damont

Some short notes from the week previous: Monday night at gaming we saw a number of people we hadn't seen in a while. This was largely due to the presence of a friend who won't be with us for much longer. Wednesday I went to a concert near Philadelphia, after which I went and retrieved my laptop, and visited my parents. While visiting them, we got the word that

wednesday1971 was in labor; Mom called my cell phone as I was driving back to Virginia to tell me that my 9-pound nephew had been born at 12 noon Pacific time. Welcome, Justin Thomas Soper!

On to the weekend... Friday night I went to hear the W&M Choir perform on their Spring Tour at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Burke. Now I knew that this was the home parish of an old friend, so I wasn't surprised to see Kate -- and it turns out she was half-expecting to see me, as she remembered that I was a W&M Choir alumnus. The program was excellent as usual, and also as usual finished off with the Choir alumni joining the current group for the James Erb arrangement of "Shenandoah" and the W&M Alma Mater. I was a bit surprised to find so many classmates and others from my era there! Yes, there are a lot of us in the area, but most of the folks I knew hadn't been to the Spring Tour concerts in many years. I got to say hello to Ed Koch and his wife Jeanne (née Lindner), at least one of the Anderson sisters, and Diane Roberson Graft.

Congratulations to

principia_coh and

byronczimmer on their marriage on Saturday! We went to their wedding, as did many of our mutual friends in the local gaming community. When the ushers seating us asked "bride or groom?" most of us said "Yes" -- especially Craig and Carrie, who'd introduced the bride and groom to each other. We got to say hello to

grayhawkfh,

mousecat0,

kmusser,

zammis,

theimp79,

bulsi, and a bunch of others who either don't have LJs or whose handles I don't know/can't remember.

Coolest. Wedding. Favors. EVAR... pairs of 6-sided dice with "Brian" and "Lije" inscribed instead of the 6-spots.

Sunday was a musical day. It started with singing at Sharon Chapel in the morning; Mozart's "Ave Verum" was the anthem, about which Amy said "I can do this one in my sleep." I hit one rough spot during the closing hymn. The last verse of "The Church's One Foundation" makes reference to those who have gone before; and this is a hymn I tend to associate with my maternal grandmother, who passed away ten years ago this month. After the service

nostasia,

blaisedec, and I went off to find some lunch. After finding a few places which had either just closed for the day or hadn't opened yet, we ended up braving Old Town Alexandria (with lots and lots of traffic, both automotive and pedestrian) and going to King Street Blues. After lunch I went to a music rehearsal with some Phi Mu Alpha brothers; we're working on some numbers to sing at a fundraiser in late April, for a performing arts charter school in DC where one of the brothers teaches.

Sunday evening, Tony did a lot of hardware transplantation, so that my new-scrounged system "cubeb" should be ready for us to start working on the firmware today, and perhaps even getting so far as to install Linux. Thanks

killernurd!