Dateline: Maryland

I'm in Maryland most of this week. I drove up from Richmond on Monday evening, and tomorrow evening I will drive back home. It took me less than two full hours to get up here Monday, but it will probably take over three to get home tomorrow because of the rush-hour traffic. I-95 and the connected highway I-495, charmingly called "the beltway," are the busiest highways I have ever driven. It is literally stop-and-go for miles between Springfield (where the southern part of the beltway connects to I-95) and Fredericksburg, about halfway between Springfield and Richmond. After Fredericksburg, the traffic thins out some, and it is more like a normal busy freeway and less like a parking lot in which all the cars periodically move slowly forward.

Susan started a new women's class tonight. She is teaching on the book Experiencing the Cross by Henry Blackaby. We both respect Blackaby's writing, so Susan was excited to get to teach this class. She called me and said she had seven people in the class, which is fewer than she hoped, but a good number for a new kind of offering on Wednesday nights at Fairmount Christian Church.

Last night I made copies of a CD for my grandfather. The CD is of the choir at Paramount Terrace Christian Church singing five of the hymns my grandfather wrote for the Church of Christ hymnal. They are beautiful songs, sung beautifully. I have been meaning to get the duplicates made, but have not found the time to just sit and swap CDs while they burned until last night. I will get them in the mail Saturday, and I think he will use them as gifts this Christmas.

I have a new phone, and one of my goals is to find a way to get the Kimmunicator ring on it. The Kimmunicator is Kim Possible's phone/pda in Disney's Kim Possible cartoon. Susan and I have been fans of the show since we first caught it on Saturday morning a few years ago, and I have searched in vain for a ring tone that would work on my old phone. I am hopeful that I can get it for this new one.