Songfest last night

For quite a few years now we've been on the fringes, via some friends of ours, of a group that's been holding informal folk-music get-togethers. Last night was the 25th (!) annual vernal equinox Songfest. We left the kids at home, packed up the guitar, the copy of Rise Up Singing that I could find, a music stand, and a pot of stew, and headed off to an evening of good singing and fellowship.

I find that my ability to follow another guitar player's chords has atrophied over the years, and I've never been able to follow Rise Up Singing's bizarre notation very well, but it was still a lot of fun. I ended up with a rather sore throat and moderately sore fingers, always a sure sign of a good circle.

Note for filkers: the songfests are basically old-style hymnal sings -- people call out requests, often just by page number, and everyone does their best to sing and/or play along.

We got home about 1am.

Through the Dead Zone

A young woman's journey by motorcycle through the Chernobyl dead zone:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

(From dafydd; was also on /. recently.)

Update: the Younger Daughter

Wants an LJ account, but I don't think she should have one until next year, when she's 13. Maybe for her next birthday.

Got several A's on her last report card, so I guess we'll have to pay up with another sushi dinner. She also had an F in math; probably due to boredom. Her math teacher seems puzzled. One would like to think that an F would cancel the A's, but we never made that stipulation.

Grew about 1/2 inch last night, and is now only an inch shorter than me. Not that I'm particularly tall, of course. In another couple of months we'll be asking her to get things off the top shelves. Ha!