Leglislation / pseudo-trollbaiting

Finally got to went to bed after 0330 and just woke up now. Had a funky dream which involved a game of football made with a ball made from recently-chewed gum. I forget who I was playing with though.

You know you've had little sleep when, despite have 220 people on your flist, only 7 new entries appear between sleeping and waking.

I meant to post this the other day:
As a result of the Civil Parnership leglislation coming into effect, many other Acts are going need to be modified in order to include them. Going back over 125 years, some of the amended Acts include:

Explosive Substances Act 1883
Law of Distress Amendment Act 1908
Limitation (Enemies and War Prisoners) Act 1945
Statistics of Trade Act 1947
( a few more )

More reading at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/40033-bb.htm

Disclaimer: From the outset, I want to make it clear that I'm very happy with the huge steps towards equality, and I don't want to come across as ungrateful, but...
This is now another reason why I'm not happy with the Civil Parnership as it stands. For starters different-sex couples are not eligible so it creates an Us-Them divide. "You can't have proper marriage, but we'll give you something else to shut you up". One of the reasons given against allowing same sex couples to have a Marriage (under the Marriage Act of 1949) was the alleged arduous task of rewording the legislation. The fact that so many other Acts have been amended thus far blows away that argument.

How's that for a dramatic thing to see on Christmas Eve morning? :-)

Thursday and Friday (more flist spamming)

My memory is awful. I finished Christmas shopping on Thursday and got home around 6 ish. Then I realised. I'd forgotten to buy a new hard drive. Despite the risk I'm taking by procrastinating, it's not an immediate need.

In the evening I headed out to see Val, the sister of dad's new wife. (She's not listed by name in http://www.livejournal.com/users/matthewp/163916.html , but you can get an idea of the complexity of my family in that post) I ate a huge amount, as is my style.

I popped out Friday morning and to get aforementioned HDD, along with a few groceries. Bah. I wish there was a Tesco closer to me. I'm a loyal customer of theirs and I very much like their product range. I shall have to place some online orders. (Having played with the site a bit last night, the current version of Mozilla I'm using doesn't suffer from
the problems I was having last time I tried)

Afternoon/evening/early hours: I did something like 11 or 12 hours of work. I'm still somewhat mashed.

To do: tidy the flat, wrap some presents and get the train to see the family.

Almost a week late (final flist spam of the day)

Before I forget I just wanted to documented my social movements last week. Saturday was a party chez saintmaryuk - I took an early train from London and arrived around 1330. Was excellent to catch up with people. Had lunch in the nearby pub and after still being a little bit hungry, pondered the ettiquette aspects of ordering a second meal for oneself in a pub/restaurant. Is it such a social faux pas, or would they just be happy for the additional business?

One thing I love about gathering such as these is the diversity of topics covered in conversation. More for myself than those reading this post, but I made a list of things to research when I've got some time:
Book reviews to read: Big lies to tell small children, Chambers dictionary of etymology, Heavy words lightly thrown
Leglistion to read: Regulation of investigatory powers act, mantrap law

Also met da_pol, another name I'd seen around on my flist quite a bit.


Got dropped home and spent Sunday packing and came back to London Monday with enough weight that I could still feel the effects on Wednesday. I had a rucksack on my front, one on my back, a shoulder bag and I was carrying a box. It took me about 30-40 mins to walk from Holloway Rd tube station to my place - I normally do it in about a third of that.
Just a few items of crap to bring back - maybe I can persuade an ex colleague to give me a lift next time he's got a job in London :-)

On Wednesday I went ringing again with mrk and helped out with some of the learning band. At some stage I'd like to run a theory course (or couple of sessions), because I think some of them are struggling because they don't really know what they're doing and have no "mental hooks" to place things on. He seemed to approve, but it'll wait until the new year. (After all, that's only 8 days away. Well, 11 as it was then)