Friday

I didn’t feel great when I woke up this morning, and I once again had some swelling around my left eye, and hives. My guess is that I have developed an allergy to Ibuprofen, which I took late last night. Or I’ve developed an allergy to alcohol, which seems less likely. In any event, Benedryl took care of the problem and by 10 AM, I felt much better. I’m scheduling an appointment with my doctor for a general check-up and I’ll ask him about it.

Fairly busy day today, but the retreat was over. It was nice to be able to work with my team face-to-face for a change. In particular, I spent a lot of time with Carol and Rob, who together, are like Abbott & Costello.

I had lunch with Beth today, at a Mexican food place near the bowling alley on Pico. It was really the only time we had to talk while I was out there, and the first time we’ve talked since she’s been in her new role. It was good to get to see her.

Kelly came by to go to lunch with someone she used to work with, so that I saw her around noon. I saw her again at 4:30 when she was with Laural. We headed over to Eric and Laural’s house in the Valley and had dinner there. Eric must have been cooking all day. We had all sorts of delicious foods: homemade flat-bread, on which we put homemade hummus. There was an excellent tuna dish that we also put on our flat-bread, made with delicious avocados and sushi-quality tuna. There was homemade pizza, which was outstanding. For the main course we had salads and pasta with crab meat. And for dessert that was a strawberry dish. The strawberries were marinated in sugar and balsamic vinegar, and then served with a Marscapone cheese and vanilla bean sauce. Yum!

It was really nice getting to hang out with Eric and Laural at their house–something I did only once before when I worked for Eric, way back in August 1999.

Eric drove us back to the hotel after dinner and we were both exhausted.