This is going be one manic week! I knew about some of this before I went on holiday but then you come and and things are thrown at you! LOL

First - yesterday I was working until 4pm but I had to stay until 5pm to go a meeting about what is happening the housing market and what the business is doing to combat this. Fine, but I have just had two weeks off, the time changed Sunday and I had to be at work at 8am! Lovely.

Then I have to work late tonight which is never fun but at least you get plenty of calls and work to do after 5pm when everyone goes home.

Tomorrow and Thursday I am being roped into helping another department. I am going to have input the applications once they come back to us which is basically sitting keying all day. Boring but at least I will have plenty to do and the day should go quickly. 2 days notice is not great for anyone though!

Friday I have a day off but I have work all weekend in return. I should have some time to post on Friday but working at the weekend cuts into my board times which I really hate. I have to work all of the weekend after as well...

Back to the sporadic posting! LOL!

I was getting sick of having a controversial avatar and sig so I decided to change it to something that shouldn't offend too much... However don't worry if you liked the ones I had before, I will be changing back to something more daring at some point! I never liked being boring and I like to be controversial when I think something needs to be said! LOL!

I have decided to disable comments on my profile as I never have time to reply to them. This doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what people have said and the kudos I have got but just that I never have time to post anything in reply.

Some of you may have read bits of this update as I have been posting on the boards from time to time. However I thought it best to keep everything in one place so everyone knows how my Christmas and New Years was. (I am also updating this on a daily basis on my own computer and then will post the whole thing when I get back.)

The travelling back by train went smoother than I thought it would. I had to change in lot of places so there was always a chance I might miss a connection. However all trains were on time (within about 5 minutes!) so nothing went too wrong. I got the train first thing on the 17th from Norwich to London where I caught the Eurostar to Brussels. After that it was fast trains to Cologne and then Frankfurt. The only slow bit was the local train back to the little town I grew up in which is half an hour north of Frankfurt on the train. Mum then met me at the station and drove me back to the house. The whole thing took about 12 hours so I was exhausted when I got back here as you can imagine! However I think it works just as easily as flying because there is less hassle with passports and other such things. I am not sure whether I would do it on a regular basis though... I might stick to flights as they are slightly quicker and somewhat cheaper as well.

Not done that much but my parents were telling me that they are looking to get wireless for the house so next time I may be able to get on with my laptop and that then means I can post more and also be on later at night. I can't at the moment as the computer is in their room so after about 8pm, I will have no luck trying to get on! I will be going shopping later this week for some stuff for presents and also myself with clothes and other things like that.

Christmas Day was a very traditional day in our household. It started really with Christmas Eve when we always have a smoked fish dinner with smoked salmon and other such things. After that we put the presents under the tree and also got the stockings organised for my parents to fill up.

We are always up earlish for Christmas Day - about 8am and we have a look at our stockings. Mainly they are useful things like socks and underwear but they also got us some calandars, chocolate Father Christmas and coins as well as a piece of the Berlin Wall. After a quick breakfast, we opened our presents. Personally I received Season 7 of Star Trek The Next Generation (I need to get Season 6 when I am back in the UK), a purse and then money as well. One of the traditions is that we always get a board game as a family that we play after lunch. Lunch itself was roast vension, Klosschen (potato), roast parsnips, red cabbage and roast chestnuts. We also had a Christmas pudding for desert. Between the courses, we also pull crackers and read out the jokes.

The game we got this year was Thurn and Taxis which is based on the original mail routes in the middle of Europe. You are trying to build up post routes through Germany (and surrounding areas) by connecting towns. There are various points for long routes and also having a prescence in all towns within a state/county/area of the country. We played it after lunch on Christmas Day and have played various other times as well.