Hi!!! I’m back at the computer - we got home just before 11 last night (looked for you in the Fantasy Festival parking lot, Andrea, but we were too early I guess!
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We had a great time this weekend! Angelia was just as I’d thought she’d be, she and her DH were SO nice and funny - and it was the first chance I’d had to spend time with Sheldon, who was ALSO so nice! We had so much fun knitting in the lobby of the hotel and then at Mi Casita (and the waiter had us sing a song for him too! Of course, it turned out to have not the most cheerful lyrics - “Young people all, attention give, and hear what I shall say, I want your souls in Christ to live through everlasting day/ Remember you are hastening on to death’s dark gloomy shade, Your joys on earth will soon be gone, your flesh in dust be laid” - but then again, a lot of texts in the Sacred Harp are like that! Definitely from a tradition that believes in facing death square in the face! But the waiter liked the singing, he said!)
I forgot to tell you, Angelia, our next trip to Alabama is actually Easter weekend - but I know most people have plans for that weekend. There’s a one-day singing on the third Sunday each April near Collinsville on Lookout Mountain (Pine Grove Church, and incidentally the place where DH and I met!), and our habit is to come down on the Friday night, then on Saturday my DH (who was feeling much better by the time I got back to the hotel on Saturday night - probably it was just something he ate at lunch on Saturday) goes off and hangs out with singing friends (usually does something like help plant corn or find missing goats!) while Lynne, our non-knitting friend Laura (who was the one who came through the lobby while we were knitting asking for Lynne’s room number) and I go to an Aveda salon in Chattanooga and indulge in spa facials and the like. Then on Sunday there’s the all-day singing. That will be my next southern singing to try to convince Amy and Sheldon to go to (there is actually a tiny all-day singing on the Saturday, near Arab, AL, but it’s really small and not so great, and it can’t compete with a facial…).
Very tired, and we had what DH and I agree was our scariest plane landing ever when we got to Midway - the flight had been very uneventful, even despite the 30 or so adolescent male hockey players on board, but when we got to Chicago, there was a cloud cover, so we were bouncing a bit through clouds for a while - when we came out of it we were pretty close to the ground already, and the plane was doing that side to side rolling dipping thing that happens, and we kept coming towards the ground REALLY FAST - DH and I grabbed each other’s hands and I had the fleeting thought of “Am I supposed to be assuming some sort of impact position?” and then somehow the pilots managed to set us down incredibly softly at the last minute. DH was getting off just as one of the pilots was coming out of the cockpit, and he thanked him for the good landing, and the pilot looked a little sheepish and said it had been a bit rough, but DH told him at least the actual landing had been soft. But on the drive back home we kept every so often just saying, “Wow… that was scary…”
But all very worthwhile (the singing on Sunday was strong and powerful and fun!), and extra special because of the knitting and visiting on Saturday! And a good example of why, as DH counted yesterday, we spent 9 weekends in Alabama last year! 