Of course, everytime I go to Europe I make sure I stop in Valencia and see my kids. It makes me SO tremendously happy to see them! I can’t wait until we can all live in the same city again. Some day, soon.

We had fun meeting the family (although my parents were on a cruise), projecting movies at night on the “large screen” over the living room windows, and playing all kinds of games. I also gave them a couple of surprises: the certificates of their names, along with mine:

having been added to Orion (NASA`s new spacecraft that will carry humans into deep space) flight test to Mars, scheduled to launch Dec. 4, and their e-tickets to fly to New York and spend Christmas vacation with my wife and I.

On Sunday morning I took a plane to New York. My airline miles program status upgrade was “celebrated” by a class upgrade, but only on the local leg of the flight, because the international part was full. Darned! At least I had a plug, so I worked the full 8 and a half hours of the flight. And I also wrote the last few posts you can see here; otherwise I will never be able to catch up!