~ ANNE! ~

Argh! Why did the Canadian dollar pick this PARTICULAR YEAR to get all strong against the pound sterling?? What is with this? Suddenly each of my pounds is worth $2.00 instead of $2.50 and I am not impressed.

The most annoying thing is that this did not even occur to me until Lucy from work mentioned something. She�s transferring a swack of money now before the rate gets worse. What a fella shoulda done (as my dad would say) is take out travellers� cheques over the summer before the exchange rate got less favourable. In fact, I think I will do that now. I�ll take out as much as I can afford in Canadian dollar travellers� cheques and then if the rate drops further I won�t lose out quite as much.

I never thought I would be all upset because the Canadian dollar was doing well for once� but there you are. My timing is impeccable as always.

This is what I have chosen to have for the work Christmas Lunch:

Vegetarian haggis filo basket with parsnip crisps and redcurrant reduction.(v)

Pan seared escalope of Lothian turkey, chestnut and onion mash topped with a cranberry and apple chutney and port jus.

and I am debating between

Christmas pudding with brandy caramel sauce
and
Howies infamous banoffi pie for dessert. The pie is on the list solely because I would like to know how a piece of pie manages to become infamous. Has it been robbing banks or something? And for that matter, what is so great about Lothian turkey? Or are they just reassuring us that they weren�t imported from Asia?

They also have cranachan which I like and may never get again, but the above two are the front-runners. Will probably just go for the Christmas pudding on the grounds that it�s traditional and I�ve never tried it, but will be very annoyed if I hate it. Brandy caramel sauce sounds promising, though.

Yes, work is boring at the moment. How did you guess? This menu was the sole topic of discussion all morning.

I have been having a super good hair day for the last two days and wish I knew why. It is useless to me on an ordinary November Thursday, but if I could work out the factors involved maybe I could recreate it when it would actually be helpful � Saturday night, for example. (Kelly is leaving town and the girls are going out on the pull. Okay, not really, but we are going out for the first time in months and THAT is when a good hair day would come in handy). Very strange, though: this never happens and I normally stand out like a hick Canuck in a sea of poker-haired Edinburgh girls.

I have just discovered that Tunnocks makes a dark-chocolate-covered Caramel Wafer! Uh-oh�

Happy Birthday to Brandon today! Who actually gets his birthday off work, the lucky rat. He�s got his brother visiting as well and it looks like a nice day� so here�s to a good one. We�re headed to a ceilidh tonight to celebrate.

PS. Suddenly it's snowing! It seriously went from absolutely dry to a couple of inches of snow on the ground in half an hour. Everyone in the office is super-excited (I'm afraid I am a bit jaded by snow, myself) and it does look pretty. A bit worried about getting home, though - this city practically shuts down given one centimeter of snow.