{"id":339,"date":"2009-02-08T18:26:35","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T00:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:37:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:37:06","slug":"cowgirl-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Cowgirl up!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-340\" title=\"042\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/042.jpg\" alt=\"042\" width=\"428\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/042.jpg 428w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/042-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 428px) 100vw, 428px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I was livin&#8217; the dream this weekend at a west Texas ranch &#8211; our friends Reid and Katherine invited us to their family&#8217;s ranch out near Marfa for the weekend. We drove out Friday night and came back on Sunday. Reid treated me to a horseback ride that I thoroughly enjoyed &#8211; he even rustled up boots and spurs for me. Katherine was a cooking machine, so when we weren&#8217;t riding or out for a walk, we were eating great food. They were wonderful hosts and we enjoyed every minute of it!<\/p>\n<p>My favorite thing was being outside, of course. I got up this morning and went for\u00a0a walk &#8211; I saw 14 wild turkeys and two deer. The sky and light out there is just gorgeous.<\/p>\n<p>Reid and Katherine also had their cute two-year-old daughter Stella and their big ol&#8217; cat, Max. Max is more like a dog than a cat. On the way out of town on Friday, we stopped at Sonic for a quick bite. We sat outside at a picnic table, and Max just sat in his cat carrier with his head poked out of the top to look around. He&#8217;s great.<\/p>\n<p>We had a good week otherwise, too. Last Sunday, we went to Michael and Teresa&#8217;s for a SuperBowl party (I actually watched the game). Monday was a Mexican holiday, so we dropped off a load of TDYers over to the outlet mall, then sped back to Juarez to make two runs to the airport&#8230;then back to El Paso to pick up the shoppers and stop at Wal-Mart, too. Whew.<\/p>\n<p>John&#8217;s great smoke-out continued this week with an incredible salmon. I am getting used to this!<\/p>\n<p>Work was busy, as usual. Some of you may have heard about a Foreign Service Officer being found dead in his home in Ethiopia &#8211; we didn&#8217;t know him, but have mutual friends. We&#8217;re still waiting to hear what&#8217;s up with that. Very sad.<\/p>\n<p>For photos from west Texas, including turkeys, deer, Max the Cat and Stella, <a href=\"http:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/ramona.crippen\/AtTheRanch#\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-341\" title=\"057\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/057.jpg\" alt=\"057\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/057.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/057-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Dinner on the porch with Reid, Stella and Katherine<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was livin&#8217; the dream this weekend at a west Texas ranch &#8211; our friends Reid and Katherine invited us to their family&#8217;s ranch out near Marfa for the weekend. We drove out Friday night and came back on Sunday. Reid treated me to a horseback ride that I thoroughly enjoyed &#8211; he even rustled [&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\/339"}],"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=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}