Well if you expected anything other than a delay for a Valve game, you hath deluded yourself I"m afraid. But then again, with the package you are getting with Episode 2, it isn"t so bad really. In any event, Doug Lombardi at the Leipzig Games Convention today admitted that indeed Episode 2 has now been pushed back to a Q1 2007 release, which translates to February 2007 according to Mr. Lombardi himself.
Eurogamer has a fairly lengthy interview with Mr. Lombardi from the Leipzig Convention, which touches on several areas of discussion. It looks like Episode 2 will be slightly longer than Episode 1, the price point is still being discussed internally apparently, and a nice little blurb on Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Look for 32 player support for TF2 and of course great post-release support from Valve as they do with all their games. Overall a very informative interview from the GC today.