Because its Monday, the sun is almost shining and I am sitting in the library, desperate for an excuse not to get down to the real business of work, I am going to post some links that have done it for me lately.

The first comes from 'Dooce'. In case you are not aware of her presence, according to an article in the Observer last year, Dooce is number five in the ‘50 World’s Most Powerful Blogs’ list. That takes some doing and it is not without foundation. Dooce routinely gets upward of a 1000 comments when she posts on her blog. She speaks from the heart about issues that matter to everyday people. Not only that, but she does it with style and wit.

I revisited a post she wrote last year about her dog (she does that a lot), which cracked me up. When I re-read it last week, it had the same effect. So here it is again, complete with detailed pictures of an escaped racoon:  ‘Chucks heightened sense of AWESOME’. Tell me you read this and didn’t love it and I simply won’t believe you.

Next up is this little nugget from Salon.com. In a new fortnightly series, Salon.com features people doing what I love them to do the most: telling stories about their lives. In this case, the subject matter is specific and one that is inextricably tied up with the theme of this blog……love, actually.

In this week’s story, eighty three year old Paul Pesce tells the almost inconceivable story of how he came to be married to his wife of fifty-five years. It’s a corker.

Finally, a news story that gives me a renewed sense of rightness about the world that we live in. Obama has repealed the ban on funding for organizations that offer advice or perform abortions in the US. This is a good thing. Denying women the right to control their own fertility is going backwards. Backwards is not good. Forwards is so much better.

I watched 'Elizabeth' on Saturday night. In it, Sir William Cecil, one of the newly crowned queen’s closest confidantes, requests her ladies in waiting to bring him the sheets from Elizabeth’s bed every morning for inspection, because, he says, Elizabeth’s body no longer belongs to Elizabeth, it belongs to the state. Please note, to any one who wishes to challenge me on the above, those days are SO over.

It doesn't matter how you as an individual feel about this issue. Nobody wants to have an abortion but I would defend until my dying day the individual’s right to make this choice for themselves if the occasion befits it. Case closed and long live Obama.

Bum. Now I’ll have to do some work.