No catchy title today

Well, I suppose I need to apologise for going 4 days without posting. It sounds a bit lame to say that we've been busy at this time of year, since everyone else says the same thing. But Wednesday saw the Carol Service at the Colwall Church, being the Christmas breakup. Joanna and I joined a few of the other Community Choir people helping out with some of the carols etc. Thursday was the work Christmas party at The Nags Head, which was good too. And in the morning, I was inducted into the gym at work. The explanations and program design took some time, so I didn't get any exercise: that meant that the treadmills called me back for Friday morning. Thursday and Friday mornings were frosty - white roads, sometimes sprinkled with salt and grit. Thursday was also playgroup for Christopher in the afternoon.

Today Berenice went for a walk with the Footpath Society, and the rest of us went for a drive to Cirencester. We didn't get a lot done, but found the Corinium Museum rather interesting. Stephanie and Helen took turns trying out Roman soldier accessories. Adults could spend longer, but the combination of 9, 7, and 1 year old didn't have quite the longevity. And I should mention that we didn't really find the Black Horse Inn to be a very good place for lunch - very slow service, and fish fingers and crumbed fish both very overcooked, and peas cold. The worst part was when the barmaid protested she'd warned us that the food would take 40 minutes, when in fact she'd told us 20 minutes. Presumably others will have better reports, but left a bad taste in my mouth (figuratively, at least).

Tomorrow (Sunday) four of us will leave home at 4am to get to Bristol Airport by 6am to fly out at 8am to Saariselkä for our 3-day/2-night Santa Magic experience in Lapland. (Or should it be Lappland?) The laptop isn't coming, so we'll have to save up all the pictures and stories for Tuesday night or afterwards. Anyone have any last minute (final week?) requests for Santa?

I found myself in an interesting discussion yesterday about writing Eclipse plugins - in particular, for extending an ontology editor that's built on top of Eclipse, using the Jena toolkit. Didn't get into any programming, but might one day.

We tried a couple of vins blanc with our salmon cutlets and rice last night. The 2006 Cave des Vignerons Chablis was quite an acceptable Chardonnay: not as much malolactic buttery/peachy characters as I like, but full of flavour nonetheless. The £12 half bottle of 1999 Château Filhot à Sauternes was scrumptious. It didn't have quite the same marmalade flavours as my favourite sticky at home (whose name escapes me just at the moment), but that's not to say it wasn't as good. I'm not sure that I can compare from this distance, but the full citrus flavours in a smooth liquid gold certainly made for a wonderful finish to the dinner. I wonder if there will be any Finnish wines to taste?