"Go West"

sing it, just like the Village People. (or perhaps the Pet Shop Boys) You know you want to!

We've been in Chapel Hill, NC visiting with Dick's family since Christmas morning. We've had a very nice visit, and will be returning to CA this afternoon.

We took the red-eye flight out of SFO (around 11:00am) and landed in Charlotte, NC at 6:30am. Turns out that this is the way to fly around Xmas whenever possible. The flight was full, but we had the option to upgrade to First Class (The second Xmas miracle, according to Dick). There were lots of kids on the flight, which was interesting, but it seemed to work well for everyone. Most kids that I saw were dressed in their jammies, which was really cute, and made me wonder why I wasn't wearing mine.

Right around midnight, I glanced out the window, and I'm pretty certain that I saw a tiny red light off in the distance. (Rudolph, perhaps? Santa?) We both slept pretty well on the flight, although it was only 4.5 hours long, so we didn't have a solid night's sleep by any means. We arrived to Charlotte at 6:30 am, collected our baggage and rental car, and drove into Chapel Hill at 10:15am - just in time for Xmas breakfast.

We've spent some really nice quality time with Dick's family. Xmas morning and evening were especially fun with his nieces and nephew. While we were out here, we squeezed in a visit with our friend, Kristi, and her two little girls, saw a movie (The Chronicles of Narnia), walked around the UNC campus, and even saw a Tar Heel Basketball game! For those of you keeping track, and I'm proud to announce that "The Curse has been Reversed! That's right, we went to watch a UNC Basketball game LIVE, and they won! It was a landslide victory, which Dick was fairly confident about, but nonetheless, we were very happy that they won. Now perhaps Dick will let me watch the games on TV with him.

The weather here has been extraordinary, and it seems as if we've missed a bunch of rain in SF. We've had sunny skies, with temps in the high 50s to mid-60s out here.

This morning, we're meeting Dick's family for an early lunch before heading back out to Charlotte.

We've had a great time out here, but it'll be nice to be home, sleeping in our own bed, snuggling with our kitties.