Over the last 24 hours a weeks worth of ‘blog entries have disappeared from the site, my hosting company had a server failure and it seems they don’t do daily backups of data, so I have lost a weeks worth of entries, I don’t intend to rewrite them, to be honest I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, I know there was some stuff about my relationship with Erin, some sports related stuff, e.g. Argyle getting knocked out of the Carling Cup by West Ham, Liverpool getting through to the fourth round beating Reading 2 – 4 at the Madejski Stadium and Manchester United being knocked out by Coventry City at Old Trafford! England made it through to the knock out stages of the rugby world cup and will face arch rivals Australia next Saturday afternoon. That just about sums up what has gone AWOL!
The relationship between myself and Erin is going very well, we have made plans to meet next April when she will come over to the UK for a week. If everything goes well I will be flying out to Kansas with her to stay with her for an unknown timeframe, maybe a week, maybe forever, we’ll see what happens. I need to sort out a passport, that’s obviously the first thing to sort out, I am hoping to do that in the coming month, then I need to save like crazy which should be easy to do as I rarely drink since meeting Erin. Flights are likely to cost around about £600 and other travel costs of around £100. I have done some research and apparently I don’t need a VISA to travel to the US for upto 3 months because the UK is one of the US’ ‘trusted’ countries, and I can apply for an extension VISA if needs be while I am over there to stay for another 6 months. If things go as well between us as we expect, I won’t want to come back to the UK, there’s not much for me here; we’ll know whether there’s a future for us when Erin visits me, there isn’t much point in flying out to the US if we don’t have the spark when we meet. Especially as Erin has a little boy to consider as well, I need stability in my life as does Erin and her little boy; unless we are absolutely sure this will work out, I’d rather not upset the apple cart, her little boy is lost enough not knowing his own father without me coming in messing things up if it didn’t work out! It’s not as simple as if it was just myself and Erin, we have to consider Conner’s feelings as well, but I feel like it will work out and I would love to be the father figure that he needs and Erin wants me to be his father and that really excites me. I just wish that there wasn’t so much distance between us, it’s so frustrating to not be able to hold her and feel her presence here with me!
I’ve had to invest in a new graphics card for my PC as I traced the recurring fault with my computer to a dodgy graphics card. The irony is that the graphics card (Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro) was the newest part inside the computer, it seems to me that they don’t build things to last anymore, it’s probably a ploy to get people to upgrade every two years. So I replaced it with a Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro, that’s the best one I could find, I didn’t really want to buy Sapphire again, but my options are limited as my motherboard is rather elderly in computer hardware terms only having an AGP slot, no PCI-E at all! These things always seem to happen at the wrong time, how come things always break when I am skint?
Lewis Hamilton rose about the weather conditions to win from pole position in the Japanese Grand Prix held under the shadow of Mount Fuji at the Fuji International Raceway. The rain poured from start to finish so much so that I thought that the whole race would be behind the safety car. Which would be pointless as the drivers would finish the way they started as there’s no overtaking under safety car conditions. But the safety car pulled in after 19 laps and the drivers went racing in the still treacherous conditions. Hamilton had an early scare when he was hit by Robert Kubica sending the Briton into a spin, but recovered his position and composure to drive a flawless race to take victory. Team mate and title rival didn’t keep out of trouble losing control of his car smashing into the barriers to bring out the safety car for the second time which bunched up the field up once more. As the safety came in for the second time, Hamilton simply drove away from the rest of the field in a display of bravery or maybe stupidity, either way it worked out for Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen eventually finished the incident packed race in 3rd after being demoted to the back of the grid when both he and team mate Felipe Massa had to pit early on as their gamble to run on intermediate tyres backfired on them. David Coulthard kept his head to finish in 4th after team mate Mark Webber was clobbered up the backside by Sebastian Vettel while running in 2nd and 3rd respectively; Webber was justifiably very annoyed saying “Vettel fucked it up” on live TV. Heikki Kovalainen managed to hold off the hard charging Raikkonen in the final laps to claim 2nd spot ahead of the more illustrious Finn. Giancarlo Fisichella brought the second Renault home in 5th ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa in 6th; Robert Kubica brought the sole remaining BMW home in 7th followed by Vitantonio Liuzzi in 8th, but was later given a 25 second penalty for passing Adrian Sutil until yellow flag conditions gifting Sutil the final race point for Spyker giving the Dutch outfit their first ever point! Lewis Hamilton now has a 12 point lead over team mate Fernando Alonso with only two races remaining. Kimi Raikkonen still has a mathematical chance, but it’s extremely unlikely as he would need both McLaren drivers to finish out of the points in both races. Alonso needs Hamilton to finish out of the points in one race and beat him by three points in the final race, assuming the Spaniard can win one race. So it’s looking very likely that this year Lewis Hamilton will be the first British champion since Damon Hill in 1996, effectively Lewis only needs nine points from two races, which should be easily achievable giving the performance and reliability of the McLaren this year!
This weekend has been disappointing for Argyle fans, Plymouth drew another game at Home Park extending the run of home league games without a win to four games and find themselves down in 13th after 8 games. To be brutally honest Plymouth were completely outclassed by Wolves, the visitors should have won by 3 or 4 goals, but luckily only capitalised on one of their many chances mainly thanks to some superb saves from Argyle keeper Luke McCormick. But just before half time, Stephen Elliott broke the deadlock for Wolves converting Andy Keogh’s cross into a 0 – 1 lead for the visitors. Nick Chadwick levelled things for Argyle in the 61st minute, Chadwick picked up on a loose ball to fire home from 12 yards out. David Norris could have snatched victory late on with a brilliant volley but was denied by Wayne Hennessey tipping Norris’ shot around the post. So Luke McCormick was hero of the day for Argyle, saving the blushes of manager Ian Holloway as it could have so easily been 5 – 1 if it wasn’t for the top notch keeping of Luke McCormick.
Liverpool also won their premiership tie at the JJB Stadium against Wigan, but had to fight for the victory as the home team gave as good as they got. If we are honest it was a substandard performance by the Reds strikers, far too many chances were missed. Steven Gerrard came closest to scoring with one of his trademark 30 yard drives but Chris Kirkland was equal to Gerrard’s stinging shot. Liverpool had to wait until the 75th minute before taking the lead with Yossi Benayoun running at the Wigan defence before calmly slotting past Kirkland from 10 yards out! Liverpool are currently 4th in the league four points off Arsenal at the top of the table, but at this early stage that means nothing, Liverpool are in with the best shout of winning the Premiership ever especially with Manchester United indifferent form and Chelsea’s current managerial woes and injury woes; is this the year?
