The week of 15th January was pretty damn exciting in many ways.

On Monday night, Veronika came up from Switzerland and stayed at mine. We had dinner and drinks with a few ex E.ON colleagues of ours, and Lorna came along too. It was bloody cold for the first time since the New Year, but the heating in the bar we were in (Malz und Bohne) was MOST effective - we all nearly died of sweat drowning!

On Tuesday night I caught up with Christine for a spot of after-work shopping which turned into a quick dash around a few shops and then a nice slow coffee in Starbucks. Then I met Ferdinand for dinner in a Serbian restaurant. You've never seen such piles of meat!!

On Wednesday night I visited my mate Mikey. He cooked me a risotto with some fantastic cheesy butter from Switzerland (he visits Zurich a lot and always brings some back), and then we honed our massage skills on each other. Mikey has travelled around Southeast Asia a lot, and it was great getting a Thai-style massage again for the first time in years.

Thursday was the day of the Big Hurricane. Which turned out to be a damp squib. But that didn't stop the authorities from closing schools for the afternoon and the following day. We even got sent home early from work! I took the opportunity to take my bike to a shop for the spokes to be tightened. It was blustery all right; as I stood outside the shop, a few bikes parked there got blown over. But it didn't turn into as much of a disaster as everyone had feared. There wasn't even a tree down on my way to work the next day.

On Friday night, I drove Michaela down to Schladming, in the Steiermark, where we were due to meet cousin Eva, Martha's kids Dominik and Verena, and Verena's boyfriend Michael for a weekend's skiing. The journey down was very rainy, which didn't bode well for the next day, but in fact the weather that weekend was super sunny.

We skied on the Hauser Kaibling mountain on Saturday, and on the Reiteralm on Sunday. The slopes were reasonably empty both days, which surprised me on the one hand, given how little snow there actually was, but then again everyone will have thought "there's bound to be no snow, so why bother going skiing" so that was good. It was truly bizarre to stand at the top of a slope and see left & right nothing but green fields! The only snow was fake stuff that they had scraped together into a few runs. They weren't even making any more fake snow, because they'd run out of water!

We had dinner and a few drinks in Schladming on the Saturday night, but we were all pretty knackered so we headed back to our B&B pretty early. There I carried on drinking with the youngsters for a while (thanks for the red wine, Michaela!).

I played badminton again this Monday just gone. I have actually officially joined the club now, so I am determined to go regularly. When I think how I used to play twice a week in Melbourne! And last year I didn't even manage once a month. Shame on me!

Monday was the day the weather changed. There were snowflakes in the air as I made my way home from badders. Tuesday saw a dusting of snow, and as the day wore on the weather turned colder. Then, in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, winter finally arrived. There is LOADS of snow on the ground now! And it's proper cold - I've switched to the warmer of my two woolly hats now (bet you're glad you know that).

And here I am, bang up to date! Shock horror!! I'm sure that it won't last. But let's just enjoy that feeling for a little while. Aaah. Because, let's face it, it gives me the chance to include the smaller, anecdotal storyettes that get missed out in the broad sweep of my non-stop all-action life.

Things like me getting my ticket checked on the U-Bahn last week - for the first time since investing in an annual ticket back in November. Ooh, the sense of righteous disdain with which I waved my wallet at the inspector!

Or how my mate Frank saw me exiting an underground station and decided not to say hi because I was deep in conversation with a friend of mine - or so he thought; actually it was a complete stranger! I was just telling her not to try to move her pram out of my way because I wasn't in a hurry, and our resulting smiles and chat were totally misinterpreted by Frank as he made his way down the stairs next to us.

Or how, this morning, I stood at the tram stop - for once getting there a whole minute BEFORE my tram - and enjoyed watching globules of water forming on top of the small pile of snow on the pedestrian crossing button mechanism on the lamppost at which I stood as I breathed out over it in a steady fashion, whilst simultaneously deriving pleasure from the intricate uniqueness of each of the snowflakes I was melting and thinking how the other people at the tram stop probably thought I was a complete weirdo, breathing out so concentratedly at a small pile of snow.

I am clearly deranged. I shall stop wittering on now. A la prochaine, mes chers!