Maze

Had my first Gordon Ramsay dining experience last night. I'll just assume for now that it's his other restaurants in town that are the really good ones.

Sunday Morning at the Park

What a wonderful Sunday morning it was. The sun was shining and Ben and I went to the park at Paddington Recreation Center. (Zach was still sleeping when we left at 9:30am.) Despite the name, the park is in Maida Vale (not Paddington, though near it), which is the neighborhood directly to the west of St. John's Wood (and then Notting Hill of movie fame is the neighborhood to the west of that). In some ways, we live closer to most of MV than we do SJW as we live in the latter's southwest corner and are much closer to the small but charming high street on Clifton Road than the larger but a bit stuffier high street in SJW. I digress.

Today was the day Ben was going to try youth football and they have group instruction and play at the rec center. That mission was aborted quite quickly as Ben was too nervous to join in. It was a wonderful facility with many large perfectly maintained soccer pitches but I too have to admit that it was wise to bail. The kids ranged from 5 (Ben is 4 yrs, 11 mos) to much older and though they broke out the smaller kids into their own group, it was pretty overwhelming. We're going to look for a program that's a bit smaller and more welcoming.

Ben was far more interested in playing at the park, which was such a nice place (just refurbished, I was informed). It's a 15 minute walk from home and how we didn't know about it until yesterday is beyond me. It's cool that we keep discovering new places to explore. He ran all over and we had such a nice time, just the two of us. When the soccer class let out, the park was quickly overrun with older kids, but it was probably time to go anyway, so we headed home to spend the day with the rest of the family.

It was a special morning. If there's a more heartwarming moment than walking home from the park on a beautiful sunny day holding your little boy's hand and talking about things both big and small, I've yet to experience it.

Paris Pix

Plenty of little stories from our Paris trip over Labor Day weekend, but only comment for now is that we ate at arguably the best fallafel place in the world (last picture), L'As du Fallafel in le Marais neighborhood. May sound like a bold statement, but even my far less hyperbolic wife will back this up. And considering there was a line down the street to order them from the take away window plus the restaurant inside was beyond packed, this isn't a unique view. Better than anything we've ever had in Chicago, New York, or even Israel. If you go to Paris, go to 34 Rue des Rosiers. You will not regret it.

Sarah

Sarah is now crawling, pulling herself up, and cruising a bit. But she has not yet learned to avoid Zach's tortuous (though well-intended) head rubs. At some point down the road, she is just going to clean his clock.

5768

To all our family and (relevant) friends, have a happy and healthy new year. And an easy fast. See you on the other side.

The Portnoys & the Fredes

We had a great time with the Fredes this past weekend. For those who don't know, John is my colleague here in London, his kids are my boys ages, and Kristina is pregnant with #3. These pictures above are actually not from this weekend, so you'll be happy to know we're no longer eating off of a card table. The pictures are from our first weekend in London - only 4 weeks ago - though it may as well be 4 months considering how much has happened since then.

The four kids all get along well and Ben has said several times already that he wished that Jack lived next door. It's really nice that they're buddies. Ahna Frede turned three this past weekend and we went to the birthday party on Saturday. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and the party was in a nice park, Parsons Green, in Fulham, where the Fredes live. Very good time, plus afterwards I got to see John's home for the first time; nice. We ordered dinner from Pizza Hut (yes, the American chain) and it tasted like...home. The Fredes came by our pad in SJW on Sunday. You can reasonably conclude that neither family knows a whole lotta people around town yet, but that's okay. The Portnoy/Frede duo is having fun.

$7 To Launder a Shirt

It seems only human to sully one's work clothes in the normal course of events and thus from time to time it's useful to have them cleaned. Our neighborhood is filled with dry cleaners and one in particular is just two blocks away, right on the way to the kids' school. How convenient. Tracy was going to drop off a couple of my dress shirts on the way back from taking the kids to school, but her new friend Julie (a mom from school), with whom she was walking, told her to not bother. The price for laundering a shirt? 3.5 pounds. That's right - $7 to wash a shirt. I've found it pretty difficult to process what that even means. Our local place in Chicago charged something like $1 for the same, but understanding this price seems immune to any sort of comparative exercise. It's simply absurd. There's hardly an oligopoly in the north London dry cleaning market, but there aren't many shopkeepers who appear to have an interest in price competition. Curious (male) readers will want to know the price for dry cleaning a suit. The answer, predictably, is $16. I've already become somewhat inured to paying $4 for a cookie for the boys (that's each, not for 2) or $4 for a one-way Tube ride, but I can't really process this dry cleaning thing. If you have an explanation, please comment.

The only silver lining to this little experience is that Tracy's friend noticed that Kelly Osbourne had just walked out of said dry cleaner. Having earned her chops acting like a spoiled brat and all-around moron on her eponymous MTV series, she was clearly well qualified to play Mama Morton (cf. Queen Latifah in the movie version) in a West End production of Chicago. The reviews have actually been pretty good. Good for her. For some extra celebrity gossip, the debut performance of the musical was delayed for a while because KO's friend and tabloid favorite Amy Winehouse was delayed in getting to the theatre. Despite her lyrical admonition to not go to rehab (no, no, no!), she did go to rehab recently and has been a bit sluggish since getting out.

How Tracy Got Her Appetite Back

The veggie burgers in Windsor are very large.

