Well, it's been a while since the last update - sorry about that. Work has been extremely time-consuming lately - we've lost four employees, including two from my team - we already had tons of work to do, and now we have even more. Fortunately, we've already hired two new people, one for my team - so things should get better soon. I'm also heading up a project where we've outsourced some work to a company in India - I am going to get them involved in our monitoring operations, so this will help us get some sleep as they'll be the first on-call contact instead of us! For a while now I feel like if I've been awake, I've been working. Jill has really been putting up with me and my work lately, so I owe her some family time! We're going to go do something alone together on Friday night - out of the flat, no work - Jill gets all of my attention!

As you know, we were in the US from the end of August until mid September. Even though I was home, I worked so hard I feel like I didn't get as much family and friend time as I wanted to - but I still got a good bit. My sister and her kids came and stayed with my mom and dad again - Ashley, Reilly, and Kelsey. They live in Texas, so it's always nice to get to see them since I don't get to very often. Shae and Billy's new baby, Ryan, is starting to be more alert and all, so he was fun too. Their other son, Landon, is a trip - he's in his "terrible twos" and it's a lot of fun being his uncle!

While the whole crew was in town, Ryan got baptized at the United Methodist Church. Let's just say that he enjoyed it more than Landon when he was baptized. We ran into Bill, Melissa, and Mary Ashlee after the service - great seeing you guys! We also went to Tuscaloosa for my grandmother's 90th surprise birthday party. I think she was surprised to see everyone - we had all kinds of family turn up, and it's always fun when the Beards get together. And a Beard get together wouldn't be complete without a late-night poker game - first live poker game I've played in a long time - maybe we can have a poker reunion when we come back in December! Special thanks to Allison and Jeff for putting this party together!

What better place to be than the US when football season starts. It was awesome watching both college and NFL games while we were home. Here's the deal - in London, we get the Bama games over the internet through Yahoo Sports, but we only get audio. If it happens to be the Jefferson Pilot game, we get video. So we used to dislike the early JP games when we lived in the US, but now we love them because we not only get video, but it's an afternoon game instead of a morning game. For NFL, we get four games - three on Sunday and the Monday night game - the early one starts at 6:00pm, then one at 9:00pm, the Sunday night game at 1:30am, and the Monday night game at 2:00am (given the times of these last two, of course we only get to watch two earlier Sunday games). We don't get the US commercials - instead, we get some locals talking about the game - it's just not the same, but at least we get to watch some games.

So as you can see, it was really nice to bring in the start of the season in the good ole US. We got the Bama/MTSU game on pay-per-view, and we went to Tuscaloosa for the Southern Miss game - it was nice to be in BDS! And the tailgating was better than it ever has been - my boys have stepped it up a notch. Get this - they not only have tents, a nice spread of food, drinks, and cherry bombs, but they now have a BIG SCREEN PROJECTOR - that's right, a projector with a satellite dish - so not only will you not miss the other games during the tailgate, but you can see them from you car on McFarland. Hats off to Kiker, Mika, OBR, and Sham - well done men! Roll Tide!

I watched Bama beat South Carolina with my parents, and it was nice to see Spurrier throwing his lid all over the place again as the Tide rolled over him. So getting to see three Bama games was huge - now we're back to audio only, but it's better than nothing (and we get to listen to Hey Coach too). Where was Jill during all of this football you ask? Well, she went to the Southern Miss game with me, but she was eating Mexican food the rest of the time. I kid you not, Jill and her mom had Mexican food about 14 times while we were home - I not kidding - that's more than three times the amount of points that Florida scored on us. They also went to see Levi - he's currently staying at a Husky ranch in Chelsea. He's having a good time out there hanging out with over 30 fellow Huskies. Her mom turned 21 again, so Jackie, Jill, Mike, and I went out to Copper Grill to celebrate. Her dad also drove up from Mobile and spent some time with her. She took him out for some carrot cake at J. Alexander's for his birthday - how old are you again?

Speaking of birthdays, I had the big one while I was at home - yep, the big 3-0. Did I feel it? Oh yeah - this one did hurt pretty good - I'm starting to feel like my body is beginning to fall apart. Jill hooked me up with an outstanding surprise party - I appreciate everyone that was able to make it out for that - if you're gonna get old, you might as well do it with your friends and family! Special thanks to Jill, our families, Kathleen, Jacob, and Christie for all that you did to make my surprise party a special memory! I got a new golf bag from Jill and new putter from my mom and dad, so I should shave at least 10 strokes off of my game, right?

