{"id":2632,"date":"2013-07-06T08:26:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T14:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2632"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:54","slug":"happy-4th-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2632","title":{"rendered":"Happy 4th!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2634\" style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0860.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2634\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2634\" title=\"DSC_0860\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0860-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0860-199x300.jpg 199w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0860.jpg 425w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2634\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smart alecs - when I told them to let me take their picture in front of this pretty tree<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Happy 4th of July! We had a nice day &#8211; I used it to catch up on work and write an employee&#8217;s review. It&#8217;s always nice when you have a super employee to write about &#8211; so much easier to do. Afterward, I went to the gym then had lunch with two buddies from Tel Aviv, Mike and Howie, at the Club. The rest of the day was relaxing &#8211; a massage and man-pedi.<\/p>\n<p>Last Sunday was a fun day. Michael, Scott, Laura, and their sweet dog Fenway came over to play board games (well, Fenway just slept and played in the yard). I just watched but thoroughly enjoyed myself. We enjoy having folks over.<\/p>\n<p>Monday was Michael&#8217;s last day at work. I&#8217;m really sad to see him go, although I know he&#8217;s looking forward to being back with his family.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday night we went to a nice dinner at Sandy&#8217;s house to welcome Joe and Julie. Joe and John share an office; Julie just arrived and is really nice. As always, we enjoyed being at Sandy&#8217;s &#8211; good food and good company.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday, the local staff supervisor came to me and said, &#8220;We have an applicant outside, but we don&#8217;t know if he is here for a passport or a visa &#8211; can you come outside?&#8221; So, off I went to see what was going on. Surprise! It wasn&#8217;t a person, but a young goat and his mom! They were just hanging around outside where all of our visa applicants enter the building. I petted his head and scratched around his little stubs of horns. Then I made a fist and pressed it against his forehead &#8211; he started pushing back and trying to butt me&#8230;then he would rear back on his little hind legs and dance around and try to butt me again. I was laughing so hard I was crying! I went back later in the day with Scott and played with him some more &#8211; just hysterical! The guards say he and his mom have been coming around a lot and just hang out in the shade.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, I have the little black and white kitty who I feed outside the Consular section (against the rules&#8230;shhhh). This week, they put a fancy shoe-shine bench right where she normally hangs out &#8211; so now, she thinks the bench is her new bed, with a nice leather cushion on it! She&#8217;s decided that it&#8217;s ok for me to pet her, and she won&#8217;t hardly let me go home. She runs in between my legs and slaps my ankles to get me to stop. She&#8217;ll follow me as far as she can when I go home each day, like a little puppy. So cute.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say, the animals around the Consular section remind me that animals are easy and people are hard!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2635\" style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0861.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2635\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2635\" title=\"DSC_0861\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0861-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0861-199x300.jpg 199w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0861.jpg 425w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2635\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael and Scott<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy 4th of July! We had a nice day &#8211; I used it to catch up on work and write an employee&#8217;s review. It&#8217;s always nice when you have a super employee to write about &#8211; so much easier to do. Afterward, I went to the gym then had lunch with two buddies from Tel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}