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• a flat rate fee for parking.  You no longer have to pay more when they make you wait longer.  You have to pay on entry.  They are more certain of getting money for their service.

Wendy:  Like your flat rate fees!

Black US car park attendant:  Lovely Jubberly!

Wendy:  (Laughter,  strange to hear a London phrase made popular in the UK cult classic comedy 'only fools and horses' from a US blue-collar worker)

 

• Ticket numbers and seating instead of stand-up line for 4 hours.  Albeit three tickets and three lines,  one after the other,  for unclear reasons.

• Only 3 hours, not 4,  from entering the building to leaving with about 15 minutes actually being finger-printed.

• usability software updates to the fingerprint capture software.  Now the operator can
• capture the fingerprints with a 'foot-pedal',  this enables them to use both hands to make sure your finger is in the right place.
• get immediate feedback on whether the captured finger-print passes the quality bar.

W proved-finger-prints-are-the-same-as-last-2-visits

• FORCE to pull the cable from Tinkerbell. 
• a KNIFE to scrape the burnt melted plastic from the connector. 

Now Tinkerbell is happily cool and battery charging.  That one pesky program could have cost-me a Tinkerbell replacement if the melted connection hadn't worked with a little jiggery-pokery.  I loath pesky programs.  Grrrrr......

ZAP pesky programs DEAD

W got-muscles-and-knives-out-with-ZAP-attitude-tonight-BEWARE!

"Girls under 16 can have abortions without their parents' knowledge, a judge ruled yesterday."

 

"All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal."

 

Along with reason to visit Tacoma #1,  how can you resist?

W

Over the years, the police have responded to criticism with special measures:

• 1985: when Women against Rape published its survey on rape, Ask Any Woman, they introduced rape suites and special training. Recorded rapes: 1,842. Conviction rate: 24 per cent.
• 1986: Home Office advises the police that all reported rape except false allegations must be registered as reported crimes, rather than as “no crimes”. Recorded rapes: 2,288. Conviction rate: 18 per cent.
• 1999: Home Office research reported that a slight decrease in “no crime” is offset by increased police pressure on victims to “withdraw”. Recorded rapes: 7,809. Conviction rate: 8 per cent.
• 2000: “Project Sapphire” — teams trained to take statements and investigate rape. The first London Sexual Assault Referral Centre opens. Police claim to have increased charges and cautions in London from 18 to 25 per cent. (Why is anyone cautioned * for rape?) Recorded rapes: 7,929. Conviction rate: 7 per cent.
• 2002: Rape Action Plan including early evidence kits to take immediate mouth and urine samples distributed to every police force. Recorded rapes: 11,766. Conviction rate: 5.6 per cent.
• 2003: Recorded rapes: 11,867. Conviction rate of recorded rapes fell to 5.3 per cent.

• 1 out of every 3 American women will be assaulted in her lifetime. 
• 1 in 4 college women have either been raped or suffered attempted rape.
• Only 16% of rapes are ever reported to the police.

"the schools no longer break up at the end of June for the traditional "Leicester fortnight" of the first two weeks of July. As a result, many parents, who do still work for employers who close their factories for the July fortnight, have no choice but to take two weeks of their annual leave when the children are at school."   

The Times reports that

"Do these earrings make my bum look big?" 

'The gallery hailed her “bum paintings”, which hang alongside her landscapes, as experiments in composition, light, colour and technique. Carnegie, 34, paints her bottom from photographs that she takes herself. Her art “capitalises on the tension between subject and medium”, curators wrote in an exhibition wall panel intended to explain the work.'

"A High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while drunk and unconscious on the basis that “drunken consent is still consent”.

'For too long, the focus has been on the women's behaviour. In 1982 a judge fined a rapist £2,000 because of the woman's 'contributory negligence'. She had been hitch-hiking. Once, a mini-skirt was seen as a 'come on'; now it's six tequila slammers.'

• squeezing an avocado. 
• studying the mbps of a WAP. 

• 350g/12oz shortcrust pastry
• 135g/9tbsp golden syrup.  British Sugar PLC describes Golden Syrups and Black Treacle as 'Liquid sugar'. 
• 125g/9tbsp fresh white breadcrumbs
• grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water)

I'm making at least two 9" tarts with traditional lattice-work tops for 'Thanks Giving'** this Thursday.  You can even make a Vegan Treacle Tart!

Wendy grated-knuckles-spice-up-original-recipe

 * tee hee,  but you can't receive the smell,  poor you,  its yummy-yummy-yummy!

