Home for the Holidays . . .

Welcome! After over a year overseas I have returned to the great white north---yes to Canada to welcoming smiles of friends and family. I have returned home for the holidays. I have truly missed my friends and family and to be sure familiar faces and places are certainly a welcome change after over a year away. But a return home is also a return to reality-- some of which is not always so welcome. In my case, the weather being so nasty and cold is my one serious bone of contention. Winter may be postcard pretty in this corner of the world but subzero temperatures make me very cranky. Maybe I will be lucky and 2010 will warm up a little bit since I am not currently in the appropriate financial shape to escape for the winter months (or perhaps the appropriate physical shape to appear on a Mexican beach in a bathing suit). I am hoping both of these conditions improve before next winter. Maybe you dear readers, are enjoying yourselves in another corner of the world---that is a warmer one anyways and if you are know I am sincerely jealous! While there are great things about being home for the holidays amongst loved ones there is something I like even better about the idea of lying on a beach with those same loved ones and being handed Margaritas by a Mexican waiter named Jorge! Hope you all have had a very Merry Christmas indeed!