January 11th – 14th, 2008
Just wanted to post a quick update. We’re still in Mission Viejo, being treated like royalty by Dave. We still have our own bathroom and bedroom, and Dave has made sure we are eating really well every day. We’ve had some awesome meals, both eating out, take-out, and cooking here at the house. He has a charming 2/2 with a loft, a formal dining room, a living room, a big kitchen, and a delightful small back yard. Dave’s got two cats who keep us company while he is at work – Oscar and Felix. Felix has kidney disease, and was given 6 months to live about 2 years ago. He needs all kinds of special treatment, but it hasn’t affected his sweet and affectionate personality at all.
Dave took us out on Lake Mission Viejo one afternoon on a pontoon boat, at sunset. We were only out for an hour, but it was so perfect I couldn’t believe it. It was peaceful and beautiful and gave us a great break – and we love water of nearly any kind!
We’ve spent virtually all our time doing our computer related work. We are finishing up our database and getting our fundraising/newsletter email ready to send out. We will then focus on all the things we need to do to close out our US matters, like closing the bank accounts and so on. We’ve been putting in long and productive days, and we hope to be finished by the end of the week.
We had one sad bit of news – Chelsea’s uncle Bill died rather suddenly – he apparently had brain cancer that had spread so far that there wasn’t any point in doing anything about it except keeping him comfortable. From the time it was diagnosed till the time he died was only about 2-3 weeks. He’s younger than I am, so it was a big shock to everyone. He just died on Friday, and Chelsea will probably try to arrange to attend the memorial service. We are waiting to hear when it will be.
We had a very fun happening over the weekend – my sister Maureen came down from Santa Barbara and spent Saturday and Sunday with us. Dave was awesome – we bought shrimp, top sirloin, veggies, potatoes, and had an amazing barbeque on Saturday night. We barbecued again last night with his sister Katy, and I’m filing away all these delicious food memories to sustain us when are back to living on ramen and beans and rice. It was absolutely wonderful to see Maureen, and rather than be sad about not seeing her for a while, we are making plans to maybe spend a month together at Chitchen Itza in Mexico in July.
We’re off to eat dinner again after a long day of work – tonight we are barbequing veggies. Ahhh, life’s tough sometimes – we are planning on fully enjoying our amazing times here!
Signing off from Mission Viejo…