John and I are enjoying a few days of vacation in sunny San Diego with our good friends from Little Rock, Huey and Suzanne. (The real reason we came out here was to see their fabulous dogs, two mini-Schnauzers – but don’t tell Huey and Suzanne!) We flew in Saturday morning – how wonderful to see the ocean, palm trees and lots of green! We took a drive to see some sights – including a seal! – and dipped our toes in the ocean. It’s really gorgeous here.
Today we had a picnic and walked around in Balboa Park, followed by a trip to a wonderful used book store. The best part of the trip is visiting with good friends over a bottle of wine, while enjoying Huey’s efforts at the grill!
Last Sunday, John returned from his trip to Dallas to see his friend Russ. We watched “Under the Same Moon,” a rather sympathetic look at immigration with some great characters.
Monday night, we hosted John’s book club. It was a small turnout but a good discussion of Jeffrey Sach’s “End of Poverty” – the first of the book club books I actually read. The basis of the book is how to end not poverty in general, but extreme poverty – and how the developed countries of the world have the resources but not the political will to do it.
The rest of the week was just work-oriented, but we did have a fun impromptu happy hour at our house with our FSO neighbors one night. Teresa and Michael are feeding Flavie for us while we’re gone.
We took Friday off, which was great. I had a check-up with a doctor in El Paso, then dropped off the Volvo at a mechanic’s shop to have some work done. I was thrilled this week because our new neighbor Lara helped me get set up with easy pass tickets to get the Volvo over the bridge without waiting in line for hours.
Friday night we met our co-worker Beth and her husband Tom for dinner at Los Bichis – it turned out to be a celebratory dinner because she just found out that she got Frankfurt, Germany, as her second tour assignment – one of her top choices. Lots of our peers are getting their next assignments now, and so far the news is all good. John and I won’t bid until this winter, so we have a while to go yet.
OK, enough work for now. Time to get back to relaxing on Huey and Suzanne’s patio with the doggies!