ROUND ONE

McCain is so lame. 'Oooh, I'm going to suspend my campaign to attend to the economic crisis, ooh'l. Obama, meanwhile, points out that as president, you have to be able to juggle more than one thing at a time. What a dude.

So McCain turned up to the first debate yesterday. Well done.

Maxy worked all night so didn't have to go into work until 3pm, so we caught up on some Veronica Mars action, then I worked all afternoon and evening, with the debate on in the background. It took til 1am to finish my work, but hooray! It's done! Roll on the weekend!

I found the debate a little stressful. The way both candidates were recalling facts and figures by rote reminded me of some kind of verbal A-level. And the bracelet wars were just hilarious! 'Oh, so-and-so gave me this bracelet to make me remember their son in Iraq', 'well I have a bracelet, too...'.

On the whole, I found Obama a little longwinded and woolly - not as clear as he'd been in his big speech at Invesco Field (for obvious reasons). But he's unanimously thought to've won, so what do I know?

Maxy was live blogging for Justin Webb throughout the debate so, as in at Invesco Field and during McCain's speech in St Paul, Justin Webb made comments to Max and Max typed them up and posted them immediately on the BBC website. I didn't think much of the blog - Justin was really snipey and mostly annoyed by the moderator, rather than shedding any light on the accuracy or significance of what either candidate was saying. But it was beautifully typed!

Having worked until 1am, I figured I may as well wait up for Max while he did the FactCheck feature for the website. So I found myself sucked into an enthralling episode of 'Deal or No Deal'.

The show is very different over here - no weird cult feeling, no conversations with the banker as ridiculous as those of Noel Edmonds and everything generally more glamorous than 21 people standing around a wooden studio.

The contestant was this crazy poker-playing lady who was convinced that the million pounds was in her case. She kept taking these crazy risks and jumping up and down and challenging the banker and being all certain, until it came down to two cases, $1million and $50 on the board and an offer of something like $375,000.

I've summarised it too quickly to give a sense of just how tense it all was, but it got even more tense when her fiance begged her to take the money and she stood there convinced that the million was in her case. But then she eventually gave in and took the money.

And the million dollars had indeed been in her case.

I got the sense from the dynamic between her and her fiance that there was a lifetime of, 'it's your fault we can't afford a big house', 'we could be scuba diving right now' and 'I knew I shouldn't have listened to you' ahead of them.

After our late night last night, we had a noodley day today. We had a nice impromptu brunch at L'Enfant, the Belgian bar at the end of our street, then went to the supermarket and home for an afternoon of Veronica Mars and the movie 'Definitely Maybe', which was nice enough. It helped me see a little better what on earth Scarlett Johansson sees in her fiance Ryan Reynolds. And Abigail Breslin is sooo cute.