{"id":2649,"date":"2013-07-21T10:34:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T16:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2649"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:54","slug":"more-goodbyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2649","title":{"rendered":"More goodbyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2651\" style=\"width: 273px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0818.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2651\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2651\" title=\"DSC_0818\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_0818-263x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"263\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0818-263x300.jpg 263w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_0818.jpg 563w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2651\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">With Brett<\/p><\/div>\n<p>So I had several more goodbyes to say this week, and it doesn&#8217;t get any easier! Brett, one of my favorite employees left. We had a good dinner at Manhattan with a group of friends to commemorate the occasion Friday night, preceded by drinks at our house. Brett will be sorely missed &#8211; he&#8217;s just a good, calm, all-&#8217;round guy. A huge thunderstorm moved through during the night and I was worried that his plane couldn&#8217;t take off, but it did. The humidity is so thick right now, it feels like you are swimming in it, so the evening and morning rains have been welcomed.<\/p>\n<p>(To a point, anyway. Our consular section is downhill and usually floods. Our facilities group has built a lot of drains that have helped keep us dry this monsoon season, but the &#8220;creek&#8221; that runs alongside our waiting area has caused extensive flood damage. The other day it looks like a dirty, fast river overflowing the banks.)<\/p>\n<p>Tonight I went to dinner with Barb and Edward to say goodbye to our friend and security officer, John. I met him at FSI last summer and have enjoyed occasional dinners throughout the year. We went to a nice Italian place that had surprisingly good pizza.<\/p>\n<p>Last Sunday was nice, even though John wasn&#8217;t here. I&#8217;ve started a little ritual of going to the Afghan bakery for fresh goat cheese, crackers, biscotti, flowers and milk. Last week, I stopped by the Gloria Jean&#8217;s for a latte, since John wasn&#8217;t here to brew me a cup of his good coffee. After a stop at the commissary and to a fabric shop to indulge my linen crazing, I settled in for more episodes of &#8220;Downton Abbey.&#8221; (I watched a lot of &#8220;Downton Abbey&#8221; this week, I have to admit!)<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was another rainy morning. I worked all day, stopping for lunch at the Club with Carla and Mike &#8211; two other folks I hate to have to say goodbye to. Carla&#8217;s been a good shopping buddy and confidante &#8211; I hope our paths cross again.<\/p>\n<p>For some reason, Flavie has been intrigued by the geckos in our house. She watched a baby gecko intently the other night, but couldn&#8217;t get close enough to it to catch it. The next night, though, she deposited a tiny one on the TV room rug as a gift for me. Thank you, mighty huntress.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I had several more goodbyes to say this week, and it doesn&#8217;t get any easier! Brett, one of my favorite employees left. We had a good dinner at Manhattan with a group of friends to commemorate the occasion Friday night, preceded by drinks at our house. Brett will be sorely missed &#8211; he&#8217;s just [&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\/2649"}],"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=2649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3514,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}