We were supposed to leave Wednesday afternoon to spend the weekend in Chiapas – long story short, the travel gods just weren’t with us, and in the end we opted not to go. When we got to the airport, a huge factory fire was raging across the street and the airport was evacuated. Our friends worked frantically to re-book all of our arrangments and when we went to bed, we thought we were leaving the following morning. Alas, they woke us up around 9:30 PM to say that our return flight had been cancelled. At that point, John and I decided to bow out and go to Plan B.
Plan B was fun! On Friday, we drove up to White Sands National Monument, New Mexico. It was beautifully eerie. On the way home, we found a great little Mexican restaurant in Las Cruces, and, of course, stopped by Coas bookstore.
Saturday morning, we headed to Alpine, Texas, just up the road from Marfa. It’s a sleepy little town and we just goofed off, shopping and eating. We spent the night, and drove back to Juarez this morning. The drive home was beautiful, up through Fort Davis, by the McDonald Observatory, through winding mountain roads.
Last Sunday, John wasn’t feeling well, so I trekked over to El Paso for shopping and to pick up a TDYer at the airport. I finally realized on the way home that I had met this gentleman before – he gave a Foreign Service exam prep session that I attended back when John and I were first trying to get in. He and I stopped by a co-worker’s chili supper on the way to his hotel – yummy.
Monday night, Teresa and I co-hosted a Final Four basketball party. I made a big pot of ancho chile-pork stew and we yakked and pretended to watch the game.
Tuesday was our first day of a new process at work – I’ve been doing the training classes to get ready for it. It went smoothly, and it was a light day. After work, we had a professional development event with a DEA agent – interesting.
On a sad note, Mom had to put her cat Baby to sleep this week. He was 17 years old – she had found him under a bush when he was a kitten. Two days later, our neighbors Michael and Teresa had to put their dog Patty to sleep. So hard to lose a pet.