Belated Update!

Greetings all! Sorry its been so long since an update - its been a little mad. Okay, since my last post I have done a good bit of schtuff - headed off to Madrid for a weekend (which was pretty cool), was mad busy at work, got to a couple of Christmas parties (still a bit shakey when the w.i.n.e. word is used) and headed back to the good ol' north strong and free for Christmas with the family. Phew. No wonder I was so tired!
Madrid was a really neat city. I headed over with 5 friends and we just went to town. There wasn't really a lot to see, but I think that was kinda because I was expecting it to be as cool as Rome and that's not really possible. We went to the zoo (which has the cousins of all the 'real' animals like instead of seeing the African elephant we saw the smaller Indian version. We saw the Dromedary, which is a one-humped camel instead of the typical 2-humped version. That sorta stuff. OH- and a Canadian black bear. Who was very grumpy), hit the museum of Natural Science (pretty cool) and a really neat market that sold absolutely everything from people's rusty old sliver tea sets to paintings to winter jackets to jewelry to multicoloured socks to knitwear to purses that looked like a box of corn flakes with handles ... everything you could think of it was there. Absolutely brilliant. We also hit a few drinking holes, our favorite being Moore's. And yes, it was an Irish pub. We met a fella from Sligo who was serving pints so he could give us suggestions on where to go and what to see.
The on to the Christmas parties - we had 2 and they were great nights. The first was in time: venue which was voted nightclub of the year for 2005, so its pretty cool. The upper 80's bar was reserved for us so the music was great and the atmosphere was buzzing. Then we had the dinner dance. Oh what a blast that was! Our table was cracking! We were constantly laughing at eachother, dancing and drinking a lot of wine! There are a few pics of the night for your perusal.
Well its time to head home (I can only do this from work since I STILL don't have a computer yet) so I'll bring pictures of going home into my next post next week. Be prepared! And be good