After getting about 10 hours of much needed sleep, I went down to get breakfast, where I bumped into composer Mark Isham and his wife, as well as publicists Ray Costa and Beth Krakower. Eventually we made our way up to the Hospital de Santiago, where I met up with some more people, and checked out some of the rehearsals – in particular, Blake Neely and Chris Lennertz practicing the three Michael Kamen songs that would be part of tonight’s …
Train to Ubeda
After a small bit of relaxing (but no sleep), I checked out of the hotel and headed down to the train station, about 45 min before the train to Linares-Baez was supposed to leave. They didn’t actually put the train track listing on the board until about 2 minutes before it was supposed to depart, so there was a bit of a dash to get on the train (which left a few minutes late). I ended up bumping into a …
Traveling to Madrid
I’m off to Spain for the 7th International Film Music Festival in Ubeda, Spain. Like last year, this year I’m a guest, talking for an hour or so about the work I do with La-La Land Records. (They’re all at Comic-Con this week, so I won’t be joining them like last year.) The flight to Dallas was fine, but for long-haul international flights, American Airlines really needs to step it up a notch. There was not only no in-flight WiFi …
Thanksgiving Day
Ah, Thanksgiving. In the past, we had gotten the whole family (and others) all together at my aunt and uncle’s place outside of Boston. This year, they basically said “screw it, we’re done!” and headed off to Arizona. So, we did turkey-day at my sister’s place outside of Longmeadow. We still had a sizable crowd – my grandmother came in with my parents, and my uncle came up from NYC with his fiancee, and there were two co-workers of my …
Prepping for the Turkey
The lack of sleep caught up with me last night; I ended up sleeping until 1pm. (Only a slight break around 7am by my nieces prevented it from being uninterrupted sleep.) With the morning completely shot, I wasn’t able to do any of my own stuff, and the rest of the day was spent helping my sisters around the house. Cleaning the basement, raking leaves (in the cold cold weather), doing a little cooking (though much of that fell to …
Longmeadow / Northampton
After being picked up from the airport, we headed to get a quick bite at Panera and do a little shopping before heading to Longmeadow, and my older niece’s school, where they were having a small Thanksgiving meal / celebration. It was incredibly cute to watch a bunch of little kids dressed up like Pilgrims and Native Americans, and tell us the story of Thanksgiving, and sing songs. After that, we headed back to my sister’s place, where I was …
Atlanta to Hartford
The flight from Atlanta to Hartford was brief – just under two hours. I didn’t get any sleep, but did enjoy finishing off some television on my laptop. I knew that the biggest hurdle would be staying awake throughout the day – there was much planned! I was greeted at the arrivals terminal by both my sisters, my younger niece, and my adorable nephew, who I hadn’t seen since he was not even two months old. How eight months changes …
LAX to Atlanta
The problem with red-eye flights in general is that I can never seem to get any decent amount of sleep on them. I’ve been dealing with a stiff neck for the past week or so, so this flight was going to be rough either way. Compounding the situation was the brevity of the flight – it was only 3.5 hours, which was hardly enough time to get any reasonable amount of sleep. I probably only got 30 minutes of shut-eye. …
Backscattered at LAX
After a nice dinner at Tender Greens, I was taken to LAX for my red-eye flight to Hartford, via Atlanta. I had pre-checked in from home, so I just needed to go through security. There was not much of a line, and after placing my carry-on bag, my laptop bag, my laptop, my jacket, my belt, my wallet, my shoes and my cellphone all through the X-ray machine, I was then directed to go through the new controversial full body …
East Coast Thanksgiving
I’m all packed up and ready to head to LAX soon (after dinner) to travel to Hartford, CT, via Atlanta. I’m not going to Boston initially; my sister is hosting Thanksgiving at her place in Longmeadow, MA. It remains to be seen what exactly there is to do out there in western MA (aside from hanging with family and enjoying quality time with my nieces and nephew), so we’ll find out! I’m also wondering what goodies the TSA has in …