Bad News and Human Kindness

So yesterday we're preparing to have dinner and I get called down to turn the oven on as it's a bugger to get going. Guess what happens? Indeed, the damn thing won't start at all (the start button's broken) and even rebooting the cooker under the instructions of some repair guy had no effect.

Now the rest of it works, but no oven, and the first opportunity to get it fixed.....next year! So initial thoughts were unsafe for human consumption, like the turkey would have been I guess. So we review our options:

1: Buy new cooker, the cooker we have is a good one, if a bit old, so I was talked out of purchasing a shiny new toy.
2: Get the thing fixed in the New Year and live with it until then. Happy bloody Christmas :P
3: Go to the mountains and forget about it until after Christmas, this may not be possible depending on my job.
4: Ask ze Germans fur ze help. Bingo!!!!!!!!

So I rang our neighbours, John and Sonja (it's -25 and I ain't walking over) to ask for any help they could provide. And so we have the use of their entire kitchen for Christmas Day as they're off to John's brother's for the day. Believe it or not, I'm a sucker for the generosity of some people and it's really cool that we have people like this around us. To be honest, their whole family are really generous - her brother Tony has given me a lift from the bus station a number of times, very nice of him, especially when you consider he's the main bus inspector :)

So while I'm sure we will be posting again before Christmas we wish you all well, and hope you enjoy the Christms shopping. Finished mine today woohoo!