Malta and Denver and a little bit of Egyptain Halloween

From the middle of October until the beginning of November, I was pretty much living on an airplane. After taking my students to Rome, I returned back to Alex to squeeze in a day of work. 24-hours later Ana and I caught the red-eye to Malta and later involved a force landing in Istanbul. As my friend Ted said, " long delay is better than a short flight" if you know what I mean.  
Malta was a last minute trip. We told our school we wouldn't be returning next year and two-weeks later we had a couple of job interviews...one for organization that operates a school a Tbilisi, Georgia and one in Malta. In a unusual twist of fate, both interviews took place in Malta. They went really well and we felt excited by the possibilities of moving to either Malta or Georgia. When we returned back to Alex in a zombie state I met with our director to debrief-basically he asked how the interviews went. He reminded us of what we would be walking away from and that the school really wanted us to stay to help transition the new head of school and teachers next year. We wrestled with the decision for several days and eventually signed on the dotted line for another more year.

A couple of days later I'm back in a car heading to Cairo to catch an early morning flight to Denver. I was invited to talk about punk rock at DU in addition to putting together and hosting a panel discussion on the 80-90s Denver punks scene. Sonny Kay and I are currently working on a follow up to Denvoid and the Cowtown Punks titled: Denvoid 2, The Colorado Krew: Tales From the Colorado Punk Scene 1988-96.    

Denver boasts 300 plus days of sunshine per year-I arrived to 5 days of snow, cold, and gloom with the exception of one blissful afternoon. Glad to see Denver's erratic weather pattern is still punishing the unexpected. I never have enough days to see family and friends, call people, eat at my favorite places, watch the Donkeys lose...you know how that goes.

I made it back in time to help the seniors get their haunted house ready for the fall festival. 

GO!

Gozo is Malta's sister island. Way more interesting than what we saw on the main island.

Gozo 4eva

Ferry to Gozo

Welcome to Gozo

Gozo is for lovers.

Roll down the hills of Gozo

Near our apt. in Sliema

Gozo the sunshine island

Gozo 4life

Not Gozo,but Sliema

Sliema beach

On the way to Fungus Rock in Gozo

Gozo's gotcha.

The poster

The panel

 Great nieces getting ready for school.

City Park and sun!

More of the same

Walking by a church.

Goodbye America. American Airlines in Chicago went all out for Halloween-workers were dressed in costume and bowls of amazing candy on each counter-couldn't have asked for a better way to be re-routed and for a cheap sugar high on red liquorice and tootsie rolls.

Teachers on the loose.

Best hat award.

So the deal is the Seniors run the Haunted House and the Juniors are the last group to go through it, except it becomes this awful hazing event with eggs, flour, pizza sauce...really gross stuff. But the joke is on the seniors who have to stay and clean it all up. Hope this will be the last year of this lame and thoughtless tradition. Maybe someone comes up with a smart and clever solution.

Juniors with sauce, eggs, and flour.

Good clean fun.

Getting the haunted house ready.

Snoopy and Woodstock

A cool homemade costume.

The creepy red room in the haunted house.

Nothing wrong with a Halloween Dance on Nov. 9th.

Denver, San Diego, the Bay Area, Stockton,

It was a busy summer indeed. Looming in the background was making a decision to sell our house in San Diego. We made a deal with our current tenant and he will be the new happy owner. It took us 7 years of living abroad to realize that we might not be coming back to live in the USA in the foreseeable future. All of our belongings were packed in the garage and every summer we'd get rid of more stuff. What was left of our stuff we put into Ana's old bedroom at her parents house. Whew.

Our big wait and see plan is to buy something-hopefully in Spain. But that depends on if we leave Egypt anytime soon. The idea is to never have a mortgage again. At the time of writing this, the house is sitting in escrow. We hope to close soon and be done with that chapter in our life. 

As I stated, it was indeed a busy summer...and most of the time it was a time of disconnect from the internet, minimal posting of stuff on FB/Instagram, no writing... It was a time to connect with friends and there wasn't much documentation to prove this, sort of like the old days.   

A former co-worker in Ethiopia met us at the Botanical Gardens in Denver. Two years in a row now, might become an annual event.

Longtime friend Ben invited us to his son's b-day party at Casa Bonita. Yes, it was worth spending an hour in line to watch a sad magic show, cliff divers...and the sopapillas.

Somehow Ana though it was appropriate to "borrow" the neighbor's scooter and bring it inside for a photo shoot with Ximena. I think the neighbors got hip and stopped leaving the scooter around. 

Stockton was in the mix too... time to visit with Chris, Lori, and Sam. That is always a lot of fun that usually results in having your stomach pumped from items scored at Big Lots.

Nelson, Teff, and Rita in Alameda is always a night to remember...it usually involves good food (being they are foodies) and local beers.

Ana and I celebrated our 9th anniversary over fish tacos.

Patrick is always a blast to see, who else would drive down from LA to see us and go back the same day. We played kickball at Balboa Park in a sculpture garden over a glass of beer followed by watching a Mexican Beatles cover band.

Rich and Patty stated putting out books. They came down to San Diego for an event.

Compadre Rudy trying to make X go blind.

A family event in Denver was in the mix too. I'm a great uncle to these hooligans.

The Keleher's were also great to see a couple of times.

Chris only ate blue that day.

When X crawls away from us, we expect this sort of stuff.

Sam and X 4 eva.

Yes that is Chris wearing a shirt of himself at Lucas Studios in Frisco.

Patty is working on the new Star Wars film so she invited us to check out the joint. You don't say no to an invitation like that.

Many of the props form Lucas films are scattered throughout the building. This is from the movie Cocoon.

Two items that for sure go in the same room together.

Phone home.

We saw a lot of pilgrims lurking around the compound looking for Yoda.

Oi Oi Oi Chad, haven't seen this guy in 20 plus years. Miss the bloke.

When cousins Lou and Lynda put the ribs on the grill,  you tend to drop what you're doing and head to Whittier.

Party hard with the Lugos in the park.

Symptoms of eating snacks from Big Lots. 

Sonny and I Interviewed Jason Heller for Denvoid part 2, Jason's crib has the best view. Speaking of Denvoid, I made a last minute flight to Denver to met with Megan of History Colorado and we agreed to have our book release there in 2018.  

Nelson captured this moment of X discovering herself in the mirror.