Victory!
So far this week has been going pretty well.
First of all, it snowed on Sunday and Monday. Getting so much snow in London (and most of England) is fairly rare. So, needless to say, people weren’t prepared. Or should I say the City of London wasn’t prepared. There were no buses running anywhere. Most of The Underground had severe delays or shut down completely. It was crazy. But nice to not have to go into work until later when the transport network finally thawed out.
Monday night was interesting, too. I got to go to a meeting for a campaign my MP has been involved with for a while. It was in regards to extending amount of time copyright applies to musicians. Right now the law extends copyright protection to singers, lyricists, graphic designers (of album covers), but not musicians. The campaign is to get 95 years from date of publication for musicians. Currently, this is what the law is in the US. It was an interesting thing to take part in and really see how government can work with industry and real people to help “the little guys.” A lot of the time, I know for me at least, I see government as this slow moving body that eventually gets stuff done, but only big overarching things like taxes, or bailout packages, etc. Not little things like what I was involved with tonight. Now obviously, if I took the time to think about how copyright law was ever developed in the first place I’d obviously understand that government is involved. It was just refreshing to see the process of real musicians coming to Parliament to present their case, along with top industry people, and government officials.
Yesterday, for anyone caring to follow my saga of Internet-lessness, was a great milestone. I acquired wi-fi access in my flat. The very gracious girls upstairs in flat 49 let me be privy to the password for their network. I couldn’t really get anything installed for only three months…the minimum is a 12-month contract. So I just offered to help divide the cost among the three of us for the three months I’m here. I was getting by okay without access at home. I’m obviously connected here at work (albeit on a p.o.s. Dell), but it is nice to be able to have that at home, too…on a real computer. I realized just how dependent I am on Internets. I know there are plenty of things to do other than be online, but it seems more and more everything is online. And even to make plans to go out somewhere being able to easily get on the Web and look something up is second nature. All I can say now is, “holllllllllaaaassssss!”
Today, meh. Average to good day.
Tomorrow!!! Melissa arrives!!! I’m so excited to see her beautiful face tomorrow at Victoria Station (at 2:35, right?). We haven’t seen each other since the beginning of January (and that was only for her layover in Frankfurt enroute to España). Even with two Macs — not even on a video chat (see paragraph above). It’s going to be wonderful to be together for a few days and get to show off London (and Parliament). I value the experience of studying abroad and interning and understand that experiencing that to the fullest may mean not getting to be together. So, being apart this whole semester is tough. But it’s a whole lot nicer being only one hour apart instead of six!
And after much struggle this week, I finally beat Solitaire at work. I swear it was set to impossibly hard.