So, Friday night we did go to The Fountain and hung out with John Scalzi for a couple of hours. Nice crowd in the tiny, awesome store, including our friends Chris and Melissa in from Norfolk. Scalzi read a bunch of cool stuff (including a chapter from the forthcoming sequel to the very good Lock In), and was generally agreeable, amiable and pleasant. We got our copy of Collapsing Empire signed, and generally had a good time.

Saturday was kind of crazy, as expected. The family’s older women were off to the VA Dance Festival for dress rehearsal before I woke up. I spent the morning getting the youngest cleaned and dressed before the rest got back for a little break before heading off to the first of two shows, when they also took lead on getting the complicated dance hair sorted for the little one (I’m good for brushing, ponytail, braids, etc, though the dance hair, bun-wig arrangments elude me) before I had to have her over at Church Hill.

Church Hill was crazy on Saturday – the weather was gorgeous, so everybody took advantage of the nice day to wander around drinking beer (and smoking, um…things…I swear, I left the place with a contact high) on public streets. The girls did a great job, of course. After the show, we just left, as it was damned near impossible to navigate the place.

The Dance Festival performances apparently went okay (the first show better than the second), though we all survived our day of splitting the party. The fact that I had the house stocked with ice cream helped.

Sunday was day two of Church Hill, with a noon showtime for the whole crew, so we packed up a little earlier, expecting crazy traffic and crowds. It actually wasn’t all that bad. The show went very well, as expected (these are some talented kids), and then a bunch of us hung around to take in the festival with slightly smaller crowds, have some lunch, and making use of the free food and beer coupons.

Yes, the benefit of being an Irish Dance Dad: Free beer:

This photo went up on the dance school’s facebook page- great promotion. Ballet dads don’t get this kind of benefit!

This week looks pretty typical – work, dance, rehearse…yes, rehearse, because I have a gig this weekend down in NC, where we’re hoping to do some recording for the new Humdingers record as well, and at some point this week, if I can get the band together in the vicinity of a microphone for 20 minutes (harder than you’d think), I can finish recording the Jenny Hendricks Experience CD.