** quaint little US ceremony where people all bring food to one house and eat themselves silly.

"Fifteen local <Coca-Cola> distributors were found guilty of unfair practices and fined $15 million...   ...The Mexican subsidiary of Coca-Cola denies the charges and is appealing against the fines, which will largely be imposed on bottlers and distributors"

 

• what other products are sold in those stores.
• where their products should sit in the store.

• giving birth (0)
• getting married (0)
• sprouting a pair of home-grown boobs (1)
• living 5+years with toy-boy (2)
• falling in luuuuurrrrrffffff (3)
• breaking-bone falls (4)
• moving cities (4)
• moving jobs (5)
• criminally insensitive (700+)* 

The 'secrets' posted on 'post a secret' are compulsively drawing.  Often extremely sad, and recognisable (common?) from stories near to home.   

One autumn I was helping an old wise lady (OWL) whoooo lives in the foothills of Ranier clear the leaves from her garden.   I raked while OWL pruned her Japanese Maples.  The leaves were gently floating from the trees as I raked.  I dropped the rake and started trying to catch the leaves before they even hit the lawn.  Leaves make wild and unpredictible direction changes as they fall.  This was not easy, it was fun (you try it). 

I wasn't much help at clearing the garden of leaves.  I told OWL that helping her clear her garden was fun because we were 'doing together' and best of all it stopped me from being lonely.  OWL stopped pruning.  Looked at me and wisely said

"Wendy,  you're not lonely,  you just spend a lot of time on your own"

Wendy alone-doesnt-equal-lonely

• H1B until 11/28/05 (US, work permit)
• EAD until 1/30/06 (US employment authorisation card)
• EAD until 10/13/06 (US employment authorisation card)

"H-1B workers continue to flood a terrible job market... ...The H-1B program is riddled with abuse, displaces American workers, depresses wages and discourages Americans from pursuing careers in the high-tech industry."
 

I giggled.

said the attourney.  As if marriage is something that sneaks up on you and happens involuntarily when you are not paying attention.   I thought like 'while I'm asleep',  no risk of that either!  I actually said...  

I balanced the emphasis on the words and giggled at the pun on the phrase in the marriage ceremony context.  I'm not sure the attourney got the joke. 

"Hurricane Katrina didn't just affect the poor and unemployed -- the Louisiana city of Lafayette is seeing an huge influx of displaced young professionals from New Orleans. That's led to a revived singles scene, and some young women say they're finding people to date for the first time in years."

• Cat-sitter had to leave the state due to family emergency.
• Didn't go to platform 9 3/4 on Kings Cross.
• had flu for 4/10 days - unable to see several friends.
• Laptop hard drive died after bluescreens and OS not found and general scarey noises.
• Went to Oxford to see the Bodelian library on the one day it was closed for a graduation ceremony.
• Portsmouth Millenium tower still wasn't open.
• Missed plane home.

• Friend stepped up to care for Kitties.  Kitties hardly missed me. 
• Walked up the 311 steps of the 'Monument' (tube station namesake) for the great fire of London.  Fabulous views.
• Visited Southwark cathedral.  Found serendipitously that 'Lancelot Andrewes' and John Bingham are buried there and John Overall lived nearby.  All dubious stars in the book I'm reading 'Gods Secretaries'.  
• Mum and Dad supplied luxurious restorative comfort & pampering during my flu. 
• Received bundles of hugs & double kisses from friends all over the place to keep me feeling warm for the rest of the year!
• Hard disc contents completely backed-up.  Nothing 'lost'.  
• Christ Church in Oxford had stained glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones who is one of my favourite pre-raphaelite artists.  Photos posted on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16456630@N00/ use search tags.
• Flat Eric had a 'Portsmouth' adventure and explored multiple UK decent sized baths.
• Air Canada smoothly offered me a new flight,  5hrs later, at no extra cost.  Fabulous service.
• Met at the airport on both continents by gorgeous boys who looked after me through my jet lag and giggled through my over-excitedness.
• Gifts!  The amazing 'expanding' suitcase bought back extra hats, bed-spread, jumper, multiple t-shirts, books and other quirky nick-nacks.  

"Everything in the modern frame of mind,  trained up on centuries of individualism, and on the overriding importance of individual freedoms, rebels against the idea [of creation of an outstanding artifact by committee].  Joint committees know nothing of genius.   They do not produce works of art.  It is surely lonely martyrs who struggle for unacknowledged truths.  Committees thrive on compromise and compromise produces fudge and muddle... ...how can a joint enterprise of this sort produce anything valuable?  There may be one or two modern examples of successful co-operative writing - Pound and Eliot, perhaps Auden and Isherwood - but the idea of a committee producing a work of genius?  Today sounds like a joke" p69