![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SktddlMJcCI\/AAAAAAAACro\/NqX4W07pATw\/s1600-h\/Cocktail%2520Hour.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWell, it\u2019s now Wednesday. Monday involved flying out from Salt Lake City and shaking off, for the most part, anyway, the psychic sense of work. I love my work, but I also very much feel a need to be away just for a while\u2026 <\/div>\n
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Touching feet to the ground at the Burbank airport and breathing in the dry hot air helped in the shift toward \u201choliday.\u201d For the next few days we\u2019re enjoying something of an enforced inaction perched at Jan\u2019s mom\u2019s house in the desert foothills above Tujunga. <\/div>\n
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Staying with an eighty-five year old we have limited web access (I\u2019m experiencing some withdrawal symptoms, I fear\u2026 And, yes, I know just because one is eighty-five it doesn\u2019t mean there has to be limited web access\u2026), and even limited cell phone access. <\/div>\n
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I spent the entire morning yesterday shopping in order to prepare a vegan dinner (for my sister in law, not my mother in law, who would on the whole have rathered a pot roast\u2026). And then spent the afternoon reading a novel, actually finishing something I started weeks ago. Ah\u2026 We had a lovely Tujunga evening, eating our pasta with a spinach, mushroom and garlic sauce (the thickener was something called Tofutti, the ingredients listing of chemicals that allow it to have properties similar to cream cheese was disturbingly long\u2026) and then to an evening on the back porch enjoying the fruits of my mother in law\u2019s feriocious devotion to her gardens, until, that is, a skunk wandered onto the property (we are two streets from the beginning of the desert proper) and who evidenced interest in us. Beautiful thing, almost certainly quite young. So, we retreated back into the house for our last hour or so before retiring\u2026<\/div>\n
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Today it\u2019s art museums and then dinner out with the sister and brother in law, with whom of all the relatives out here, we are the closest\u2026<\/div>\n
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I do feel like I\u2019m decompressing. There are a few important things to deal with back home, both church and sangha. But, I\u2019m hoping to let them go for a little, and just enjoy not thinking of tasks that must be done. I\u2019m now in the down time. <\/div>\n
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Yum\u2026<\/div>\n
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<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-7871626032602777519?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\")
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