Wow! It has been a bit of a whirl wind couple of days here in Maryland. Spent most of yesterday just goofing off reading my book and playing on the computer. A good friend of mine who lives in the area, Terri, was due back from a work trip to Louisville, Ky during the week and she had asked me to come on into town and go to a house concert she had been invited to.

   We met up at her place in the town of Greenbelt, Maryland around 5:30 and she introduced me to the two cats and fed me home made soup. The house concert was at a friend of a friends house so we really didn't know anyone there, or at least I didn't. Terri at least knew some mutual friends, and everyone there was so nice, that we were soon talking to others, chowing down on snacks and drinking a glass of wine.

    The concert featured two marvelous guitar-mandolin flat pickers from the area, Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondi Kline. Both were amazing players and singers and the best part was sitting on a comfy couch less than 5 feet away from the stage. They played and sang quite a few bluegrass tunes of course, but also threw in a little Gordon Lightfoot, Fatz Waller, Emmy Lou Harris..... Both gentlemen have toured and played with several big name performers and bands, but they really shone in this kind of venue. More than an hour of performing over two sets before saying our goodbyes and heading for home. Terri and I had some hot tea while watching SNL for a bit before we each finally headed for bed.

    We were both up kind of early this morning and on our way toward Baltimore. Terri knew of a nice restaurant just out side of town in a building that use to house an old textile mill. We spent a couple of hours eating a nice meal and catching up on more of what we have both been doing this past year. We then took a nice walk up the stream the mill was located on before getting back into the car and going on up to Baltimore.

    We went on into the center of the city and stopped near what is known as the inner harbor. We walked along the seawall looking at the boats and the people enjoying the sunny day. In the end we ended up walking several miles out the south side of the harbor and made it all the way out to Fort McHenry. We spent a good two hours out there looking at all of the exhibits and climbing over the embankments. It was a neat place to see, but by the time we were done seeing everything we were also kind of worn out having walked quite a few miles. We managed to catch a bus back into the city and it dropped us off about two blocks away from where we had started in the morning.

     We caught a quick bite to eat in a little restaurant overlooking the harbor before heading back to Greenbelt. We got changed into some dancing clothes, I packed up the rest of my gear and we took off for the Sunday night dance over at Glen Echo. Another nice dance there, but it is true that there are often more men than women at the Sunday dance. It doesn't seem to make to much of a difference though. Some of the guys simply dance with other guys and some of them wait a dance or two out and some guys just give up a go home. I sat out one dance but was otherwise lucky enough to find a partner every other time. I do think that I will have to start learning the 'following' position so I don't have to sit out any more dances. While it seems that it has always been 'okay' for women to dance with other women, it has never been as common of men to dance with other men at a contra dance. It seems to be much more prevalent back here in the east for some reason and I always figured for me personally that if it was good enough for mountain men, cowboys and sailors to dance with each other, it should be okay for me.

    I only stayed at the dance through the break tonight, it was just a long day and I didn't get my nap in today. Want to try and get up early enough tomorrow to go to Gettysburg because it is suppose to be a nice warm and sunny day. I should have some more pictures to post in a day or two.