It's a grey, rainy day here in London. It's gotten cold enough that it's window scraping time in the morning. Skip and I have both been surprised that London has turned out to be so much colder than Duesseldorf was. I have to run some errands in this rain and I'll be sporting my Wellies boots purchased for a very low price at our local Aldi. Living in Northern Europe for these last couple of years has really boosted my supply of foul weather gear. Scarves, hats, boots, jackets--we're ready for whatever.

I am in awe of the people who are still biking through all this weather. I'm afraid to ride my bike in London traffic in good weather, yet there are folks who are still just pedaling away through the traffic and the cold and the rain. They are far more impressive than I am. She who gets her exercise on an elliptical machine in a temperature-controlled gym. The hard core biker people most likely would not want to be my friends.

Maddie is enjoying her Advent calendar each morning. Only in the month of December do you get to wake up and have a piece of chocolate each morning for breakfast.

Earlier this week I hit the big mall to do some Christmas shopping. The big sale item here in London are party dresses. "Fancy dress" parties are big holiday events here--at least they were until the "credit crunch". I'm guessing that people have fewer fancy dress parties and/or are wearing last year's dress to this year's parties. But if you are headed out to such a party this year, you could get a really good deal on a dress. I don't think I've been to a fancy dress party since the New Year's Eve party where I met Skip 13 years ago.

One of the big promoted Christmas gifts here is the ABBA version of Singstar for Playstation. That coupled with the release of the Mama Mia video just in time for Christmas, means you can't go very long without hearing an ABBA song. That can be a good or bad thing depending on your preferences. They do love their ABBA here.