Weather: Sunny, mainly. 15

Travel: Not happening - the cold's still with us.

Bob Martin is the new Speaker of the Commons, after going through a preposterous system. He's the name on the original motion, but has to defeat eleven (count 'em!) amendments - to replace his name with someone else's - during seven hours of gruelling debate. The Father of the House, former PM Ted Heath, presides over the charade, which makes the Commons look like a rabble. Heath announces the next day that he's retiring. Speaker Martin starts by dispensing with the traditional wig, worn by all Speakers except his immediate predecessor, Betty Boothroyd.

Henna : )
in Finland it doesn't matter so much if there would be only one British side left, it'd be differend if that would be only one Finnish side.
True. I can explain why they've got lots of exposure on UK tv, but not overseas.

Still, I don't get it why people praise so much ManU, even people who don't othervise follow football think that ManU is the best..Is it only the name, or because they won the treble or what..?
Possibly because they're a known name, a brand famous right across the world. Maybe Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid have a similar level of fame.

To make a comparison, I could ask a bundle of people on the street to name an American sports team. Those that replied would concentrate on the New York Yankees, the San Fransisco 49ers, and maybe the Chicago Bulls. No other side has the cachet, the instant recognition of those sides.

I meant the Finnish commentators, wonder what it would've been like with the British ones...
It was Peter Drurie, IIRC. He's OK, but very bland. The radio commentators add spice aplenty.

But in Finland you can choose the language, either Finnish or Swedish :)
I'm waiting for a similar choice here: Commentatorspeak or English (:

Weather: Cloudy, rain by mid afternoon. 15.

Travel: Again, the cold wins.

Victoria:
So after we got off the phone from talking to a certain annoying Scotsman (which I'll try to post about later, but let's just say he had us naked, rolling on the floor laughing),
OK, *surely* this counts as too much information. I mean, the thought of people actually rolling about on the floor, *laughing*. Whatever would Father Goode say?

the immigration lawyer we've been talking to called.
Hutz! Or was it Pah?

He said we can refile for the Visa from here! Which means, Brendan doesn't have to go back to Ireland in December! He can stay!!!!!!!!
Oh, good.

Result!

The lawyer gave us the name and number of a woman at the INS office here in Charleston, so Brendan is going to double check with her today. But we're pretty confident the lawyer was right since not only does he specialize in immigration, he just went through the visa process with his own wife.
*And* he's an immigration lawyer. *And* he's given you advice so if he's wrong you can sue him for twice the GDP of the USA.

And Brendan and I happy danced and hugged and got all sappy.Then we put on music to, um, celebrate
Which was it? No, don't answer. That would be TMI again.

Brendan talked to a woman at the immigration office and she confirmed that we can finish it all from here. We ordered the forms we need, so we hope to get the process started soon.
Oh good. Can I eat that senseless moron from the airport, then? Oh, *please,* Spike.

We also ordered wedding rings (finally!). We're getting silver cladagh rings.
Heck, if you're going to be love's bitch, be man enough to admit it. Or something.

Sorry, this must be a trifle confusing. Work ran out of their usual brand of coffee on Friday, and replaced it with Gold Blend, as consumed by fine high school librarians all over California. It does seem to have given me a bit of a funny turn.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are coming in concert to Charleston at the end of November and we're planning to be there.
OK, colour me jealous.

And Al Gore will be speaking at the Capitol tomorrow. My office gave out free tickets, so Brendan and I will be attending. Woo-hoo.
Bring a sleeping bag.

I do enjoy that look of amusement on Brendan's face when Al says 'lockbox'. :)
Hmm. I think the election coverage in the NYT, USAT and Slate is missing some vital components. Al Bore's Lockbox. Like, what the blazes is it when it's at home. And should we, the public of The Rest Of The World, be worried, concerned, mildly amused by this?

Weather: Wet early, but dry and a bit sunny after. 15.

Travel: Crap. Failtrack is staging a PR stunt, claiming that there are oodles of unsafe spots on the network, and causing go-slows here, there and everywhere. Journey out should take 26 minutes - it's over 40. Back is an overcrowded stopper (no thanks to the f***in' Morot Show) that takes 30 minutes to do a 23 minute journey to Wolverhampton. With all trains reported as AWOL, try the buses. Only the 1745 and 1755 are also AWOL. Nasty letters Will Ensue.

From the Evening Standard:
The sorely-tried British travelling public is undergoing a new trial by ordeal. Great swathes of rail track are being closed or subject to delay without notice. A major transport system in peacetime finds itself suffering the sort of systemic failure that only a wartime campaign of carpet bombing has imposed. The cause is a media-fed frenzy about safety following a recent derailment. Railtrack, which is responsible for the tracks, finds itself ferociously criticised for a failure that has cost lives. The company, under siege and accused of putting profit before people, feels obliged to adopt draconian measures.
The difficulty for any non-expert is to decide what is an appropriate proportional response to a situation of this kind. Has Railtrack been knowingly running a grossly dangerous rail system, which has now been found out? Or has the public, media and body politic forced on the company wildly alarmist measures, completely out of kilter with the real risk of rail travel? Rail travel is still far safer than car and the replacement bus services. We cannot measure the scale of risk posed by poor rail track today. The pressures on Railtrack have made it impossible for the company to do anything else but adopt urgent closures and checks.

Well, a cold / mild flu has been doing the rounds recently, and popped in to say hello to me over the past few days.

Belated birthday wishes to Henna and Cory, before I forget.

I knew things were getting really bad when Channel 5's morning shows started to look promising. The combination of cheap US talk shows and cheap UK talk shows requires zero brainpower. Discovery Kids was *far* too intellectual. Cartoon Network was about my level, though I'm not sure "Angela Anaconda" will make any sense when I'm not dosed up on cold mixture.

