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

I'm glad to know that Christmas in New Zealand is very much like Christmas in the USA. (With the possible exception of weather.) I'd tell you all the things I ate, but I don't want Sam to run out of disc space.
Howard