“Guatemala City and San Francisco”
We headed to the airport on Tuesday morning – me to travel to Guatemala City for work, and Diana to visit her Mom in San Francisco. Both of our flights were on time and smooth. I enjoyed dinner with our leader for the Guatemala business and called it an early night. I visited my favourite breakfast place, Saul’s Bistro, the next morning and noticed that the tables were built on old sewing machine pedal mounts – very clever.
Damon and Doug traveled with me and we had meetings all day on Wednesday, followed by a team dinner. We did take a break for a yummy Greek lunch – I really like this place and have eaten there each time we visit.
Another break in the afternoon for the COVID tests necessary to regain entry to the United States. I chuckled at the name of the facility:
The team dinner was at a fancy steak house – Jorge’s steak came with some kind of smoky presentation, and Doug certainly got a lot of meat. His father was a butcher and so he enjoys his steak.
After dinner, we were teasing Damon about having selected such an early flight. So early that his car was arriving at 4am. We should have kept quiet! I woke at 2:30am to discover that American Airlines had canceled my 10am flight back to Dallas and booked me on the same flight the next day. That wouldn’t have been awful, but necessitated getting a new COVID test etc. I really didn’t relish having to fill out all the forms and going through that again. I was able to book a seat on the 6am flight to Miami and then an onward flight to Dallas. This meant – you guessed it – I had to share Damon’s 4am car. That and wake up Doug and get him organized with a new flight to Austin from Miami. This sign in the Miami airport reminded me to go with the flow and relax:
I was home at 5pm, not too much later than on my originally planned flight, just with a much earlier start. Whew – early to bed. I did notice this large, broken tree limb hanging in our yard before bed. The storm that caused our flight cancellation must have been a pretty good one. The upside is that branch needed to come down anyway as it was over the pool and spoiling the sun bathing area.
I met one of our Board members for lunch at Snuffer’s on Friday. This is a place that I used to visit regularly 30 or more years ago – but I hadn’t been in quite a while. The burger and chicken sandwich are just as good as they always were, and the cheese fries just as ridiculous.
Finn and I met at Fork and Spoon for Thai food on Saturday. He entertained me with a story about all the shoppers complaining about how much food prices have increased. “It’s just basic economics – if diesel doubles in price, then some of that has to be passed along to the consumer.” We tried to get him signed up for health benefits, but the system had him locked and we’ll deal with that when they open on Monday.
Saturday was a busy day in Pacifica. Diana and Clorinda watched two baseball games in the morning – Massimo and Luciano’s teams. Then they hosted a party for Alicia’s birthday. The weather was cooperative and so everyone was able to enjoy the deck and the view.
Fortunately there is plenty of room for parking:
The hoodlums from up the hill had fun in a tree – even Frankie in her party dress.
And of course pictures with Mom (favourite daughter and son):
Diana reports a really lovely event. So exciting that it was close to midnight before she could get Clorinda to bed.
My book this week was “French Braid” by Anne Tyler. If you are a regular reader, you know how much I admire Tyler’s ability to capture the day to day normality of families, with great characters.
“French Braid” is her latest offering, and I found it a bit disappointing. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, or have read too many of her books in the recent past, but it just felt plodding and a bit boring. I needed some more excitement and action of some kind. I know that’s not her thing, but this one just needed something to spice it up a bit. I didn’t even have a dog-eared page to share.
Saul’s Bistro in Guatemala always has an interesting soundtrack playing. I heard this when enjoying breakfast. Such an interesting cover:
I checked out some more of Kent’s music – some good French songs:
Vince told me he was enjoying this album on the deck of his lake house. I decided to check it out. Great jazz music:
And finally some wonderful Tom Petty:
Stay safe, compassionate and kind to everyone!