Just before things got really bad, I went out and bought the new Steps single. It's really rather good, the fab five pays tribute to 70s disco band Chic in an irresistible way. The single also includes a remix of "Tragedy" that is possibly the best they've ever done.

*Really* not sure about the new theme to 15-1.

Sleep is good. Coughing through the World Series when you can't sleep isn't. Remember the time gap.

Normal service resumes... right about now.

Weather: Cloudy, the odd shower. 14.

Travel: Even worse than yesterday. The starter fails at Wolverhampton, for no adequately explored reason, and we arrive in Birmingham at 729. Only 27 minutes (103% of the scheduled time) late. Return: 1649 leaves a full minute early (unacceptable.) 1702 is cancelled, with the stock making an Empty Headed Move towards New Street (also unacceptable.) Give up at this point, take the bus. Edinburgh train takes only 21 minutes to get to Wolverhampton, including a 2 minute stand outside Wolverhampton - more Failtrack failings. Again, the home stopper is AWOL, and the next one isn't even on the announcer boards, such are the network delays. Thankfully, buses are on time.

Lara Ruth: (hello)

A sidebar to the original thought, more than a proper response. But this...
I thought you guys might be interested in surfing on over there in participating!!
strikes me as a really, really old-fashioned way of saying "go click." Yet it was the height of hipness as recently as 1996. Four short (or long) years ago.

More Jeremiah Simpson moments later, I'm sure.

The decision of the Lord Chief Justice to give the killers of James Bulger a sentence of eight years, effectively releasing them from Her Majesty's Pleasure next summer, is a brave and humane one. Lord Woolf's is the fifth recommendation in a case that has carried huge emotional heat.
A howl of outrage is invariably unleashed at the idea that the two - young children themselves at the time of the killing, though they are now 18 - deserve anything more humane than the cruelty they showed to the vulnerable and innocent James. Large sections of the public would be very happy and content if they could be permanently boxed into confinement by the impenetrable fence of public revulsion that surrounds Myra Hindley.
The point of an independent judiciary is to make considered judgments on sentencing free of the political pressure which inevitably affects Home Secretaries. Lord Woolf's decision is brave, because it will not be popular with many people, and the feelings of those people with whom it will be most unpopular will be both violent and vengeful.
Part of the public anger aroused by this case stems from a collective guilt that an awful crime unrolled openly under the eyes of the public. James's last hours were recorded and witnessed and yet nobody took responsibility for intervening and protecting him. It was a crime that could only happen in a society that has abandoned collective responsibility for the rearing of children.
With the exception of the Moors murderers, no adult killers have come in for the kind of merciless judgment that public opinion has shown towards two little boys. Thousands of children are abused and killed by adults, even by their own parents, and nobody demands the Old Testament justice of an eye for an eye, a life for a life. But they do demand it for two immature children who could not have done what they did unless they were in some way damaged themselves.
Lord Woolf's decision allows for the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption. Long custodial sentences have a place in the protection of the public from people who could cause further harm but very few people could honestly claim that prison is a redemptive experience. The demand to pay for Bulger's life with the killers' own is pure vengeance. In reversing Michael Howard's 15-year sentence back to the original eight, Lord Woolf has shown that the judiciary can deliver mercy as well as retribution.

Weather: Drizzle, fog, but turned out nice late on. 14.

Travel: A tad better. Just make the 1649 at Longbridge, then squeeze onto the jammed 1707 New St - Shrewsbury. Off at 1718, into Wolverhampton at 1740, in time for the bus.

The FBI is investigating a computer break-in at Microsoft's headquarters by hackers, described by the company as "a deplorable act of industrial espionage."
The break-in was discovered by Microsoft's security employees after they detected passwords being remotely sent to an e-mail account in St Petersburg, Russia. The internal passwords were being used to transfer source code - software blueprints - outside the Microsoft network.
A Microsoft spokesmodel said: "Microsoft is moving aggressively to isolate the problem and to secure our corporate network. We are confident that the integrity of our source code remains secure."

Sarah Dawn:

(D'ya mind if I use both names? Only we already have a Sarah, and a Sara, on the list, and us old codgers get confused very easily.)

1. Name
Oh, start with the difficult ones, why don'tcha (:
Iain T. Weaver, it says here.

2. Loction
Codsall, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. The funky place between Bilbrook and Brewood. Which will mean nothing to anyone from more than ten miles away (:

3. Age
Well, born November 1 197x, so it's The Dreaded Birthday next week. I'll be twentysomethingandtwo. And feeling about ninety.

4. Whats you favorite color
A particularly vivid shade of purple. On the RGB scale, it's somewhere around 152-16-192 (#9810c0)

5. Your fave thing about you :)
Call me Mr Blunt, coz I won't be winning any awards for diplomacy.

6: Your fave Number and y!! :)
Number: e, I think. It's just so well rounded. Favourite Greek letter: call me old-fashioned, but I've a soft spot for mu.

1) Favourite Musical group
Santana, Blur, Barenaked Ladies, U2, Steps

2) Favourite solo singer
Jewel, Amos, Sinatra, Hill.

3) Actor Actress
Paquin, Pitt, Kudrow.

Weather: Wet and windy. 13.

Football: 5-0 wins for the leading two: Man Utd over Southampton, and Arsenal over Man City. Leicester picks up a 2-1 win over bottom side Derby, while Ipswich's 2-1 victory over Middlesborough gives them sixth place in the league. West Ham stage the only upset of the day, beating Newcastle 1-0. Chelsea beats Spurs, Sunderland betters Coventry and Villa over Charlton as all eight home sides win. Sunday's matches see Liverpool down Everton 3-1 in the Merseyside derby, and Leeds draw 1-1 at Bradford.

Weather: