Slept ok. Better than the admittedly terrible idea of a night on the floor, but I kept waking up from dreams about cleaning, or with a panicked thought that I’d forgotten to clean something or clear out something.

I figure that I’ll have plenty of time for hotel breakfast buffets over the course of this thing, so for the first ‘official’ day, I went out for pancakes. I do not regret this decision.

My sneakers were on the way out, and the cleaning/moving process essentially finished them off, so I dealt with that in the morning; I’m sure there are shoe stores in lots of places, but I already knew where this one was.

Sports Direct have almost perfected the most annoying way to buy shoes, I feel. You can see all of the options, but in order to try them on you need to get a staff member to go & get the particular shoes in your size. As soon as there are more customers than staff, which is almost all of the time, the whole process slows to a crawl.

I say almost perfected because, in the case of their “these are on sale” shoes, they just have the various boxes of shoes out there, so you can do it yourself. I’m sure the “can you please get me a UK 10 in this” system cuts down on theft, but it’s so annoying.

I’m still sorting out a few things, so today’s effort was putting all of the “I’ll need this for the Gen Con trip in July/August” into my carry-on so that I know where the hell it all is, and taking that to the storage locker. And also the modem/router from the flat, because I forgot to ask them what I should do with that; I’ll send an email sometime.

Lunch with a friend ( waves at Terry ) at a pub named Honey Bee, which seems entirely surrounded by light & medium industrial facilities, but is a classic English pub/restaurant. They’ve stopped short of gastropub territory, and instead do very good high-end pub fare.

Dinner with Kayleigh+Alex+Tony at a “why don’t we come here more often” Italian place. It’s in an odd spot between two squares, and it’s easy to forget about, even when you’re walking past it. Very good food, leading to food envy as you see what everyone else ordered.

I tried Burrata, which I’d never had before and initially confused with Bruchetta. Not sure I spelled either of those properly.