Thanks everybody for the kind words regarding the technical hiccup a couple of days ago. Our computer guy turned up first thing this morning as promised, which was totally out of character, so we were still drinking tea and coffee in bed!
It took him 10 minutes to replace the network card and 40 minutes of animated conversation in "Franglais" and voilà, I'm back in business! I gave him a cheque, au revoir and all that, but I forgot to sign it... he'll be back sometime this afternoon.
It's great to be able to access all my files and blog to my heart's content once more. My husband is a happy bunny, with the laptop all to himself again.
As we're already off-topic, I'll use this post to answer a few questions.
I'm not American and I'm not French. We're British ex-pats living in France.
We caught the election bug last year and followed the campaigns the best we could, on TV, youtube and on the blogosphere.
My husband became a youtube addict, watching all Obama's speeches. I became very interested in the desperate housewife from Wasilla and didn't buy the story about Bristol's pregnancy. I lost a bit of interest after the election, but by December my curiosity got the better of me and I started following Palin Deceptions.
Other Trig truth blogs appeared and I followed them as well. In February, one of these blogs was intimidated into shutting down. I was furious and decided to start my own blog. As Babygate is not the only "gate" in Sarah Palin's repertoire, I called it palingates and proceeded to learn about the governor's shenanigans in more detail.
I'm not fussy and try to keep all the gates fresh in people's memories. Occasionally Sarah Palin provides us with a shiny new one, so there's no shortage of material!
In the past four months I've learned a lot about Alaska and American politics, made several wonderful friends and became part of a privileged community of intelligent, thinking people.
The comments went from zero to quite respectable. The discussions are animated, humorous and there are the occasional fisticuffs, which I think is normal. We're not sheep and don't follow one single line of thought in the same blind fashion as on some other blogs and sites. Hopefully the people who fell out with each other in one thread will kiss and make up at some point, in future threads...
As you've probably noticed, I'm dead against censorship and REALLY believe in free speech. Things may get a bit heated sometimes, but I trust my readers to be able to work things out without my interference.
We have sporadic trolls, but they don't last very long. I don't think they can follow the conversations very well.
So there you have it, a potted history of palingates.
Your warmth, respect and support is invaluable and I'm very lucky to be in this virtual room with caring, passionate and consciencious people, bound together in the effort to prevent a certain person from "progressing" in the political scene.
What galls me is that I owe HER a debt of gratitude for bringing you here!
Ah, c'est la vie...
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