alexist

We met Neil's parents today (the Northern Line was completely fouled up, so we drove to Arnos Grove and got the Piccadilly Line--needed to go to Russell Square anyway) and went out to Greenwich. The boat we got didn't go all the way there, it stopped at the pier before (forget the name) so we had a bit of a walk, including the foot tunnel under the Thames (and the lifts weren't working). We did not go up to the Observatory. :-) (So I didn't get to stand on the meridian... oh well).

Funnily enough even though I didn't sleep properly last night, I woke up after only 5 hours and can't fall back asleep.

(BTW - for those asking about my post Friday night - I'm OK now. Just a crisis of confidence.)

OK, before I book these tickets, is there anything in May that anyone is planning? Right now all I have down is Neil's sister's birthday, 13-14 May, and I'm sure that I've forgotten the date for something.

Another suicide bomb in Israel. It's not enough that there are 9 people dead and 40 in hospital. What rubs salt in it is that tomorrow I will have to read more dreck from the British newspapers saying, in effect, suicide bombs are bad, but Israel is still to blame and they have to talk to Hamas. Hamas, a group that calls blowing up a felafel restaurant "self-defence".

This whole past week the liberal papers have been focused on the Tom Hurndall inquiry. Now, it's hardly excusable to shoot a civilian but from what you see here you'd think that the ISM were tree-hugging peaceniks and the IDF a bunch of evil murderers. We've already had the Rachel Corrie martyr play (and of course, blaming the Jews when a group pulled out of producing it in New York).

It's pathetic; in the US (and among Jews) I'm pretty centrist. But in the British context, all Zionists are pretty much lumped together. Unless we're willing to toe the liberal party line of Bad Israel, Oppressed Palestinians, it's all the same.

Scanned all my DVDs into DVDpedia tonight.

Discovered one problem: Box sets of many shows simply come up with the title "The Complete Third Season" (or first, second, etc). So you have to change the title manually ("The Simpsons: The Complete Third Season").

It's from the same author as Bookpedia and has the same bad search interface, although here I have the DVDs so I scanned them which was easier (once i got the trick of just how to align the bar code). I'm going to write a suggestion e-mail about the search interface: Amazon has a good book search page so its engine can obviously handle complex queries.

I am truly a sad, sad woman. Maybe I should try meeting people at librarian conventions.

When I went out this morning I thought it was a bit warm, so this afternoon I put on my sandals instead of my boots.

Of course, I didn't realise until later that my tights were reinforced toe. DOH!

Also, I was still wearing my winter coat. I never get around to buying a light one because it always seems like there's about 3 weeks between coat weather and sweater weather. My wardrobe is basically two-season. Which also explains the boots/sandals, my standard comfy shoes. Maybe I should buy cheap flats or something.

Actually, considering British weather, perhaps I should try to find a raincoat... (Not that it's so wet here, but summers are cooler and rain is more frequent, though less intense.)

I knew they were moving VS009 as of June: it now leaves at 16:00 and there's a new 18:00 flight.

But they're also moving VS010 (return flight) from 23:10 (22:55 in winter) to 21:25. I LOVED the late flight: time to eat dinner before leaving. (All the flights have been moved up. It was 19:30, 21:45, 23:10 [VS004 appears to have moved already]; the new schedule is 18:45, 19:50 and 21:25.)

Also, round trip fare for August (when we were both planning to go) is £670 :/ (Each.) It's awkward because we want to plan it round the EBU Summer Congress in Brighton: I'll visit that week and Neil will join me for one week before or after. It's the school holidays so it's the most expensive time.

That said, it's coming up with full miles, which means one of 3 things: 1) no cheap N-class fares; 2) all N-class fares already sold out; 3) N-class fares not yet released.