Well, that's that!

This weekend I'll put away our one Christmas decoration that we had out and that's Christmas done and dusted! We were blessed to be able to spend the holiday season with both of our families this year and we received lots of nice gifts.

On Monday I arrived back from the in laws to a DRY flat. Whew! I was really worried that I'd be cleaning up water all night. We finally got an update from the management company as to what happened with the water pouring into our flat the previous week. Apparently the girl upstairs left her kitchen tap running to keep her pipes from freezing, left for a few days, and it overflowed the sink. Neat! Thanks idiot! We've had some back and forth between the management company, our landlord, and the landlord for the girl upstairs about who is responsible for the repairs, thus dragging out any sort of progress. Hello, why are the innocent victims (i.e. US) being penalized here?? Thankfully, the management company's maintenance guy took pity on us and yesterday we got a brand new cook top, oven, and exhaust hood! We still have stinky carpet, but at least we don't have to eat salads and cold quiche for dinner anymore! Incidentally, they're making the girl pay for the damage which is too right.

Now we're busy dodging water restrictions. The week before Christmas our water was shut off from 7pm until 7am. This week it's 6pm to noon the next day. Fortunately the water in our bathroom comes from a tank, not the mains, so we do have water in there for showers and flushing the loo.

Next up is January which is the single worst month of the year. Even though the days are getting longer you can't tell and it's just cold, dark, and rainy. Of course my birthday month is the following month, but I'm getting too old to look forward to that anymore!