Catching up

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I'm back in California right now, but sick in bed, so it seems like a good opportunity to update the last month or so.

For Christmas, we were adopted by our friend Amy and various sides of her family. Christmas eve dinner was at her mom's, and they made three wonderful pies for dinner! I made sticky toffee pudding, which I was relieved got rave reviews (actually having English people try my version of an English dessert was surprisingly intimidating). For Boxing Day we then went to Amy's aunt's house. That side of her family is predominately French, so I got some good practice of my language skills in. (Hank smiled and looked pretty.)

New Year's was pretty much just me & Hank - we went and stood outside Downing Street (Tony was in Florida, otherwise we would have yelled "hi") to watch the fireworks over the river. We ate dinner at a fabulous restaurant called L'Escargot in Soho - highly recommended! I had fish with clams and cockles that was simply divine, and a surprisingly great banana souffle for dessert that Hank (even more surprisingly) finished off for me.

January was definitely the craziest month we've had so far. First I had a work off-site in Zurich, so Hank flew out to meet me there and spend the weekend. The weather was so beautiful - and almost 50 degrees (F). I was glad not to be freezing, but it was disappointing we couldn't sled down one of the mountains. Zurich is a beautiful city. Shopping is pretty pricey, though, but they make up for it in CHOCOLATE! I think I brought back at least a kilo of chocolate with me. Hank picked up a few Cuban cigars also.

After that, our friend Kari came to visit, and brought her friend Bethany with her. They stayed for about 10 days, and spent 3 of the days in Dublin and dragged Hank along with them. (I'll let Hank post his update about Dublin separately.) Nope, I couldn't go since I had a date with my skis in Courmayeur, Italy! That was the site of the 2007 company ski trip, generally very successful except for the bout of food poisoning I was lucky enough to catch. But I got in two great days of skiing on the fresh snow that had dropped our first night after arriving. Courmayeur is one of the sites of the Turin olympics, but the site wasn't as large or as difficult as places in California that I'd skied. But I was able to watch Amy learn how to snowboard and ski down some of the black runs with other buddies from work, so it was great fun!

I've also uploaded a bunch of other recent photos to Flickr that I've had sitting around for the last month.