Ooh-arrrr, me hearties! Ahoy there from the good ship Blogger, making steady headway in the choppy waters of the Sea of Employment! As I mentioned in my last Captain's (B)log, I got a job. No, really! It's been three weeks now; suddenly my days are a whole lot fuller than they have been in recent months.

I'm working in the Human Resources department of a company based here in Munich, and when the weather gets a little milder I'll be able to cycle to work in under half an hour, which will be nice. If I'm still there in the spring: I'm temping, and currently I'm only on board until the end of February. But we'll see...

But, in other news, I've been making the most of living within spitting distance of the Alps by actually going skiing a few times. I've already been more times this year than I did all of last year, and it's only February! Mind you, my March weekends are pretty much all booked up in the UK, so I'm not sure how much more skiing I'll be getting in this season.

Let's see, what else shall I mention here? Well, the whole inviting-people-to-mine-and-cooking thing is coming along nicely. I've had Bénédicte over; I've had Christian over again; I've had Tom over; and I made a to-die-for tiramisù which I took round to Michaela's for dinner one Sunday.

I've also done some "away" eating, notably at Bezi's house (where Bénédicte & I got to enjoy an authentic couscous cooked by her Moroccan husband Mustafa) and at Harry's house (where he & Dieter cooked up a storm in the form of chicken & chips with oooooodles of cream to make a very naughty but nice sauce), as well as at a fab Afghan restaurant called Lemar, which had a divine beetroot starter that I can't really describe; I'll just to go and eat it again a few times...

The weather here has been properly wintry (although not as extreme as in London and other parts of the British Isles!), with day after day of fat, heavy snowflakes falling through the air and collecting on every available surface. On occasion it's been blowing a gale too, but then on other occasions it's been gloriously sunny - and warm enough for a bike ride along the Isar to the zoo!

It was Ryan's birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I got to enjoy the raucous birthday party in a (hopefully soundproofed) basement bowling alley underneath an Italian restaurant near Michaela's house. It all went very well, considering there were a dozen pre-pubescent lads running around and getting progressively more boisterous.

I dressed up for my first Fasching (=carnival) party of the season on Friday night. It was a fancy-dress party organised by the EPO's social affairs people, where you had to dress as a star. I went as Clint Eastwood, not because I think I look anything like him, but because I've got a poncho (and it's real alpaca wool, don't you know, which I bought in Chile). Bénédicte went as Penélope Cruz. There were lots of people in crazy costumes. And TOO MUCH food!! I was stuffeder than I've been in a veeeery long time.

And Lorna was here briefly this weekend too. She was skiing in Tegernsee, but popped in to have a drink, a meal & a chat. I miss her! I was in her old stomping ground the other day for Susanne's birthday, in The Big Easy, just up the road from where Lorna used to live, and I thought of her then too. She had lots of stories to tell from her three weeks in Mexico & Belize. How jealous was I?! But hey, perhaps 2009 is a year for knuckling down and doing a bit of work.

Which brings me back to my job, and to the fact that it's getting late, and I have to get up for work in the morning, so I think I'll stop there, my dear readers. Tootle-pip!