Christmas Cheek
The perfect bottom we all work so hard for. This one greets visitors (actually the more interesting side greets visitors). Today is Christmas Eve so not surprsingly the kids barge into our room at around 6AM, which is unfortunate because I "indulged" last night at Dukes. Tony had never been and the hotel in St James's offers the best martini in town. Of course the only one to order is vodka and we had several. Did I mention that Tony spent five years in the Navy before business school? Hmmm never wise to find this out at a cocktail lounge. Before, I spend the day with Arthur at the sciences museum- the perfect date place with him (Arthur is a Senior Engineer working on the Pentagon's missile defense shield). He's in town for some chores and his apartment, which otherwise he rents out as he lives in VA. Normally I tear through the exhibitions on my way to the planes or rocket displays but Arthur is fascinated by the early technology like lathes, steam pressures and telescopes. He ponders each joint wondering why it is useful? and this forces me along for the contemplation. I absorb (mostly) what he says, including an explanation of the first computer and a description of his fathers who had a "calculator press" before Sony took over the world. We also discuss other stuff including the necessity of a large military and techy weapons when the most threatful thing could be a van packed with fertiliser. He agrees, but also our government cannot find itself exposed to a strike without any sort of available defense. Hence Star Wars. Unfortunately for him, he finds himself retooling his program based on timing and budgets and sub-contractor budgets which change at the whim of Congress and especially this and next year. We're talking billions of dollars here. All Arthur wants to do is build or fix things, poor fellow.
From Arthur I join Erik at The Woolsley and we catch each other up before he flies to Southern California for the holidays. Unknown to me before recently, his family (Dad's side) bought up the orange groves in of Orange County starting around 1911 and today they have diversified into many areas and funded a university. From SoCal he will ride his motorcycle to Arizona which sounds pretty cool to me. And then Dukes, oh boy.
