Colleen and I spent a lot of time on the road this weekend, visiting friends and family across the mid-Atlantic and enjoying some great performances. I also had a closer-than-I-would-have-liked encounter with some Amelia County wildlife.

Friday night, while returning home late from Amherst, where we saw an absolutely AMAZING performance by my kid and her fellow theatricals at SBC of Heathers: The Musical on Friday night, we were mostly alone on Route 360 heading toward Richmond around midnight when I saw, well ahead of us, a pretty large 4-6 point buck working his way across the median strip between the east and westbound lanes. Having some experience with this sort of thing, I slowed down quickly and safely, though the deer didn’t. I slowed further and swerved (again, safely toward the luckily wide berm) out of the way, and this deer, presumably, given the season, crazy with lust desire, decided to follow, eventually side-checking passenger side of the car pretty hard and (again, presumably) with stunned turpor, wander off into the woods.

We pulled over to survey the damage, and, luckily, there didn’t seem to be any, save some minor scuffing, largely in the road/weather dirt (it was raining most of the week) on the rear passenger side door. No blood, hair, antler-holes or even, thankfully, dents were present. We continued on our way, a little shaken, but none the worse for wear.

A more thorough survey of the vehicle Saturday morning confirmed there was nothing beyond a small scuff just below the belt-line that can polish out easily. I am quite thankful, and what’s funny is that we were both mostly worried about the deer.

That covers the post title, so let’s move on.

So yes, Heathers was really well put-together. My kid still gives good villain, and really seemed to impress the theater and arts department (we had a nice chat with the department head before the show), who she surprised, because she hasn’t done much to talk about her musical theater background (she’s mostly known as a dancer at school); they seem pretty high on the idea of making use of her for further productions (I don’t think she’s going to have much of a choice). I am a proud dad, and spent most of the weekend talking her up.

And there were a lot of folks to talk her up to on Saturday. While the rest of the family danced in the rain at a festival in Midlothian, I took care of some errands in the morning, hitting the farmer’s market (it’s apple season, and Jerry my market hook-up sold me some amazing Jonastar and Honeycrisps this week) and the grocery store and knocking out some housekeeping and laundry. After that, Colleen and I headed down to Raleigh NC for a show by my friends Metricula and Mikey Mason at a neat little venue, The Maywood. We arrived in town, checked into the hotel (one late-night drive in a weekend, deer or no, is enough), and met some friends at the Trophy Brewing Taproom, conveniently located right next door, where we collected even more friends (including the performers for a bit), had a couple of drinks (falling in love with the Milky Way stout and Off the Top Rope IPA), ate some tamales from the food trucks, and enjoyed ourselves before the show, where we all had a pretty great time and talking up the kids’ performance again.

The show was pretty great, as expected; we crashed at the hotel, arose, and headed home after breakfast. Arriving around lunchtime, we took care of a few things, *then* headed over to VCU to attend the local students art show, celebrating the art from local schools being hung in the education building for the 18-19 school year, and one of the youngest’s pieces from last year was included. We found the painting and sat for the presenation, wandered around campus a bit for Pokemon community day (only two shinies…alas), grabbed some food, then headed home.

Then, I kind of fell asleep on the couch around 7pm watching an episode of the new Daredevil. Exciting.

So yes, this weekend was busy. This week, overall, shouldn’t be too bad – just the usual stuff for the family, and the Isley open mic if I can manage on Wednesday. Plenty of time to rest up before the Celtic Fesitival and Halloween pub crawl in Richmond on Saturday.

Sometimes, I think we do too much.