Sorry not to have written in a while, but at least my roommate Diana has finally contributed to the website journals without having to be physically threatened.

As Diana mentions in her last journal entry, I have been away in Wales, then England, for the past week. Wales was to visit my grandfather, and England was to attend my grandmother's funeral. She had been very sick for a while, but losing her just sucks. I am sure that many people can commiserate.

Death, however inevitable, is still an awful awful thing to have happen to a loved one. I am just happy that she is finally in a better place. Her dementia probably frustrated her just as much as it did her relatives. I always remember when she was younger and came to see us in Canada, she even came to watch my soccer matches.

The only good thing about the visit was the chance to gather together with family. It is very sad that now funerals seem to be the only time that the whole family gathers together.

At least before I left Norway for the U.K., we managed to put together a traditional Canadian Thanksgiving dinner. Amy, D and I decided to have the meal the weekend before, so that we could all be together for the event. We would have loved to invite the whole team over, but unfortunately food here is in much the same price range as gold is on the stock market, so we narrowed our guest list down to three. We had Mari, Hege and Lene over for the meal, and we chose them because all three have gone way out of their way to make we foreigners feel at home here.

We had wanted to thank them since we had arrived, so what better time to invite them for a thank-you meal than Thanksgiving dinner? Mind you, we were very nervous that the meal was going to be a disaster. Among our problems was that I was in charge of roasting the chicken and the preparation of the gravy. Amy was in charge of veggies, but In my managerial role as "keeper of the chicken," I still asked Amy to check with her hand inside the chicken for any giblets.

D meanwhile, was in charge of making the stuffing and desserts. And, I am happy to report that the meal was eventually a total success. Despite a couple of melt-downs and panic attacks, I only had to call my mother three times for advice. The whole process was wonderful for such an amazing roast- look at the pictures!!!!!!

Congratulations to my teammates for defeating Kolbolten in the league, without me. Their victory made my bad day much, much better.

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