Here I am again, back from almost one whole glorious week of not working. (Except for the, um, three separate days on which I had to go in to the office for an hour or so. But in principle, yes, one whole glorious week.) I won't be back to normal working hours until January 2, so I'll only be here infrequently until then. I'm just glad a lot of other forum regulars are away too, otherwise it would take forever to read all these posts I missed!

So here's an instant summary of my Christmas break: AWESOME weather/too much chocolate/beach/sunburned/the beach house at the end of the universe (Coromandel Peninsula)/QUIET!/sitting on grass on small hill looking at blue, sparkling, glorious water/"floating islands" optical illusion of distant Hauraki Gulf/wore nothing but swimsuit for almost three days in a row, adding a t shirt for formal occasions/unexpected Christmas present to myself of highly expensive new radiator after my car decided to blow itself into extinction late on Christmas Eve in most inconvenient part of town/swimming in deep cold river swimming hole in fern lined ravine/oog, way too much food/argh, need expensive new batteries on boat, perhaps they had suicide pact with car/removed and varnished another couple of bits of boat/Christmas TV programming is beyond abysmal, so watched videos Casablanca, Bram Stoker's Dracula, about nine Red Dwarf episodes instead/considered eating a vegetable, just for a change, decided this is probably illegal on Christmas/whoooaaaa....too much chocolate/lie around in sugar-induced coma. Woo hoo!

Brunnen-"looking forward to New Year's for more of the same!"G