Good times, good food, good friends

Rik here ...

I figured I would catch up on some picture loading and story telling.  

First some shots from the Christmas Eve party we had at the Stubbs.  Good fun had by all.

Next a couple of artsy shots from our Boxing Day walk in Hazelhead Park.  Guess who took those?

And finally some shots from the Snow Ball, which was a load of fun.  It was held at the Beach Ballroom, which is, funnily enough, right on the beach.  Everyone was dressed up - lots of ballgowns for the ladies and tuxedos for the men.  I would say about half were brave enough to do the kilt.  Dinner was quite nice and some decent raffle prizes were awarded.  We kept with our longstanding tradition of never winning anything and left empty handed.  The real fun started up after dinner when the band started playing.  The majority of songs were for traditional Scottish dances.  It was fun to get out there and try and figure out how to do them.  A great many are group dances, so you kind of tucked yourself in on the end and hoped that by the time it got around to you, you had figured it out.  Fiona and I managed quite well to "Strip the Willow" but had a harder time with some of the reels.  These songs are like marathons, they just keep going and going.  You either need to be in good shape or well fortified with your alcohol of choice.

We rounded off our weekend by having the Stubbs over last night.  We broke out the Yahtzee dice (I was the overall champ) and one of our new faves, Pit, a commodities trading game (I ended up looking for a government bailout by the time that was done).  A little vino and a little prosciutto with melon and it made it a pleasant way to ease out of Christmas and back into work.

We had a great "We love Aberdeen" moment tonight.  Getting a little sick of leftover turkey we wandered into downtown, walked past several good restaurants and settled on this nice Italian place that we had been to once before.  Service was great, food was delicious and price was very reasonable.  And we could walk there and back.  Just a nice little reminder of the good thing we can get here.

Cheers,

Rik