Traveling

We are entering a short stretch with lots of travel. Sunday I'm going to London to see about my eyes. Expect to come back early the following week. A friend at the British embassy connected me with a retired couple who have a London flat they rent to British diplomats. They made an exception for me. So I will be staying in Pimlico, SW1, and riding the tube around. The over Thanksgiving is our annual happy confluence of holidays -- we have six days off, starting with Thanksgiving Day. We'll come back to work on Wednesday. We're tentatively planning to take a five day trip to Sharm al-Sheik, Eqypt, right at the point of the Sinai peninsula. That's still tentative. Alma, our friend who owns a travel agency, found out about it. We're waiting to see if there is enough interest. Dec. 5 - 12 we'll be in Baku, Azerbaijan. Cindy is going to be part of an OECD anticorruption assessment trip with people from the EU and I don't know who else. I'll just be a tagalong tourist. (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). OECD is headquartered in Paris, and Cindy is supposed to go to a followup meeting there in March. I'll plan on going with her on that one too.

Our embassy has an OIG team here now for our two-week inspection. Some of the career State people are a little nervous -- it is amazing how the lack of continued job prospects make one have a much more nuanced view of these things. In short, I'm not real worried about it. I figure it is sort of like a professor writing an exam -- he has the option to write one no one can pass, one everyone can pass, or something in between. So we'll see what these folks have in mind.

Weather has been nice -- in the 70s today. Supposed to be near freezing Friday and Saturday mornings.

There is what we call the German store across town near Embassy Row, and I was able to find some cheddar cheese there Sunday. A successful outing. The American embassy is across town from Embassy Row, so I don't make it to the german store much. But this turned out to be well worth the detour.