Christmas with the family....

December 31, 2010  Rota, Spain

I'll interrupt my discourse on Spanish living for a visit to North Carolina to see my son, Tony and his wife, Annette, and the special star, Akilah - celebrity granddaughter.  Christmas for me is the most fun seen through the eyes of a small child.  Akilah is almost 3 and now old enough to be dazzled by the Christmas pageant.  But she is still young enough to be completely un-material.  When asked what she wanted for Xmas, she didn't know.  I'd be surprised if that were the case next year....

I had two weeks in North Carolina and the kids fixed me up with a bedroom down in Tony's music studio.  Great!

While I was there, I was Tony's roadie for a few gigs that he had.  One of them was with Woody Wood and Artimus Pyle (formerly of Lynryd Skynryd).  They took their last names and called themselves Black Wood Pyle.

Here we all were after the gig, L to R, Woody, Artimus, me, and Tony.  Turns out that I am Artimus' landlord as well.  Great getting to meet him.

But the real fun was just the daily living and playing with Akilah.  She is at the age where she is the center of her universe, which is a good thing when you can get her to perform.  Here we were having some breakfast...and being silly.

Christmas morning rolled around and when we came out to the tree, it was snowing outside.  How perfect.  Akilah was a little new to the Christmas thing so she opened her presents v-e-r-y carefully, trying not to rip the paper and when she did finally rip it, she took each handful to the trash before making the next rip.

This was the fun part for me.  I wasn't feeling very much Christmas spirit - didn't do presents and cards this year - not even a newsletter.  The news wasn't cheerful enough to send out.  But this turned out to be theraputic for me.  I ended up enjoying the holidays completely.

Here is the front yard after a few hours of snow.  It eventually reached about 8 inches. If you click on these pictures, they get bigger.

Here are Nettie, Akilah, Tony and dog Annabelle romping in the snow.

This was a really good picture of Tony and I eating the worlds biggest breakfast burritos

And I thought Nettie deserved her own picture, no?

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All too soon it was time to fly home again.  Here you can see the snowy fields in the East.  I had some airplane adventures.  As normal, I always ask for seats in the exit aisle to get room for my long legs.  The agent in Asheville mananged to get me good seats for the first two flights, but there was nothing available for the long transatlantic flight.  That is the critical one, so I figured that I would stand on my tip-toes and look pitiful at the boarding gate while begging for a seat change.  So I was the first one in line at the gate.  But I began to get worried when the staff arrived.  There was a little wizened black man who didn't look like the kind of person who could work a computer (I know - stereotyping - but we DO think that way).  His companion was a Latina who walked in like she was carrying the troubles of the world on her shoulders.  Not a happy appearing person.  She took her post directly in front of me and shuffled papers for a about 10 minutes in a desultory way.  Finally she looked up and asked what I wanted.  I explained about the "tall-man seats".  She checked the computer and gave me the answer that I was expecting - that the flight was full and there were no other options.  I asked if she could give me a window seat so that I could try to sleep leaning against the wall since my head is too high for the cushions.  Then she suddenly had a change of mood and broke out in a big smile.  She went to the computer and printed out a new boarding pass.  She passed it to me with a smile, saying "try this one".
She had put me in seat 1-H.  Hmm, that sounds like the very front of the plane.  When I got back to my luggage, I noticed that the pass had the word "Envoy".  Isn't that what they call First Class?  Yup!  When they called boarding, I got in line with the Envoy crowd and in we went.  As I passed the agent, I had a chance to thank her again.  I'd like to send her a card!  That was a $500 upgrade!!!
When I got to my seat, the stu took my coat and gave me a glass of champagne.  I was in the best seat in the plane.  A front row window seat with as much room as 6 seats in coach.  There was nobody next to me.  Lots of vacancies in First Class.  I've never flown 1st class before so I was dazzled.  Instead of eating the sushi and vegetable wrap that I had put in my luggage, I chowed down on some decent food.  It was so artfully presented that I should have taken pictures.  A linen tablecloth, no less!
After dinner, I put the electric seat into sleep mode and it got completely horizontal at which point I slept my way all the way across the Atlantic.  What a treat.
On arriving in Madrid, I got my car and drove back to Rota.  I'm making lentil soup today for our old family tradition on New Years.  But I also bought some grapes to celebrate the Spanish way, too. And I bought myself a good ham to get the year off to a good start.  On the first, I'll go up to Sevilla and have dinner with the assembled Hernandez family - well, almost all of them.

I'm sure there are parties tonight, but nobody knows I'm here.  I'm going to stay home and enjoy just being home again.  Feel free to write......