Back from LA

I'm trying to keep up with Hector's movements on the other side of the world but since he's going to bed as I'm getting up and taking flights at all hours it's pretty hard. I send him a good morning email as I'm going to bed and vice versa. He told me he was walking through the Dubai airport last night and out of nowhere heard someone shout "Hector!" It was a former Harcourt employee who used to be head of the International Division. So they chatted a bit and are going to get together for coffee later.

I just returned from LA where I went for the weekend to visit with my nieces, Rohanna and Hari. Ro is breathtakingly pregnant. You can almost see the baby's face pushing through her belly. Had dinner with them & their mom, Sophia, and Tom, the baby daddy, at Parc in Hollywood. Good food, fun atmosphere but very loud. I hate to say it but I'm too old for those places. After dinner, I walked back to my hotel, The Renaissance Hollywood, just a couple of blocks away, past the amazing freak show that is Hollywood Blvd at 10pm on Saturday. On one corner, a bunch of hip hop kids performing for tips next to a group of Christian something-or-others singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus. I kid you not.

I also worked on Saturday for Mary Carlisle Blakeley, my old customer on Rodeo Drive I've known for 20 years. Mr Blakeley, her wonderful 97 yr old husband, has died and she had a bad fall 2 weeks ago that left her pretty banged up. But she was outside with me as I built some shelves in the garage: sweeping up, shoving old rotten fainting couches out of the way. Her old mausoleum of a house is just falling down around her ears but still she's talking about pulling it all together to have dinner parties, maybe even replacing the old burned-up Rolls Royce... This morning she showed me a gold ring given to her by Anna Q. Nilsson, a silent screen star in the 20's! Really, when she goes, she must surely be the last of that era. It's hard not to be taken aback when she starts talking about swimming at the Basil Rathbones' and visiting San Simeon with Marion Davies.

Off to Istanbul

The school quarter is winding down, only ten more days to go. But the assignments are becoming more fevered and frequent. Big lesson plans due, papers on foreign cultures, final exams. Keeping my head above water, though. I might actually make an A or two.

I've got the dreaded nasty-cold-that-you-thought-was-over-but-came-back-a-month-later that everyone seems to have. Just when San Diego was ready to come out into the sunshine, we're struck down again.

Hector leaves tomorrow for an extended work trip to the mideast that, by all that is right, I should be accompanying him on. He goes to Kuwait, Dubai & Abu Dhabi, and then Istanbul, where I'll join him next weekend when classes are done. We'll spend a week exploring, eating yummy food, smoking water pipes and whirling in circles with long, white skirts on.