{"id":2169,"date":"2012-10-06T21:41:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T03:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:36:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:36:14","slug":"life-in-the-fast-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2169","title":{"rendered":"Life in the fast lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2170\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/car.png\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2170\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2170\" title=\"car\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/car-280x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/car-280x300.png 280w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/car.png 374w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2170\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Don&#39;t give John any ideas!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The highlight of my week was buying a car &#8211; it&#8217;s a cute little SUV. It&#8217;s fun to have my own wheels! It&#8217;s still an adjustment to remember to stay on the left side of the road&#8230;and to remember which side of the car the driver&#8217;s side is on, but I&#8217;m learning!<\/p>\n<p>This was a busy and fun week. Last Sunday morning, we went to Rick and Sarah&#8217;s for a yummy brunch with homemade waffles. I enjoyed chatting with a woman who is visiting them &#8211; she is here for a couple of weeks working with an NGO. We were able to walk to their house because they live right behind us &#8211; there&#8217;s a gate in between us (sort of like Mom and Aunt Bonnie&#8217;s set-up). We had met them briefly because they were in Jerusalem when we were in Tel Aviv &#8211; a very nice couple.<\/p>\n<p>Monday I had lunch with Barbara from the German Embassy &#8211; I had also met her in Tel Aviv last year when we were both working there. She is lots of fun, and I hope to see more of her.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday night we took Rick out for his birthday &#8211; we went to a great Moroccan restaurant at the Serena. Even though the restaurants don&#8217;t serve alcohol, some places allow you to bring your own bottle of wine, which is nice. Rick has become a good friend &#8211; and there is also an Israel connection with him: we met his girlfriend last year because she is serving in Jerusalem. Small world.<\/p>\n<p>Friday night was a big management section cookout after work in one of the courtyards at the Embassy &#8211; lots of folks turned out for burgers and beer &#8211; a good way to end the week!<\/p>\n<p>I have an update on the celosia plant from last week&#8217;s post. My friend Joan wrote to say, &#8220;Actually the\u00a0celosia\u00a0is an amaranth which is native to Latin America. \u00a0The greens are edible and very nutritious. I always referred to this species as &#8220;brain flower.&#8221; Maybe I&#8217;ll cook up some of the greens!<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Joan, she has concluded her chemo treatments and had her surgery last Thursday, and it sounds like she is doing great! She was home after just a short time in the hospital, and was already planning a walk around the neighborhood when she emailed me \u00a0&#8211; she&#8217;s really amazing. Here&#8217;s to a speedy recovery!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The highlight of my week was buying a car &#8211; it&#8217;s a cute little SUV. It&#8217;s fun to have my own wheels! It&#8217;s still an adjustment to remember to stay on the left side of the road&#8230;and to remember which side of the car the driver&#8217;s side is on, but I&#8217;m learning! This was [&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":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}