I flew up to South/North Carolina to spend New Years with good friends I met in Alaska. First night was a night spent at a bar in Columbia across the street from the State Capital where a Confederate flag flew high. The following 2 nights were in Asheville where us as a group of drunk friends decided at 10:30pm to nix the bar idea because who wants to go to a place where drinks are hard to get and expensive and where dreams of a classic night are held at an unreachable hight. The next day my friend drove me 1 hour south of Asheville where I met my great-uncle’s widow, Sue Weatherly. There I picked up a book by a long lost Weatherly written and published somewhere in England, and she pointed to me a table built in black walnut by my great-great-grandfather that, she says, will someday belong to me. After this we drove up north to a mountain and a cabin rented by my friend that had a hot tub. It snowed all night, we drank a box of wine in bubbling water while snow fell on our faces. The next night I made an arugula, gruyere, and bacon bread pudding for dinner. After much vodka I went to the empty room downstairs and fell asleep and woke up to a sunrise in the Blue Ridge mountains. I didn’t bring a camera, and would take awful cell phone shots not for showing-off purposes but to remind me in the future of this trip. And, of course, I found a way to put 2 of these on the blog.

Last Friday morning the last I wanted to do was to be surrounded by happy people, alcohol, and beauty. It’s interesting how things like that can seem so unappealing. It’s also interesting when you realize how silly you were to think that.

For now I’m stuck in the Charlotte airport for hours, with free wifi and a netflix dvd of that Bored to Death show that was just cancelled. It’s cute, I suppose?