A Very White Christmas

Oh, behold, Christmas is over. And it was really, really lovely.

But let's start from the beginning. I didn't make it over to Av's because London got snowed in the Saturday before Christmas. As in proper snow, not that fizzly stuff that thaws as soon as it hits the ground. I braved the weather to go to the post office to finally collect my work Xmas pressie, then had to witness the local choir murdering some Christmas carols with the help of a totally unqualified guitarist. Arrived home looking like a snow-woman & decided to not go down to South London as the risk of not being able to return home was a big too high for my liking. Instead I huddled up in the house & took a few pictures to prove that we actually had snow in case it disappears again over night.

Well, it didn't. Disappear, that is. Instead it lingered & caused Heathrow to shut down for a good 3 days. Apparently they were unable to clear the runways or whatever, I still don't understand how an airport can be so bloody unprepared. Anyway, a lot of fretting ensued as BA kept canceling flights left right & center, I actually bought flights from Gatwick (which, surprisingly, only shut for a few hours on Saturday & pretty much returned to normal on Monday) just in case & secured a lift by car from a colleague just in case. Yes, I REALLY wanted to go home as the last time I'd seen my parents was sometime early summer.

Inbetween all of this was my second work Xmas party, unfortunately on the evening before I was due to leave so I only stayed for dinner & wasn't around to witness my colleagues getting drunk & disorderly. Bummer.

Just in time for my flight home Heathrow/BAA announced that they were up & operating again, so in the end I made it home to Germany with some delay (45 minutes) but I made it. Dusseldorf airport was a proper Winter Wonderland when we landed - faced with that amount of snow Heathrow probably would have shut down until spring. It took almost an hour for my bags to arrive as the little luggage carriers had problems with the snow and it took about 3 times as long to drive home as the motorway kept getting snowed in.

But thanks to my Dad's driving we arrived at my parents house safe & sound. There was a lot of catching up, I decorated the shiniest tree ever (or so they say), a lot of tasty food was eaten, snow was shoveled, I saw my brother's new house for the first time (it's a shell but I'm sure it'll look great) but couldn't go into the garden as the snow was too high, more snow shoveling & de-icing and some shopping was done. I canceled my BA flight to stay in Germany for one more day & would've loved to stay longer but I had to work today & there wasn't enough snow to ground & cancel my flight back.

Having been back in my home country made me realise how much I miss it. I love that my parent's house is always warm (central heating that works), that I can take a shower where the water actually pours down on you (rainforest shower head & decent water pressure FTW), the town & the shops are so clean & organised. I'm not quite ready to go back yet, but I actually found myself entertaining the thought more & more the longer I stayed.

Going back to London was harder than usual, I honestly didn't want to leave this time. I didn't help that I had to face the usual shambles that is the UK as soon as I got off the plane & boarded the train to Victoria. Which didn't leave the platform for a good half hour & then we got told that we had to board the train opposite (no reason given why we couldn't leave in the one we were in), which subsequently was overcrowded & even more delayed. I finally made it back home around midnight, too wired to go to sleep right away so I unpacked & then curled up under my amazingly cosy duvet.

Work today was busy as hell and tomorrow will follow the same pattern, I was the last of my team to leave at 3pm, though, so I shouldn't really complain. Alas it only means I've got even more stuff to finish tomorrow & I really want to leave early on NYE as I was planning to pick up my passport from the Indian consulate.

My reward for all of this will be the Monkey NYE bash, which everybody hopes will be even more epic than last time. Something to look forward to.

I'm also pondering goals for next year, which I really hope will be better than the last.