From dinner with love! But I didn't like that horse thing and rather find the scheduling the right thing to do. So there is a good reason for a long discussion and a bottle of wine. I sent your solution approach to her and will not step down until she drops the horse thing. ;-)
Actually I approached the scheduling by calculating a stop-over in Samoa, as they skipped Dec 30th 2011 and then cross the date line, as Jan 1st 2012 was a Sunday... But still gotta figure that one out.
Cheers and thanks for the dinner,
Denis