As time goes by...

I didn't recognize how much time went by since my last post. January is a very busy time at work as well. Twice a year I have talks with each of my team members. We discuss what has been achieved during the last 6 months, what are the targets for the next period, we talk about the individual performance and make development plans. As you can guess this is really time consuming especially since it happens in addition to my "normal" work.
We also had a team building workshop appr. an hour away from where I live, and a meeting in Finland. Finland reminded me of Alaska, at least it had some snow.
At home we only had wind. Maybe you heard of the big storm "Kyrill" that hit Germany really bad 1.5 weeks ago. I was lucky, all that happened was that 3 trees are now standing in an 45degrees angle and have to be cut down. Unfortunately my insurance won't pay for it. They would if the trees were already completely on the ground....
During the last two weekends in England Dave and I explored the northern coast of East Anglia. It is a little bit more than a one hour drive away from Thetford. I love the ocean. Especially in the winter. It is rough and windy and not too many tourist are around. We walked there, had coffee at a nice cafe and took some pictures. The little towns along the shore are very nice, but I can imagine how busy they will be in the summer time.
Do you know about my photo pages (yahoo and flickr)? I added two links to this blog so you can look at my pictures there.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of you! Sorry for the late blog, but it was a busy time. We were all looking forward to the holiday season and suddenly it is all over ;o)
It started all with fog in England. For some days it was not possible for planes to leave Heathrow or Gatwick. Good luck that Dave flew out of Stansted on Friday before Christmas. But the fog was nearly everywhere in the London area and so I spent 3 hours at the airport Cologne/Bonn waiting for him. The really bad part was that it was in the middle of the night with only one kind of diner open. But I found this place, had something to eat and drink and a nice place to sit and wait, and wait, and wait.....He finally arrived at approximately 2am. It was 3:30 until we got some sleep. The original plan was to meet Juergen and Ingrid, two friends of us, in an amusement park near Cologne the next morning. We wrote them a message and said we won't be there before 1300. And somehow we made it. I forgot my motion sickness pills, which is really bad if you like rides like I do, but get sick like....I don't know....I mean, really sick. So I called Juergen and asked him to stop by a pharmacy and bring these drugs for me. And it worked. We all had fun, enjoyed the Christmas decoration and lights and had a nice dinner before going home.
Christmas eve was a little bit more relaxing. We slept in, had breakfast with Marcus and Eva, drove to a my favorite little forest here and went on a hike with Senta. We went to church twice. First to my normal one and than later, at 2300, to one we discovered last year. We opened presents, sang Christmas songs and had dinner.
Christmas day we spent at my brother's house. December 23rd is my nephew's birthday and traditionally we meet on Christmas day to celebrate this. It was only a short stay for Dave and me. The next day started very early at around 3am since we planned to spent 5 days in Minneapolis. I was a little bit nervous. It was the first time I met Dave's parents and his brother's family. But it was a great time, everybody gave me a very warm welcome and I got more present than I ever had. We really had problems getting everything home. Beside spending time with his family we also took half day trips to Owatana (where Dave grew up) and St. Cloud (where he went to college). And then we had a lot of things to organize for Amber (his Golden Retriever girl) to move to England beginning of January. In the meantime she arrived there savely, we are all back to Europe and work and already had a very rainy weekend in England together.
The weather is still much to warm for January. It is scary. At the house in England I found the first flowers peeking out of the ground! This usually happens in March. And I don't believe in the coming spring. I am pretty sure the cold weather will come late as it happened the last years. And if not: Hopefully we can go on skiing vacation in the Alps end of February and see some snow there.