I hope that your holidays were wonderful.  I thoroughly enjoyed the week of 
vacation that I took before Christmas.  It was fun to be home with the 
children, although I certainly worked hard -- up every night until very late 
either baking or wrapping gifts or writing notes on last minute Christmas 
cards.  

I plan to be in the London office next week.  I will leave Houston on Sunday 
evening and will arrive in London Monday morning.  After a stop by the hotel, 
I should be in the office after lunch.  I plan to be there through Thursday, 
and will fly back to Houston on Friday morning.  

I have a number of things planned to review with Mike Jordan.  Some of the 
major goals for the trip are:

 to review Mike Jordan's action plan to move the close and officialization of 
London books to same  day,

 to replicate an Operational Risk information session for London counterparts 
(we are doing this in Houston  on January 11 for managers and above within 
Operations for EA, EGM and EIM),

 to discuss the Doorstep process with Mike's business controllers in the 
London office who will participate in  Doorstep reviews this year, 

 to discuss with Mark Pickering the technology dependencies of the London 
office related to speeding up  London's information for the corporate DPR

I also plan to visit with Mike on the feasibility of utilizing our 
operational pricing model in London and his thoughts on CommodityLogic and 
other ideas around potential commercialization of mid and back office 
services.  Mike also has some members of the London team that he would like 
for me to meet.  

Other things planned are spending some time with Beth Apollo and Ted Murphy.  
Ted and I will have a conference call with Shona and Cassandra (and team) for 
a download on the New York metals Doorstep review that is taking place this 
week.  

I would welcome your participation in any or all of the above.  In addition, 
I hope that you may have some time for the two of us to touch base.  Also, if 
you have an opening for lunch or dinner, do let me know.  I have been in the 
throws of bonus allocations this week, but hope that today I can start to 
finalize my calendar for next week.  --Sally