Who wants a holiday from SL? Not me!
I was jonesing for SL-contact because I'm on holidays in the UK and the laptop decided it doesn't want to run the new upgrade. :P But I lucked out - by a weird bit of coincidence, right when I was online trying to decide where to go for supper, Mike Mission was on his way to meet a few other SLers at a pub. Henrietta IM'ed plum Hartnell (who had to back out of the pub night because of dental-work stuff) and he called Mike, then passed Hen Mike's mobile number (who passed it to me through gmail) and I called Mike. He wasn't far from my hotel and was kind enough to swing by in a taxi and the two of us went off to the pub.
The pub, whose name I don't remember (Red Lion? Maybe?) was down a side street off another side street. I might be able to find it again by triangulating on the restaurant with the fun fabric flames outside it. Maybe. At any rate I got to meet Kumi and I7o and the four of us (plus Mr. Kumi - pity him as he had to put up with our SL chatter all night) had a great time.
Because of the strange spur-of-the-moment nature of the outing, I didn't have time to hit the bank machine (I had exactly 20 pence and 4 American dollars on me). So not only did Mike pay for the cab there, Kumi picked up the tab on the ride home. And I never did buy my round at the bar, which was more the fact that I was drinking and not paying attention, because I think they took plastic. None of us were paying attention to the time, so we wound up trying to order our meal after the kitchen closed. Oh well. A few bags of crisps are almost as good, right?
We chatted about the new friends list capabilities (sort of handy, but take getting used to), and DJing, and alts, and mutual friends (yes, Henrietta is a hottie in RL), and gender (Kumi has an abstract avatar), and finances (both RL and SL), and the effect of SL on RL. Well, I have long been aware that I can ramble on extensively about SL and all the blessings and frustrations associated with it, but it's nice to hang out with others with a similar... affliction?
The following day, (which may have been Friday... vacations are time-warps) Jayjay Talamasca, who I first met during the SL 3rd Birthday celebrations, was in London and the two of us wandered around looking at the shops lit up for the holidays and I got to have some actual (gasp!) food at a pub. At his suggestion, I uninstalled Quicktime and all versions (beta or otherwise) of SL on my laptop, then reinstalled SL and now of course it runs like a charm. Dammit. Why didn't I think of that?
Tomorrow, I'm going to be hanging out with Ham Rambler for a bit. If there's any other London (or somewhere near London) SL folks who'd like to hang out sometime before Wednesday - drop me an email (IMs to me in-world also forward to email). I will even buy my own round at the pub, now that I've found a bank machine. Wow, the dollar sure sucks.
I've stiffened my resolve to get together with the New England SL folks more often. It's been ages since I've gone for brunch with BushidoBrown, and I know he's been trying to drum up interest in doing some sort of event for the locals. It's time to get serious on that.