British Television Is Awful

It's hard to overstate how poor the programming is on Sky, the UK's satellite TV provider. There are hundreds of stations but nothing to watch. Many of the stations play a lot of American television, but choose -- during prime time no less -- to broadcast the likes of Murder She Wrote, MacGyver, and Hope & Faith. There's of course the long arm of the Law & Order juggernaut, but I have the sense that I'll be seeing more of Fred Thompson than I care to over the next 14 months. And then there's the local British programs. I'm all for exploring new cultures, but this stuff is awful. Most of these shows have production values that make The Jeffersons look like it was shot in HD. And there's a difference (and not always a subtle one) between dry and boring. The kids' stations are actually okay, though there are lots of bona fide commercials, which are sometimes completely out of place. Strange to have my 4-year old son ask me if we can save money on our car insurance. The final nail in the coffin is that Sky is owned by Rupert Murdoch, perpetrator of Fox News. At least he hasn't sicked Roger Ailes on the BBC.

Our only recourse is typically movies (free, we didn't pay for premium stations) and there you get lucky from time to time. Tracy and I are now watching The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Haven't seen this in years. It's fantastic.

The Heisenblog Principle

It has come to my attention that a certain colleague, who also apparently recently made an intriguing-sounding movie entitled Cold Blood Canyon, has publicized this blog to many I didn't fully expect to visit. Alas, welcome.

Which got me thinking about Werner Heisenberg. As you may recall, this 20th century German physicist is associated, rightly or wrongly, with the observer effect, which simply states that the act of observing a phenomenon changes the phenomenon itself, prompting the epistemological question of whether one can actually see and know something in its "true" or "pure" state. Certainly a broader readership (sic) could potentially lead me to tone down my snarkiest of comments. So can we now know the "true" Portnoy UK Adventure? We shall see.

And speaking of 20th century Germans. I found out today that the synagogue that we now attend was bombed by our friends to the east during WWII. Stepping back, St. John's Wood, where we live, is a lovely neighborhood in the northern corner of central London. Fitting for the spiritual home of cricket, docile (and incomprehensible) as it is, SJW has beautiful streets, nice homes, and wonderful cafes and shops. It is thus all the more jarring to think of the Luftwaffe dropping bombs around here. When I first saw the shul, Liberal Jewish Synagogue, its incoherent architecture was obvious but the explanation wasn't. Now I know that the building, though not destroyed, was rendered structurally unstable and at some point well after the war was almost redone from scratch. But they kept the facade. Hence the classic Greek columns in the front attached to a modern, unattractive brick structure that any graduate of an American middle school would recognize. I'm going to try to dig a little further on this. I wonder what else around here was bombed.

Happy Birthday, Tracy

Today is Tracy's birthday. And appropriately enough, it's an absolutely gorgeous sunny day in London. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Steelers Withdrawal

This is killing me. Opening day in the NFL. Anything is a possibility. Hope springs eternal. The chance for the Steelers to make up for last year's mini-disaster of a season. And from London I'm watching scores on ESPN's GameCast. At least the Steelers beat the hapless Browns, 34-7. Big Ben had a great game. Nice start for new coach Mike Tomlin. There were few things each week I looked forward to more than holding the Terrible Towel in one hand and a cold one in the other while watching my Black & Gold. The boys liked watching with me as well - it was a nice tradition we had started. Now instead I spend time trying to figure out the difference between the UEFA Cup and the Coca-Cola Champions' League - and why Europeans gripe about Americans' crass commercialism but plaster their uniforms (they call them kits) with ads for everything ranging from Samsung to Emirates Airlines to AIG. Today, I don't even want to know.

Ben referred to the NFL today as "real football." That made me feel a little bit better.

It Rains a Lot Here

All-Day Breakfast

There are plenty of elements about life in London that I've already come to like or dislike, but there's one on the way-positive end of the spectrum that's already worth singling out: the All-Day Breakfast. It's somewhat of a literal concept - typically all the basics of the classic American diner breakfast in one: fried egg, bacon, sausage, ketchup, sometimes potato, sometimes bread. The joy of the ADB is how it is realized across so many different situations. The "classic" (labeled as such because it's where I first encountered it) is at sandwhich shops, Pret-a-Manger in particular, that have the ADB sandwich. I fondly remember my first Pret version on Pall Mall about a year ago. I so thouroughly enjoyed it, though I do regret that the site and smell of it nauseated my colleague Julie Hawkins. Fast forward to now, I've had my fair share of ADB sandwiches at Pret, but have encountered it at different venues as well. I'm pleased that my London business partner John has worse taste than Julie as he and I both relished an early Friday afternoon ADB plate (not sandwich) a couple weeks ago at the King's Head pub in Mayfair. As the pub filled up with locals clearly having no intention to returning to work that day after their liquid lunch, John and I wolfed down our massive plates, teeming not only with the eggs, bacon, and bangers (i.e., sausages), but in this version baked beans. And tonight, I encountered the ADB burger at Hache , where Tracy and I ate dinner. Gotta admit that I did not order it, instead opting for the basic cheeseburger as that was what multiple reviews recommended. (Good lord, does this place make a great burger.) The guy at the table next to me did and it looked excellent. Long live the All-Day Breakfast.

PS. I saw advertised on the BBC yesterday that they're going to start broadcasting Flight of the Conchords sometime soon. So glad because Tracy and I are going through withdrawal on this one. If you're not already watching this series on HBO, you're missing something. Most original comedy series in ages.

Intertemporal Musings

The problem afoot here at "the Adventure" as this site has come to be known in the blogosphere is that time keeps marching on and the endless transitional tasks here in London (read: work plus figuring out how to fit my entire wardrobe into a 2.5' wide closet) have prevented me from working through the series of events that would bring us all up to date. In the meanwhile, experiences that I'd like to write about every day still occur but go by the wayside (i.e., rest precariously on the shaky architecture of my short-term memory).

The solution is obvious. As my erudite readers will appreciate from Michael Cunningham's The Hours -- and just in case a different Michael for the rest of you, Michael J. Fox's Back to the Future -- the narrative will now take on an intertemporal quality, moving back and forth in time until plot lines converge again in one unified storyline. If I can actually accomplish this before 2008, I'll be surprised.