We went and saw Bart, Kerrie, and their new pride and joy, Mr. Rock Benson. He's a good-looking boy - and Bart, he already has more hair than you! Speaking of babies, a big congratulations go out to my cousin David and his wife Katie - they are the proud parents of Henderson Tucker Jones, born September 15 weighing in at 8 pounds and 2 ounces. We are extremely happy for you guys!

Our flight back was uneventful, so that was nice - we arrived later in the day, so we decided to skip the nap and just go to bed early and get over our jetlag that way. Well, of course that didn't work too well - but the good news is that when we woke up in the middle of the night, the Monday Night Football game was on, so we got to watch that. We continued to sleep on the blow-up aerobed when we got back so we could watch TV as we dozed off in the den. If you remember, we've been sleeping on this bed since the end of May - we have finally let the air out and started sleeping in our normal bed again. We miss watching TV as we go to sleep, but it gets us to sleep faster in the end.

We went and saw Revolver a few weeks ago - this is the movie that Jill was in - it was directed by Guy Ritchie (Madonna's husband), and Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore (from the Sopranos), and Andre Benjamin (from Outkast) were all in it. It was pretty cool to see her walking into the casino in the first scene of the movie. We went to Cambridge with our flat mates that live below us (Ed and Aileen) a couple weeks ago. Cambridge looks like a nice place to go to college - the buildings are very old and neat looking, as I'm sure you'd expect. The Cam River runs through it, and we went "punting" on it. No, I'm not talking about anything to do with kicking footballs (although that was my initial thought when Jill mentioned it). Punting is when you get in a boat and the punter moves the boat along by taking a long pole and pushing off the bottom of the river bed. Now you have two choices here - you can punt yourself, or you can be punted. We decided to be punted and just enjoy the ride. And it turned out to be a good decision - it was a pretty cold day you see, and everyone we passed that was not a professional punter (actually, just college kids earning a few pounds), looked like they were working way too hard - and not only that, but one guy punted his boat into the side of the river bank, lost his balance, and fell in - did I mention how cold it was that day?

Back to football for a minute - the first game Bama played when we got back was against Arkansas - and if you remember, it was a JP game so we got to watch it live. We hooked up our computer to our TV and watched it like we were back in the US. We weren't so lucky with the Florida game. We called the Sports Cafe and they said that they were going to play it live - so we get all excited and when we get there, they are finishing up the Boston/Yankees game first. So we wait, and while we wait, I check the score on my pager - I couldn't believe that we were up by a couple of TDs early. Well, after the baseball game, there's no Bama game - I go talk to the manager, and supposedly there is a problem with their server. Well, this happened last year as well, so we've decided to boycott this place - they never go through with their promises. And the thing is that Manderson had his webcam set up so that we could have watched it on our computer at home had we known they weren't going to play it. And so we missed one of the best Bama games in years. We did listen to it the next day, but it wasn't the same since we already knew the score. Don't take your football for granted over there boys - the next day the NFL game was delayed 30 minutes due to a cricket match - CRICKET - are you kidding me?!?

Jill planned a fun-filled day for us in London two Saturdays ago - we went to the Thames Barrier (the dam that keeps London from flooding), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (we saw the play Measure for Measure), we had a drink on the Queen Mary (which was docked on the Thames), and we finished it up with an excellent steak dinner at the Gaucho Grill. The next day, Justin and Rachel drove us to Kent and we toured Leeds Castle - cheers for that guys, it was a lot of fun. Aileen cooked us some proper Filipino food last Saturday. We had Misua soup (with pork and shrimp meatballs and patola) as a start, and pork adobo (pork in soy sauce and vinegar), chicken ginataan (chicken in coconut milk), pansit sotanghon (vermicelli noodles and veggies), and rice as the main dishes. And for dessert, we had turon with lankga (jack fruit) and ice cream as well as ensaymada. Thanks again - everything was delicious!

Well, that wraps it up for another edition of the Beard's life in London. We hope you enjoyed it. I have a MySQL training course all next week, and Jill and I are going to Poland in two weeks. Please check out our updated pictures - Jill & Brad, Family, Friends, Cambridge, Leeds Castle, and London. By the way, flights are starting to get cheap again - great time to come and visit... Until next time, take care and God bless - we love and miss you all!