{"id":554,"date":"2009-11-08T11:48:46","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T17:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=554"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:36:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:36:45","slug":"happy-birthday-mr-crippen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday, Mr. Crippen!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-556\" title=\"020x\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/020x.jpg\" alt=\"020x\" width=\"336\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/020x.jpg 336w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/020x-224x300.jpg 224w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Thursday was John&#8217;s birthday, and he had a really good day! We had a huge cake to celebrate with the visa section (made by our friend Sharapova), then we went out to dinner with Teresa, Michael, Keith and Whitney at Corralito&#8217;s &#8211; the manager, Raul, made John a special plate for his birthday pie (made by another friend from work). It was great to see John having such a good time!<\/p>\n<p>It was a busy week all around. Last Sunday, we spent all morning cleaning out closets to start getting ready for our move. In the late afternoon, we went to Kerry&#8217;s house, where she had a huge spread of Jamaican food (including an oxtail dish that was good) &#8211; we yakked and ate for a while, then came home to relax and watch an episode of &#8220;Rome.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Monday was a holiday to celebrate Day of the Dead. I celebrated by running a bunch of errands in El Paso &#8211; I love the Mexican holidays, because in El Paso, it&#8217;s business as usual, so I was able to start accumulating medical records from my doctor&#8217;s office.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday was the day that would not end! Erik and I left the Consulate at 6 AM and didn&#8217;t get back until well after 8 PM that night &#8211; we drove seven hours south to pick up an American woman and her two sons who ended up destitute down there and needed to get home. We brought them to a shelter in Juarez,\u00a0where they stayed until we were able to take them to El Paso on\u00a0Thursday to put them on a bus heading north.<\/p>\n<p>Work during the week was busy &#8211; the death toll in Juarez is now over 2000 this year, so some of that number\u00a0are inevitably Americans. It keeeps us busy in the office.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday, John flew to Las Vegas for a magic convention. I spent all day at the Consulate, helping with the holdiay bazaar. After 12 hours of straight work there, I was glad to get home last night and have a nice bubble bath and a glass of wine!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-559\" title=\"008x\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/008x.jpg\" alt=\"008x\" width=\"448\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/008x.jpg 448w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/008x-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Sharapova and Balbina serve up John&#8217;s cake at work<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-558\" title=\"024x\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/024x2.jpg\" alt=\"024x\" width=\"336\" height=\"391\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/024x2.jpg 336w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/024x2-257x300.jpg 257w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Day of the Dead<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday was John&#8217;s birthday, and he had a really good day! We had a huge cake to celebrate with the visa section (made by our friend Sharapova), then we went out to dinner with Teresa, Michael, Keith and Whitney at Corralito&#8217;s &#8211; the manager, Raul, made John a special plate for his birthday pie (made [&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\/554"}],"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=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}