Family Birthday Party

This weekend we had a bit of a family reunion in Kentucky, ostensibly to celebrate some birthdays. My great uncle turned 80, one of my mom's cousins turned 50, and a couple of others turned something or other.

Anyway, we had about 30-40 members of my mom's side of the family (descendants of my mother's grandparents). It was quite interesting hearing stories about my parents from when they were dating, especially because those stories weren't always told the way my parents told them. I think most of it was that my mom put a more romantic spin on things.

But, I also learn things, or hear tell of things that I had never heard before. According to one of my mom's cousins, I might be 1/32 Native American. Which is all news to me. Of course, looking back at some old pictures of my great grandmother, and my grandmother, there might be some truth to it. But if so, it's so watered down in me that it hardly matters. I still get sunburned in less than 15 minutes.

I was actually really lucky weather-wise. The forecast for the trip down said there might be quite inclement weather in Lexington which worried me for arriving. Then there was supposed to be a huge snowstorm in Boston today which would have made returning home difficult. But the delay going to Lexington was only long enough for me to get food between planes. If it hadn't been delayed I would have had to rush just to make the plane. On the way back, there was a bit of a delay in Charlotte because they had to kick the standby passengers off the plane. Apparently there is a weight restriction flying into Boston, and because they had to carry extra fuel in case of a diversion this meant we couldn't fly with a full plane of people.

Actually, my flight down was even more exciting than I made out. The woman two seats in front of me had called the steward because of a draft (at least that's what I gathered from what I could see). Apparently the guy in front of me objected to the woman reclining her seat. So in retaliation he turned on his air vent to blow onto her. The steward found the source of the draft and turned it off. The man in front of me objected and complained about her seat. The steward told the man she had the right to recline her seat and the man didn't have the right to harass her. So the guy turned the vent back on. The steward turned it back off and they snapped at each other some more. I was really afraid the plane was going to get diverted because the guy was being unruly. For an old guy he was very immature.

I don't know why the guy was complaining so much. It wasn't like the seat was banging into his knees or anything like that. I object when people recline their seats because it causes me physical pain when their seat smashes into my knees, for this guy it meant he couldn't read his paper as comfortably.

Last note... I had some weird dreams last night. It seems to happen when I get a really poor night's sleep (no dreams) one night, and then get a relatively good night's sleep the next night. I won't go into too many details, but what really made it odd was that in a main part of my dream I went into a catatonic state. I was just lying there (in the dream) and I could see and hear everything that was going on, but I wasn't moving. It felt like I could move if I wanted to, but I had no desire to move and so didn't.