So the lovely Anna bought me a subscription to InMyMug for christmas.  Along with a new French press from her parents and some other nice coffee-ey bits this was very much a caffeinated holiday.  In My Mug is a weekly blog run by coffee roaster called Steve Leighton who is based in the UK.  They are relatively famous in that several of the British Barrista Championship winners have used their coffee, as well as (I believe) one World Barrista Champion.  Steve sells a subscription to a weekly bag of coffee which he then video-blogs about at the weekend.  The videos are well worth watching as he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of coffee, and all of the coffees he sends out have typically been roasted the previous week so they are very fresh.

This week’s InMyMug coffee is the christmas espresso blend.  It consists of 40% Mocha Matari from Yemen, 40% Serrano Superior from Cuba and 20% Ndimaini AA which comes from Kenya.  It’s a rich spicy espresso with a fruity taste that works really well.  I’ve been drinking it in cappuccino all day and it rocks :-)

So we had a fun Christmas.  We were home in Ireland with my parents, doing family stuff.  It was all fun, though I still maintain that Trim is too far out of the way for anything good to happen. Still, its nice to see that my parents have settled in so well there.  Life in Dublin was better, but that's just my perspective, considering that all of my social life was there, or at most just a bus journey away.  Of course, they've closed down the Rocky now, but the Classic still stands in the same spot.  I drove past there sometime during the holidays, up Terenure road and down past Rathfarnham.  Its all different now.
I haven't had a chance to play much Eve of late, though I've just gotten back into it now.  We've just built out very first space station, so I'm gonna head down there when I get a chance and take a look.  The screenshots look brilliant though.
I have a bunch of pictures that I want to post up here.  Christmas, Brighton, the last holidays in Germany... they're all sitting in my pictures folders waiting to be processed.  I'll get to them hopefully before the weekend is over.
Anna is going to graduate this year, so we're looking at moving somewhere else.  Just how far we go remains to be seen, but London doesn't click with me much anymore.  We don't know exectly where or when we're going, but it'll definitely be this year, probably sometime during the summer.  Have to go and do some work now, but I'll post more later on.

Photos of Christmas in Munich are now up on the Photos page.  

I'll be uploading the photos from Christmas and New Year later this week, but here's a small teaser...

Happy New Year!  It has been a while since I posted, and I promise to be more active this year.  Though I probably promised that last year too, so we'll see how well I stick to that ;-)  We were in Germany for Christmas and New Year, with Anna's and my parents, and my sister.  It was really nice actually, we had good food, good drink, and good company.  Santa brought me a snowboard for Christmas, which was very surprising, though in a good way of course.  I took it out between Christmas and New Year for a spin, and have to say that I love it.  It came with a great set of bindings too (thanks babe!).  
So now I'm back at work, and as usual nothing happened according to plan before Christmas, so everything has to be finished yesterady.  I'm sure it'll all get done, its just a pain in the arse getting to that point.

Where did the year go to?  It only seems like a couple of entries ago that we were in Germany for the holidays.  Well, we're going back there again this year, but this time my parents are coming over from Ireland.  You see, we've always spent Christmas with one side, but always only one side.  We thought it might be nice to have everyone together for once :-)  So we're all getting into Munich on the twenty first within ten minutes of each other.  How's that for great organisation? I have no idea what the plans are like for Christmas though, we'll just have to wait and see.  I do know that we're hooking up with the usual crowd though. Seibel and Michi will be back from Canada, and Sylvia and Al will be over there too.
I started smoking again, but gave up yesterday.  Today, I'm a little tense.  It is a very bizarre sensation.  I feel like I'm very cold and my body is sluggish.  I lack the control that I exert over myself.  I don't really like this feeling I have to say, though at least it will go away soon.

At last... holidays :-) It is the Saturday before Christmas, and I have two whole weeks of no work. I had a meeting with my manager yesterday which clarified something I had been mulling over recently... I don't like the way we've been handling the work we did over the last year. There is a new player in the game, and they don't always make life easier for us (as they should be). There's too much badly managed information going around, and too many organisational personnel running around like headless chickens. Its a pain in the ass. Bring back the old days where we had developers talking to each other, getting things done, doing them quickly, and sharing the knowledge they gained as and when they discovered it. Blah. Fuck it, no more talking about work until 2003 :-) Today is Saturday. Its the Saturday before Christmas. Its a day of rest, a day of haircuts, a day of good cappuccino, a day of putting together the last of the Christmas presents. It is fairly cold outside, so I think we're going to have to stay in most of the time, warm and snugged and comfortable. Have to watch the Fellowship of the Ring before tomorrow :-)

OK, the next few updates may suffer from typos as I'm using a German keyboard. The flight yesterday was the usual thing with Go, though it was shorter than usual at 1 hour 50 or so. Stansted was the usual easy-to-get-through that it always is, though nothing in duty free really demanded to be bought. Temp was -1 when we got here, and there are several inches of snow on the ground. Gaby and Andreas met us at the airport and we came home for some food... and beer ;-) Today we went to see the Christmas Market at the Chinese Tower in München's English garden. We had some sausages and Glühwein there (Glühwein a mulled wine with spices). The glühwein warmed really well from the inside. After taht we went to the place where they normally hold the Oktoberfest for more of the same. Have to go now... food.