.jeri.

Well, last week was the return of full Fridays at work. I can't say I'm a fan. Last week felt like such a long week.

Work has been steadily, busily, monotonous. I've been working on this one project that seems to be a bottomless pit, which involves cleaning up codes that were built with no understandable form of logic or point of reference. I basically spent the last few months researching schools and school codes online. I am now far too familiar with the standard formatting of South Korean universities (but I love them because they all have an easily readable address right on the main page). Now I'm on to transfer articulation work, which involves building every course that could possibly be transferred from a school into our own system and then entering rules that determine whether those courses are equivalent to any courses at our school. Fun times. And on top of that, I've had to teach some of our new software to my own mother, which can be exhausting for me at times.

Anyway, I was ready for a vacation. Good thing Ric and I planned a mini-vacation to the San Diego area! We drove down after a bit of a late start on Friday night and stayed with Liz and Emily in Bonsall. The next day all of us headed to the Wild Animal Park in Escondido for the day. We saw all sorts of animals, went on the safari tram tour (and saw an antelope being born), fed some deer, and sweat a whole bunch. The foolish weather channel predicted a high of 73, but it was much hotter, and completely humid. We were all suffering from exhaustion after just 5 hours there.

We headed back to the house to freshen up and rest a bit, then drove back to Escondido to the Stone Brewery. We met up with Rob and Dee, and all of us took a tour of the brewery, had a tasting of a few brews, then had dinner at the Bistro. We had a soft pretzel appetizer, I had some cheese and Stone soup, loved the mushroom and penne main course, and topped it down with an Imperial Stout. Yum. I can't wait to go back and sample other items on their menu.

Unfortunately, with a not-quite-functioning air mattress, we had a bad night's sleep on Friday, and Ric had another one on Saturday while I used the comfy couch. We're not as young and spry as we used to be, so our plans to spend a full day at Sea World were postponed. Instead, I drove home in terrible traffic and spent my Sunday completely bored. Oh well! At least we had a good Saturday.

Up this week, I'm going to see Cake with Yo and some friends of his on Thursday. Friday, our office is having a department retirement lunch for our boss. Should be fun!

Health updates: It appears Ric's grandma's tumors are growing back in her brain rapidly, so we expect that she'll probably pass away soon. I think that would probably be better than a drawn-out situation. One of the difficulties we're facing is the fact that grandma once voiced a wish not to be seen by many people if she isn't looking very good, and grandpa is insistent that he thinks she should have more visitors. There's a battle of wills going on between our aunt and grandpa, and hopefully there won't be any hard feelings when all is said and done. Also, the family is still very tentative about discussing grandpa's living circumstances while grandma is still alive, so I'm hoping that when then time comes, he will be open to options that will be good for the whole family.

That's all for now! Have a good week, everyone.