just fine. The tennis etiquette was super nice, people were polite and quiet during play, the access was regulated so people were not getting up every five minutes. Here we are during the break between matches:

After the matches, we had spent 5 full hours watching tennis- it was great but we were hungry. So, we headed over to our friends Darren & Nicole's house to enjoy a proper 4th of July BBQ. Darren recently got a new grill and we were all grateful for actual BBQ food. That is not a big thing here in London- in fact you really only see the Austrailians BBQ. Anyhoo, we filled their fridge with Budweiser, Coors Light, and enjoyed burgers, corn on the cob, mac and cheese and oreos. We even downloaded every American type love song on the ipod and sang along to greats such as God Bless the USA and some Bruce Springsteen. It was probably the most patriotic July 4th any of us have ever had, but not being on US soil really makes you appreciate what you left behind.

So that is it! It is Saturday and tonight we are hosting some people at our flat. We are making tacos and enjoying some champagne. It goes together as much as PB&J right? we all have champagne to drink, and JP and I wanted to cook at our flat- so put it all together and that is what you get.

I'll leave you with a short video from Ben Harper at this week's concert, it was such a great night- this is especially for Rachel who used to listen to Ben constantly during our years as roomies...