I had hoped to keep the blog going while we were on vacation (1 to 13 December on the Celebrity Silhouette) but with one thing or another … just didn’t happen. The second day on board I looked at my tablet and thought … do I want to stay inside and type? … or should I be enjoying the sunshine, shipboard fun, and beaches that only comes around once a year? Enjoying myself won out and what a time we had!! So good that we have already booked the same trip for next November. Getting back was a little bit of a downer … white knuckle driving from Toronto to London in blowing snow and ice … but getting home is always good too. And we picked up Zeke the Dog the next day … he enjoyed his vacation in the doggie hotel as well, but seemed pretty happy to see us. Plus, after eating shipboard meals I finally got to cook again … don’t get me wrong … the meals on board Silhouette were excellent … but I love to cook and the first week back we had a sirloin roast for Sunday dinner, curries, stews, savoury pies, Mediterranean Chicken, and fresh pasta with Italian meat sauce throughout the week. Kelly and I caught up on our foreign Netflix series … Belgian series like season 2 of The Break … quite the ending, very surprising … Unite 42, a police crime series with a different story every week … season 1 of Undercover (French and Dutch) police agents trying to catch the kingpin of dealing ecstasy . . . And we just started that last night … and Deep, a French mini-series (only 3 episodes) which was excellent. I’ve started catching up on writing reviews of Netflix foreign shows … I’ve done the French and Belgian ones … but I’m still working on Spanish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Finnish series … I guess I didn’t realize how much work this was going to take. I’ve started a new language … Filipino … so I’m now up to 16 languages … not fluent by any means, but I can read most foreign newspapers and I watch shows on Netflix in the original language with English subtitles. Christmas came and went … we had our traditional dinner of steak, shrimp, and scallops … and I’ll probably do a tourtiere for New Years day with maybe a seafood chowder. Today’s the last regular NFL games – I hope my Seahawks can beat San Francisco tonight. Have a great week … and I hope to see you back next year!!