It's...

... December, at last! No idea where most of the year has gone, but here we are, and only three and a half weeks til I go ski-ing for New Year which I'm really looking forward to. The astute of you may spot that I am not on skis in the photo, rather had temporarily defected to the Dark Side and had a go on a snowboard. I didn't think I was that good, but apparently I didn't do too badly in that I managed to stay on my feet for a good chunk of the time and managed to do some basic turns. Think I prefer skis though as I feel like I know what I'm doing! Got into the mood for it last weekend when we went on a trip to the Snowdome at Milton Keynes (my friend Simon had bought himself a snowboard and wanted to test it before the holiday) and I was relieved to find I could still ski. Wasn't too impressed at some of the highly irritating public schoolgirls who were being very loud and annoying and stopping in the middle of the slope, and also some snowboarders who had no concept of life etiquette in that they would walk up to the bottom of the lift then stop to strap themselves into the bindings, while several buttons went past and the queue of people waiting to go up got ever longer. Well, that's snowboarders for you!

Had an impromptu day off yesterday as realised on thursday afternoon that for some reason I'd been accidentally left off the appointments template so didn't have anyone booked in for me. The choice was therefore to hurridly stick me back on and run the risk of seeing 35-odd people who wanted to be seen for their cold or cough which started the day before (no thanks, FOIAV etc), or take it as leave as I still had an odd day left in addition to the 2 weeks I haven't yet booked left in my leave allowance. So a bit of a no-brainer really, although didn't exactly do a lot with the day aside from go to the gym and put a few more things on ebay. Have been a little more productive today, went to town with a friend and saved lots of money by not buying anything, and continued painting my lounge which is looking much better already now that the blue walls are halfway towards being neutralised. Have to do some shifting of furniture tomorrow in order to do some more painting, but at least it's getting there.