Nice to See David

Our younger son is here visiting for less than 24 hours. He got off the plane at 10pm last night in a suit that he had bought all by himself! He had five separate interviews at Baylor Medical Center, three for the PhD program and two for the medical school program. He says he thought the PhD ones went better than the medical ones; I guess now we just wait and see if they liked him.

We also have another visitor here, but I'll talk about that later. Right now she and David have gone to buy a Christmas tree.

Pray for David's Interviews Tomorrow

David called me at work this morning from the DC airport, just to say he was on his way to Houston for his medical school interviews tomorrow. It turns out that someone from his lab knows someone who is on the admissions committee for the PhD program, so David was given phone numbers, etc. and told to go meet him. That sounds like a helpful coincidence :-) He is being hosted at Rice U. tonight by a girl he knew in HS who has a friend with a couch he can sleep on.

Then Andrew called about 30 seconds later to ask me what the difference was between earrings that had a post and ones that were shaped like a hook. (He was buying Christmas presents.) Only Andrew would call from the other side of the world to ask a question like that.* He also told me to enjoy my visit with his g/f tomorrow. He's is flying to Kenya tomorrow for a few days of meetings.

*That reminds me of when he was working at a genetics lab at A&M University one summer, sequencing DNA. He called me to ask what "simmer" meant.

First Christmas Party of the Season

Last evening our boss invited us and the rest of the office staff, with spouses, to his house for an early Christmas party. Lots of nice desserts, of course, but lots of good stories too. The question asked was, "What was your most memorable Christmas?" Whenever longtime missionaries get together and get asked a question like this, the answers are very entertaining. The stories ranged from

"We spent 36 miserable hours cramped up in a 2nd class berth on a sooty train to go pick up our kids from boarding school. When the train slowed down, we looked outside and we were just yards away from the Taj Mahal."

to

"It was our first term in Indonesia. We had just arrived with four kids and had only our suitcases. We decided to make do the best we could. We got a tree but there were no decorations on it. Then our first of 23 barrels arrived from Wewak. It was the one with the Christmas stuff in it."

to

"Our most interesting Christmas is just about to happen. In two weeks we will fly for 36 hours, then immediately get on a train for 8 hours, then be picked up by a taxi for 5 hour ride to the foothills of the Himalayas."

My Christmas story: we got married on Christmas.

Checking People Out

A young lady is coming to our house this weekend for the express purpose of meeting me and my husband. When I said to a friend, "She sure is brave, to come here by herself and be put under the microscope," my friend replied, "Maybe it's you who's going to be under the microscope."

More Credit Card Theft

Ugh! Those nice guys in Italy are at it again. Over the weekend there was a $400 charge on our debit card from a gas station in Italy. This time in was using a different debit card number than the last time, and this is a card I've only used for a couple months. Three additional charges, totaling over $10,000 from a travel agency in Italy, did not go through. So the credit card company contacted me right away, and then cancelled the card, but it is a nuisance to set up automatic payments again, etc. At least the credit card company is doing a good job noticing these things.