Logistics & Operations Day, London…Plus…I Turn, uh, 40

I’ve written before about my logistics and operations days. Today was one of them. I did really important stuff. Like LAUNDRY. I found this place on Yelp that washes your clothes for 10 GBP a bag. It’s called Marshall’s Laundry Service and it’s in Soho. And it was awesome. I dropped my stuff off around 10:30 and by 1:30, it was all done. 20 quid for a week’s worth of laundry. (It would have been 10 quid but I wanted the lights separated from the darks. If you think this is expensive, imagine how much my hotel would have charged me. 6.50 GBP for a pair of DRAWERS.)

I also did other really important stuff today. Like get my nails done. Sorry…you can take the girl out of Long Island, but you can’t take the Long Island out of the girl. I found this other place in Soho — also on Yelp —  that does manicures and stuff and I walked in at 10:45 am and they took me immediately and did a shape and polish for 13 quid. They also did my eyebrows. Totaly cost? 19.99 GBP! A huge bargain, by London standards. (Normally, I go to Selfridges for my eyebrows where it costs about 20 quid.) This Soho place isn’t fancy but it does the trick. It’s called The Beauty Lounge and it’s at the bottom of Kingly Court in Soho. They might try to sell  you all sorts of other things, but just say no.

Other things…I went to M&S and bought some new black tights, because M&S is where I get all my black tights. I also went to Boots and bought a million things I really don’t need. Boots is my favorite place.

What else? I checked my blog email. Words really cannot describe how much email I get via my blog. But then again, I just did the math and maybe it’s not that bad. So far, in April alone, my main blog account received somewhere in between 300 and 350 emails. (Sorry, I don’t feel like counting them all to find the number in between…maybe it’s 330?) I haven’t read my blog email all month — bad blogger, I am — but now I am caught up back to April 1. No, I still haven’t ready March or February. (Yes, LIFO.)

In between all this operations and logistics, I had a nice lunch at Antidote, also in Soho. A nice lunch, but that’s all. (Can you tell this was a Soho kind of day?) Oh wait…I should mention…the service was very French and VERY lovely.

Most time-consuming? Finding somewhere to have my 40th birthday party! (Yes, I’m 40. I still feel like I’m the 29 year old that started this blog — or, well, the precursor to this blog — back in 2004 but I will actually turn FORTY next week.) I called and e-mailed every place I could think of in London — with the exception of my favorite, Bob Bob Ricard, because the bar downstairs is apparently closed. The places I called told me to email them. My hotel concierge told me I should have my party at Sketch or Navikov. !!! I said nothing and instead sent all the places I wanted to go the same message:

I am looking to organize birthday drinks on Wednesday, April 30th. Probably 20ish people.I’d like to do something pretty easy and informal…some wines, some snacks, etc. 6:30 to 9:30 pm. (Worried about the tube strike so would like to keep this easy.) Can you oblige?

 No one has responded! I die.