Seasons Greetings!

I officially leave for home for the holidays tomorrow and will most likely not post anything until my return on January 3rd. Therefore I wanted to leave with a parting Christmas story, compliments of the Swiss tradition. This story was told to me by a few Swiss co-workers and friends

Now most people, despite religious backgrounds, know of Santa Claus, Saint Nick, or Samichlaus as he is fondly referred to in Switzerland. Most people do NOT know of Samichlaus’s “helper” Schmutzli. In Switerzland, Samichlaus comes for his visit on December 6th and hands out toys to those kids who had behaved all year-round. At the same time Schmutzli also comes to town, but for other reasons.

Schmutzli is a man dressed in black/brown robes, with a black face, who carries a switch and/or stick and a sack. He is a man who walks with a limp from childhood injuries. He is also a man who snatches naughty children in the middle of the night and takes them to the forest in his sack to be beaten or to be forced to make toys for the good children (the original child laborer). According some to Swiss, he was actually the murderer of three children, who Saint Nick brought back to life.

Needless to say, every Swiss person I talked to was TERRIFIED of Schmutzli growing up (which might explain why everyone here is so well behaved)! In case you don’t believe me, and reject this fable as an Ange story, see for yourself at Wikipedia…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmutzli

Now Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and Behave, or Schmutzli will come and get you!!

Man I am OLD!

On Friday night I went to the KPMG TS Holiday Party and had an AWESOME time. The following Saturday was not so awesome and apparently I wasn’t the only one hurting. So, instead of going out that Saturday evening, we all headed over to the Marks’ house for fondue and college football (compliments of the Slingbox).

After the fondue was finished and football had wrapped up, we decided to play some cards. A few ideas were thrown out, but they were either too involved or too complicated. Anna mentioned a game that she vaguely remembered where the 2 was the highest card, you tired to get rid of all your cads and certain people can make up rules along the way. The game sounded very familiar and it took me about 5 minutes to remember the name…ASS HOLE. I am so ashamed to admit it, but the name of my favorite drinking game, my life line, my claim to fame in college had escaped me. But that is not where my disgrace ended. Oh no! I couldn’t remember all of the rules that I could so fondly recite under any circumstances or conditions just four years prior. So we did what any group of late-twenty-somethings would do…we googled the rules to ASS HOLE. Thank god for Wikipedia.

So embarrassing and such a disgrace to my college education. Mom, dad, I promise those five years weren’t completely wasted. Now please excuse me while I google all of the other games I can no longer remember.