Divertimento

Hey. Um, sorry about that. More than a week, you say? Almost two? Again, I apologize. Life, well, you know. Busy day, busy people. But still: you deserve better. And so I'll lay my stack of grading to one side, and will get down to business - to the business, that is, of remembering this past Saturday afternoon, when Cleo and I drove down to Old Town Alexandria beneath a pleasant spring sun.

We had plans to meet old friends in the evening, but that was hours away, and so we parked the car and wandered down to the trolley stop. Cleo soon scored, in the weirdly magnetic manner of most 4-year-olds, a balloon, and it danced a jagged rhythm above her wrist as we rode down King Street. On the trolley, I flipped through a tourist brochure, and noticed a two-for-one ice cream ad, and suddenly we had a plan, in the shape of two small cups of Mint Chocolate Chunk.

Once we'd had our fill, and then some, we walked outside, and immediately heard bagpipes. A half minute's walk brought us to an assembly of about 20 pipers, who then marched to a nearby green, where we found an entire Scottish festival, complete with clan booths and a main stage. And all the while the pipers kept it up, pausing only to introduce the next song - or, in a further happy turn, five young female dancers.

Cleo was deeply interested; indeed, when the dancers appeared, she sprinted across the green so that we would have a better viewing angle. And there we sat, for nearly an hour, through a full slate of tunes and several flings, watching the drum major lift and then plunge his staff, and listening to the drones before the company finally receded. The large wet circle on the rear of my pants was thus not merely a residue to the prior evening' rain; it was also in part a testimony to our sheer enjoyment of the pageantry.

Ears full, tummies full, we thought we'd push our luck, and ducked into a nearby bike shop to ask if they might rent adult bikes with attached children's seats. No luck. But that, in turn, only spurred us to begin walking back to the trolley - and to find, along the way, a convex mirror that seemed just the spot for a quick selfie. Which you can see below - because, again, we never meant to hide anything from you. It's just that sometimes life gets in the way of blogging about life.