October 23, 2009

This past week, the person filling in for the staff member on leave for a year announced that I would be getting a call from a prospective employer for a reference check. We talked about it for a while. Great opportunity - $20,000 per year more than we at our NGO [Non Government Organization] can offer. Young, bright, ambitious, wanting to get married and have some kids. How can I object to that? How can I ruin the opportunity by not supporting them? That is just a lose-lose. No promotion and me working with an angry employee who deserves recognition and an opportunity to better fulfill life dreams! Here we go again!!

The reference check arrived right as scheduled and the formal offer for the job was made the next day! Good for them. Kind of sad for me as the working relationship was just beginning to gel more positively than before.


During the 1st week in November, I will be going to Oklahoma - a spiritual community for me; a church and seminary that I attended in the 1990s. I will lead the Sunday service there, my first ever, other than my seminary completion requirement; although I have done lots of public speaking. The Pulpit has not been my cup of tea. Two hour hell fire and brimstone diatribes during my upbringing and too much orthodoxy come to mind as possible reasons – but my experiences in Africa inspired me to offer to lead the service the only Sunday I will be there and the church leader accepted my offer. My topic is entitled: The Commandments Revisited. I will also do a session on my Africa trip as a work travelogue and description using the Internet based Picasa web album for my slide show. Then the next day, I will do a workshop-seminar on addiction entitled: Addiction: Unveiling the Tortured Soul of Humanity.

I have done a workshop in this community each year for the past 4 years and this year is a busy one with the three offerings during the week that I am there. My best friend there and one of the important the reasons I go to visit, is moving to North Carolina in part to be nearer to her daughter and grand daughter. Oh, we will see what the future brings.

Had another lovely hike last week – a great bright, sunny, cool, fall day – probably one of the last as the west coast monsoon seems poised to start on Tuesday with the predictable forecast beyond that date offering rain every day. Such is the season in Vancouver.

I am planning to go to Oaxaca Mexico for Christmas to join my Seattle brother and his wife (Remember from a long time ago I have seven brothers who live all over Canada and the US) who are studying Spanish there as of November 6 in preparation for working as English as a 2nd language teachers there soon. My NY- NJ brother will join us there. I will fly from Seattle and take Linden, my dependent niece with me. I booked the flights and paid for them on Wednesday so the die is cast! Haley, my older niece, will join from her work in Northern California as will my brother from Jersey City. That will be our third Christmas together in Mexico. Baja was first, followed by Buscerias, just north of Puerto Vallarta the second year.