Dear Everyone,
We are back from Mexico.
This was a pretty placid journey - - I think we were most anxious a week
ago Sunday morning when we got to Midway, and found a long, somewhat
disorganized line for check-in.
Nevertheless, we made it through, and had an uneventful flight to Cancun
and no issues with our transfer to the Club Med.
I had a great time: I was able to exercise every day for
about two hours, went swimming, played petanque, did archery, discussed two
books (Sum and Hadji Murat), teased my nephews, nieces, grandnieces and
nephews, and 1st cousins once removed, had many alcoholic drinks,
and ate too much food. Although I don’t
think the New Year’s Eve dinner was that spectacular, I felt the average meal
this year was excellent. I especially
liked the dinner that had a lot of North African dishes – tagines, harissa,
spiced chickpeas etc. (This reminded me
of muhammarah, and I showed Nicola how to make one version this evening.) Other highlights of the trip - -Jasper doing
the trapeze at the Circus, and doing a release and catch from the bar. Getting third
place in the archery competition. Reading about 7 books. I think our major complaint would be how humid
our bedrooms were. I ended up sleeping
on the small couch in our room because the bed was so damp. And when we packed
up our luggage this morning, Lucas and I noted mold growing on our bags! Cindy
has a lot of laundry to do, since even clothes that were never worn seem damp
and musty. I don’t know why the air conditioner performed so poorly. I would have been happier with the room warmer
if less wet.
Our flight home was even less uneventful. We were checked in almost immediately, left
on time and arrived early, and were processed through customs quickly. Midway / Southwest is the way to go if the
airport is not too far for you! We were
pretty successful in cleaning out our refrigerator before we left, but we had
rice and black-eyed peas available, so I made some Hoppin’ John to celebrate
the New Year.
I have to work tomorrow.
Even though the other Advocate hospitals have the day off, the surgeons
(or some surgeons) at Christ decided that wanted to work on Jan 2, so we have
to cover. Something similar was afoot on
December 26th, but one of the main operators, Dr. Krueger (the breast
surgeon) had to cancel her Monday cases because the radiologists had scheduled
that day off. It would not be an
exaggeration to state she was unpleased with this decision on their part. The
hospital has had a decrease in the quality of radiology over the last 6 months,
because, for business / political reasons, Advocate did not renew the contract
with the previous radiology group (who did not have an exclusive contract with
Advocate, and were providing services for other hospital networks). Thus, a new
group started up in July. The new group
is less experienced, and I don’t think they were prepared for the volume and
complexity of the work at Christ. Hey,
only the patients will suffer…I think the pathologists felt a bit of schadenfreude
when all of this happened. Certainly we
hope this experience would make Advocate wary about not renewing the pathologists’
contract (and I think we would be a lot harder to replace).
Cindy picks up Meeko tomorrow!
Love, H.
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