Happy Birthday to all the March 22 boys. Here we go again. Especially warm birthday greetings to mrdreamjeans in Minneapolis.
I am in Altea and celebrated with a lunch for "the girls". The celebratory dinner for "the boys" will be on Saturday night when everyone is down from Madrid.
This lunch picture encapsulates what is wonderful about Altea.
Upper row from left to right:
Estelle moved here from London just over a year ago, loves it here, and plans to stay forever. Sara is from Southern California and moved here with her husband 10 years ago. They opened a wonderful bar, AlteArte, which has become a true cultural centre. Dawn moved here three years ago from San Luis Obispo, CA, loves it here, and plans to be here forever.
Lower row from left to right:
I am spending most of my Spanish time here in Altea and love it. Meryl moved here from Los Angeles 6 months ago and plans to be here forever. Ruchamah and her husband manage the condo that we live in. They have lived here for four years, had twins three years ago, and just bought a wonderful finca (small farm) with its own little mountain. They will not be leaving.
Add to this that lunch today at Sabor was delicious and fun and there we are. :-)
It's March 22 again, so Happy Birthday to all the March 22 boys (especially to mrdreamjeans).
As for me, today is my first day being 74. That´s so old that I think I am finding it quite charming. LOL
Wayne, my best old high school friend, and Nancy, his wife, are here in Madrid to celebrate. We are all turning 74 this year. I am just the first.
Wayne and I met when we were 13 (That's a friendship of 61 years!). Wayne and I met Nancy when we were all working at the Banff Springs Hotel when we were 18. So that's a lot of shared experiences with multiple years and levels of meaning.
We are going to celebrate with dinner tonight at Market Madrid, Ricardo's and my favourite restaurant here. Tomorrow we are all going down on a high speed train to Altea for a long weekend of more celebration.
In 64K upstairs on a British Airways 747 from Vancouver to London on the way to Madrid. The flight attendants made the card for me on the left. "Good" friends in Victoria gave me the card in the centre to open on the plane.
This is the view from the shower in the en suite on level 2. I love it. I can see the Mediterranean and I can watch the construction continuing on the condos across the way. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy hot showers? LOL
I don't want to go back to Madrid tomorrow. I don't want to get onto 3 planes on Tuesday to get to Victoria. I just want to stay here in Altea. I just want to enjoy more showers. 😊
We have rented our favourite casa in the hills above Altea again and it's wonderful. Juan Carlos and Luis have come down to stay with us and we are having a great time. They have gone off to a gay nude beach near Benidorm and we are just relaxing on the deck. Actually Ricardo is now asleep on the deck.
We are entertaining ideas of buying the place as the Dutch owner wants to sell. It's quite unnecessary and somewhat incovenient. But we love it and you only live once. Vamos a ver.
Had a wonderful birthday dinner last night with friends at The Marina Restaurant in Victoria. The Happy Birthday plate looked much better before Ian started licking the letters and tickling the truffles. Note the single candle. LOL Great food. Wonderful wine. Close friends. Too much fun.
Wishing a good year to everyone whose birthday is today. :-)
Pat Sampson turned 94 last Friday. I remembered the day before and realized that I could actually go over to Vancouver if the family had planned something. They had planned a restaurant lunch so over I went.
Pat and I have known each other for 67 years! I was 4 years old when we all moved out to a post-war Montreal suburban development for WW2 veterans in 1947. Pat and my mother became good friends as did my father and her husband, Jim.
Around age 10, I became the baby sitter for their two children, Glen and Janet. At the end of my baby-sitting career, a baby named Brad suddenly appeared but after a gig or two that included baby Brad, I moved on. :-)
Very sadly, Glen died at age 15 when he was hit by a car. But the rest of the family carried on with lots of new and fun twists in the road.
By the early 80's both Janet and Brad had moved to the west coast. Brad and his wife had also provided grandchildren. Pat and Jim decided they would move, too, to be closer to their children and grandchildren. (Janet had provided a couple of ex-husbands but no grandchildren. Needless to say, I felt very close to Janet.)
My parents and the Sampsons had remained the best of friends decade after decade and they always had time together whenever my parents were visiting Vancouver.
One especially dramatic evening, I had Pat, Jim, and Janet at my place for dinner with my parents. During the first course, Jim had a seizure and we had to call 911. As the two medics put Jim into the stretcher, one of the medics and Janet exchanged guarded remarks which set off my radar. As we went down through the lobby to the ambulance, a crowd in the lobby wanted to know if my bad food had been a problem again. Such friendly neighbours! LOL Meanwhile my parents were still sitting back at the dinner table wondering what was going on. Pat and Janet went off to the hospital so my parents and I concluded with dinner for three. Years later. Janet told me that the medic was at that time one of her clients in an alcohol treatment program.
In 2005, Pat and Janet arrived in Victoria on a cruise ship from San Diego to Vancouver. Jason (my then partner) and I met them at the dock and took them out for dinner. As soon as I saw Janet, I knew there was a serious problem. Her cancer became very serious shortly afterwards and, the next year, the family had a funeral back in Pointe Claire where we had all lived so many years before.
As I happened to be in Montreal at the time, I offered to do a photo book of the service and met with the minister before the service. It turned out that he had officiated at both Janet's weddings and was now doing the funeral. He was also very gay so I thought he would laugh when I said that we would have to settle for just Two Weddings and a Funeral. He didn't laugh. Maybe he wasn't as gay as he appeared. :-) I also met Brad for the first time since I had seen him as a 12-month-old baby in a crib. He was now a very big guy indeed.
All this to explain the occasionally sad but mainly very happy memories that came along to this lunch. Pat, her son, her daughter-in-law, her granddaughter, and her first great-grandchild were all there. I'm very glad I was there, too.
At 94, Pat still doesn't miss a beat. As we both ordered wine, she said, "I'm so glad you're here. They're all teetotallers."
