Merry Christmas!

Season's greetings from Dronfield, UK! Here I am in the family home, for the first Christmas in six years ;)

It's been great so far, and the scent of roasting turkey wafting up the stairs makes me think it's going to stay great.

Hope you are having happy holidays, whoever and wherever you are.

Open the sesame!

Open the sesame!, originally uploaded by sendaiben.

This is a new shop I just noticed in Sendai...

Optimism...

Apple store opening, originally uploaded by sendaiben.

is turning up at 11am for the 10am opening, and meeting people you know who have been there since 6!

Apple is coming to town...

Or rather, came today. The store opened at 10am, I figured if I sauntered down there around 11 I could have a quick look around and maybe get a free t-shirt (the first 1000 customers were to get them)...

Extra animals

It's winter, so our friend Meekeh is back. For those of you just joining us, Meekeh is an extremely intelligent and very independent stray cat that lives in our area. She doesn't get on with our cat Tiddles (who is a very stupid and dependent animal) so during spring, summer, and autumn she happily lives outside.

Once it gets cold though, Meekeh rejoins our life and deigns to hang out in our living room by the fire eating Tiddles' food. She comes in as it gets dark and usually leaves by morning.

Snow!

I have this theory that the divide between people that like snow and people that hate it is possession of a driving license...

I used to love snow, but now that I have to drive on the stuff I find it a lot less exciting.

Sendai was a fetching shade of white this morning, and of course we hadn't changed our tires over yet (to snow tires, which grip better but kill your fuel efficiency). Needless to say, there were three hour queues at service stations all over the city to get it done. I have very much learned my lesson on this one, and will be changing the tires mid-November next year.

Less than two weeks before we are in Spain.

And I'm Spent...

Just finished booking the last of the hire cars, hotel rooms, and flights for our trip. When you take five people, the numbers add up to a scary amount.

Gulp.

Oh well, I guess this is the last time we're going to be able to do this for a while, so it's worth it. Going to fit a lot in, too!

And most importantly, I'm going to get to eat Christmas dinner. Hopefully more than once :)