Happy New Year Chris. I am glad you had a good holiday and that Liz was able to join you. We enjoyed our first European Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year. They really seem to like Chistmas in Belgium and decorate everything to the hilt. The Christmas Village and all the decorations in Brussels were really entertaining, as were all the revellers. We spent New Year's Eve at a party held by the French delegation. Nice affair but I will never learn to like caviar. What is the attraction to salty fish eggs?
The former ambassador I replaced has left and I am left to run things now. I am really looking forward to all of this as is Rick. He is heading up to The Hague on Wednesday and I will be in Germany for a couple days. Both of us will be getting intimately familiar with aircraft interiors over the next few years. That is okay. We both love to travel.
In case I should happen to be gone and miss it, I will wish you a happy birthday now. And 40 years of marriage is fantastic. My parents would have been married for 35 years on January 9th. Rick and I will have been married for six years in April. Hardly seems possible that much time has passed.
I wanted to send this link to you. I passed it along to John Bailey and I thought you and Mary might enjoy it as well. It is to a live journal from a young guy out in San Francisco and contains photos he has taken of flowers and other botanicals. His photography is stunning.
One of the highlights of my visits to Moscow was always the banquets with caviar canapés washed down with vodka. Food of the gods! But maybe it's as well that you don't like it, because I heard on the radio news today that there is a serious problem of overfishing for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, and that caviar production needs to be drastically curtailed.
Good luck with all your upcoming trips, and thanks for the joeysplanting link. He certainly takes excellent photos. When we're in Cape Town next month we plan to spend a day at the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. I expect I'll take plenty of photos there, though not up to his standard.
The former ambassador I replaced has left and I am left to run things now. I am really looking forward to all of this as is Rick. He is heading up to The Hague on Wednesday and I will be in Germany for a couple days. Both of us will be getting intimately familiar with aircraft interiors over the next few years. That is okay. We both love to travel.
In case I should happen to be gone and miss it, I will wish you a happy birthday now. And 40 years of marriage is fantastic. My parents would have been married for 35 years on January 9th. Rick and I will have been married for six years in April. Hardly seems possible that much time has passed.
I wanted to send this link to you. I passed it along to John Bailey and I thought you and Mary might enjoy it as well. It is to a live journal from a young guy out in San Francisco and contains photos he has taken of flowers and other botanicals. His photography is stunning.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/joeysplanting/
Have a great week.
Tim
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One of the highlights of my visits to Moscow was always the banquets with caviar canapés washed down with vodka. Food of the gods! But maybe it's as well that you don't like it, because I heard on the radio news today that there is a serious problem of overfishing for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, and that caviar production needs to be drastically curtailed.
Good luck with all your upcoming trips, and thanks for the joeysplanting link. He certainly takes excellent photos. When we're in Cape Town next month we plan to spend a day at the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. I expect I'll take plenty of photos there, though not up to his standard.
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