reunited + time warp

my oldest friend in the world, jenifer, has moved to london! temporarily, but for the next six months i get to share a city with someone i thought would perpetually be hundreds or thousands of miles away. hurrah!

jenifer and i met in kindergarten at the boyd e. smith elementary school ballet class. my mom has a photo of us somewhere sporting pink tutus and cheeky 5-year old grins. from this early meeting right up through the first few years of college, jenifer could always be counted upon to be a partner in crime. our parents and society in general used to fear the products of our combined brain power, which resulted in genius schemes such as our hitchhiking field trip to Norwood (pre-driver's license, obviously), or the fabulous night we changed the local perkins sign to read 'come in for a hemp feast'. we lost touch during the end of college and reunited in our mid-twenties, only to find that we were working in the same field for competing companies!

anywho. my girl has been in new york for the last few years but thanks to a lovely american boy who has moved to london for his job, jenifer's here too. we were finally able to meet up tonight at my favourite local beer garden - the wool pack.



the weather in london was 60 degrees and sunny, just right for a few drinks after work. whenever the two of hang out, the world seems to go into a time warp where hours pass like seconds and before you know it, oops! the sun's coming up! it happens every time. the problem is that when one of you lives in bermondsey and the other lives in fulham, and the tube shuts around midnight, you kind of have to be conscious of the hour.

we accidentally drank until 10:30 (pub shuts at 11, so we were technically early) and we really wanted a curry, which was a 15 minute walk from the wool pack and also the wrong direction of the tube station. but, lovage has the best curry this side of tower bridge (in my opinion. they put a lot of care and artistry into their food!) so we decided to roll the dice. dinner resulted in another time warp and before we knew it, it was after midnight. we frantically asked for the bill as i whipped out the blackberry to check tfl to see if the trains were still running, which they were, but it was impossible to tell when the last train would be.

we hightailed it back towards london bridge and were side tracked by several of my co-workers who were still hanging outside the local pub. doh! we finally made it to the station and she got the LAST westbound jubilee train before it shut for the night. whew! must learn to pay more attention to what time it is, or start drinking much earlier to help counteract time warp effect...