Christmas Day was relaxing and I could really get comfortable

with the idea of not doing very much at all  :-)  Today is a beautiful day- the sun is shining and although it is still cool, things are very nice. I went for a swim this morning and took advantage of an almost-empty pool. Very much worth getting up for!

I am sitting here wearing my new hoodie and enjoying my day off

although I would enjoy it a lot more if I didn't have such a bad cold. It is still only early and breakfast was good and in a little while I will head into town to get a few things done. Lunch in Lugano yesterday was great and the train ride was cool too. Lots of snow north of the alps on the way down in the morning and then it was snowing like crazy on the south side on my way home.
Only a couple more days until Christmas- hope that everyone is getting relaxed  :-)

Best wishes to all for an enjoyable Rabbie Burns Nite

I was lucky enough to be able to toast the bard at 12:01 this morning- a couple of friends and a glass of whisky! The ski weekend was lots of fun and luckily Saturday's weather turned out to be a lot better than expected- I believe that everyone made it up the mountain and we had a great lunch together. Our luck with the weather didn't quite extend all the way through Saturday and we had a fun walk for about 20 minutes through a snowstorm to get back to civilisation after our dinner. No major incidents to report and everybody had a good time.
"And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne."

Luckily there were no complaints about the polenta

on Thursday evening and I believe that the ragout and the mushrooms were quite well received. I certainly enjoyed my evening and it was nice not to have to jump out of bed early in the morning and dash off to the office. Things have been moving steadily since then- I have made some friends at apple.com and kitted myself and my darling child bride out with iPods and I am now in the process of ripping our CD collection so that I can load it onto our new toys.
I am hoping to get to the gym tomorrow lunchtime to do another spinning class as it is only a week until the 6-hour spinning marathon and a little more training definitely won't hurt. Luckily I was clever enough to grab a partner for the afternoon and Jasmin is still not aware that she will be riding 315 minutes while I cruise through 45 :-)
Monday is the start of the new working week (for me too!) and it will be difficult with the start of the new month and Christmas looming. We will all need to keep our heads down and see what we can salvage from the rest of the year.......

I am enjoying my week off

and although I haven't achieved loads, I feel that it has been a pretty successful break thus far. I have been able to catch up with some friends, haven't taken as many pictures as I might have liked but I have cooked a great beef ragout for our guests to eat with polenta tomorrow night.
Hoping to get to the gym again tomorrow and finish off the shopping for dinner while I am in town- we will have guests arriving from 18:30 so I will need to get home, put the music on loud, finish the cooking and tidy the place up. It should be good fun- the best news is that I won't have to dash off to the office early on Friday and depending on how I feel during the day I might even go to the big whisky tasting on the boats here in Zürich on Friday evening.
The fire that the Americans have tried to light under their stockmarkets seems to be still smouldering, but it is sadly perverse to see stocks like Citigroup up close to 100% in a couple of days and still trading at under $8. Not sure where this is all going but some of the ex-big brass from UBS have put their hands in their pockets and returned some of their ill-gotten from the last few years......... when the bank is writing off grillions and the stock price is in the basement 20-30 million coming back from these guys doesn't make a big difference, however they might feel that they are less likely to be attacked with rotting fruit and eggs when next they show their faces in public.
Lugano was great yesterday- thanks for your time Stefano, I really enjoyed those couple of bottles of wine!
P.S. have I told you lately how good Nick Cave really is? Just go and buy "Dig, Lazarus, Dig" and treat yourselves :-)