Turkey & Gravy, Stuffing, Lasagne, Sweet & Sour Meatballs, Beef Curry, Mushrooms stuffed with Feta Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Taco Salad, Bananas & Chocolate, Fruit & Whipped Cream, Sweet Potato Pie, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Chip Muffins, Chocolate Cake & a whole lot more.

This is what happens when you have a potluck Christmas Dinner with 3 over-dealous hostesses and guests that are fabulously well endowed with culinary skills and ambition.

I am officially stuffed and now take this opportunity to warn you all that hosting such an event could be hazzardous to your waist and appetite. On the upside your grocery bill for the week following will be nil, as your fridge will be filled with copious amounts of leftovers....

In other news of last night's Christmas Celebration:

Gift exchanging can get nasty, espeically when you play the Chinese Gift Exchange Game. This involves the participants picking numbers and then, in order, picking a gift from teh pile. The trickis that the second person can pick a gift from the pile OR steal the first person's gift. If you are teh last person to pick, you can steal ANYONE's gift. Due to objections from a few of the guests, we had to go with a 'nicer' version of this game. in the original game, you would open your gift immediately, so the next person could choose from an opened gift belonging to someone else or take their chances with the pile. In our version, everyone had to keep their gifts wrapped until the game was finished and everyone had a gift. I ended up with a jelly bean candy dispenser - very fitting I think. Personally though, I think my gifts were among the more interesting - I had wrapped up a walking dinosaur that runs on batteries and a snowman that grows when you sprinkle it with magic water. Shields insinuated my 2 in 1 gift might be dodgy when she shook it, but I think Rachel was chuffed with both gifts :)

It is v difficult to wash dishes without hot water. Thank goodness for bathtubs and electric showerheads. Yep, we gave our dishes a good ol bath last night!

Hmmmmm..Oh right..did I mention we have a FAB group of friends here last night. Seriously, I think moving to a new city is THE best way to meet new people (unless you move to Dublin..but thats another story), and I am so glad that we ended up in Edinburgh, which seems to have more than its share of friendly and fun people!

Ms MacPhail informed me earlier today that there are only 188 hrs before we will be flying across the Atlantic....

Oh -as for the rest of the weekend - yeah it was fun - Return to the Walkabout went ahead smoothly - it was packed for once - v unusual (reason was a rugby game)..even more unusual - it was packed with good scenery (see above reason :)

K - back to work here...will write again soon(ish)

Well am here at EasyNet just killing some time before I meet up with Anne for a chat and, hopefully, some grub. I can't think v clearly..a result of rumbling stomach and mind-numbing week of work.

Now I will admit work has been a lot better in the last few weeks, since I got trained to process Single-Life Death Bonds, but,I swear, this place may be the death of me (pun totally intended and, in retrospect, not v. funny but I am too lazy to erase it so deal). Anyway, apparently there haven't been so many deaths lately so I've been forced to go back to the good ol' CEC's. Fun

Oh - I have some Hypocrisy/Irony to report. Today's front page newspper headline read 'US warns Ukraine to Clean Up Election or Face the COnsequences. Yep, that's right, the experts in dirty elections & fraudulent voting are threatening to take action against little ol' Ukraine if they don't do something about the fraud that is being reported leading up to the country's election. The AMericans claim that the results of the election will not be representative of the citizen's wishesd...Hmmm..does this seem VAGUELY familiar (rewind to 2000 Gore vs Bush)??????
Buried somewhere in the article was the 'aha' as to why the AMericans care about Ukraine. THey fear fraudulent election results will affect relations with NATO & Russia as well as SUPPLY OF OIL....

It reminds me of school....the kids that got into trouble all the time..they only got punished/reprimanded about 20% of the time, but if you were one of the quiet kids and you did something bad once, oh you got in BIG trouble.

Anyways- that's my example of hypocrisy & irony - I find it both funny & sad (which is also ironic in a sense I suppose).

Tomorrow night us gals are heading to ASDA - ooooh a field trip. ASDA is teh equivalent of Wal-MArt (owned by them, but branded differently here). WE are in search of food and decorations for our Sunday Shindig. Should be fun.

Bloody hell..there are a load of fireworks going off outside as I write this..leftovers from Guy Fawkes Day, or celebratoin of CHristmas?

DId I mention there is a giant Ferris Wheel overlooking Princes Street, and they have an ice-skating rink in the gardens below the castle. Oh - and to top it all off, a German market. Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas ....or at least like winter/a carnival/Germany...a virtual smorgasbord of entertainment and novelty for us Edinburghers!

K - off I go to eat..10 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ugh. I just ate too much for lunch. I had a cup of soup, a cup of yogurt & fruit, a delicious apple & a granola bar. It really doesn't seem like much, but it is when you've not had much of an appetite for weeks...

Right- so last night saw the reappearance of Miss Jennifer MacPhail who has been traipsing around Europe for the past week and a half. She 'did' Paris,Finland & Estonia, and appears to have had a fab time...albeit no luck in meeting Liam at teh London airport. So sad.

In other news - for once someone has actually taken me up on the offer to come & stay with me in PEI! I randomly invite friends and people I've just met to come visit - rarely do they take the opportunity, but Brandon did! (WOOHOO) And its thanks to this blog..because who knows if he would have emailed me, or I would have emailed him..but he commented, I replied and the rest is history! THe power of a blog- it astounds me :)

We are having a huge Christmas dinner this Sunday for all our friends in Edinburghj - and by all, I really do mean all. Despite having room for approc. 13 behinds in our living room, we've invited 19 people to our flat (thats including us). SO it'll be cosy and some will have to make do with mashed potatoes & chocolate..Keri's only cooking enough chicken for 12..she figured not everyone will want chicken. Um, yeah, OK- but they may want another option in lieu of chicken/ Me to the resuce!!! I am goingot make a vegetarian alternative which I hope will appeal to the meat-eaters and veggies in attendance.

Anywho, it promises to be a great gathering and fab way to say goodbye to everyone before we head home for the holidays...will keep you posted on how it turns out