Hello Everyone! Hope you are all doing well. Another day in Athens...today the maintenance people came to the house to hang a few mirrors. They used nails and screws so I tried with mixed success. Instead of destroying the walls I am just going to wait until the hooks arrive. I finished another book today and my supple has almost been depleted so it looks like Amazon is going to be getting a bit more money from me.

Well last night David and I saw some real Christmas trees for sale in Papagou. We are still trying to decide between a fake tree and a real tree but will be buying one or the other tonight finally.

I got some news from the Embassy today that we will not be getting our mattress until Friday now. I am more than a bit irritated by this development. Yesterday when the mattress did not arrive I had David go down and talk to the Customs guys who called the moving company who told them that it was not even cleared through Customs yet. Why did they tell us on Friday that it would be arriving on Monday you ask? Because this is Greece and it takes a couple of tries to get a straight answer. Needless to say I phoned the moving company back in DC and let them know that I did not appreciate the misinformation and we would be expecting straight answers from now on. God help them if that mattress does not come in the same condition it left over two months ago. Ok enough of that...

I am going to start making Christmas cookies next week. If anyone has some good recipes please send them my way. I am going to try to make at least 5 kinds and could use some suggestions. I am going to make the standards: sugar, gingerbread, those ones with the little peanut butter cup pressed in the center and the ones with a Hershey's kiss pressed in the center but could use a few more ideas.

Well it is a pretty dreary day here but I still need to get out for a run. I have been doing 45 minutes of running/walking 30 minutes of which is devoted to running. It has been hard to get the motivation since I lost Vicki my running partner back to the States for the holiday but I am doing my best. I am over the initial hard part which are those first few days when you are really sore and you suddenly realize how out of shape you are. Now I can tell it is starting to pay off.

Hope you are all have a wonderful week! Love from Athens.....