Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Sad news:  Middle Gel tipped me off this evening to the the death of Annie Schmidt.

Who, you might ask?

Well, she was the daughter of Jon Schmidt, one of the founders of the Piano Guys.  She’d been out on a solo hike in the Oregon wilderness and had gone missing about a month ago.  According to the story, her remains were found at the bottom of a cliff and her death attributed to blunt force head injuries.  Bottom line: she fell.

I had originally been inclined to say something here about the foolishness of solo hiking, but pace.  There is nothing, from what I know, worse than surviving your own child and I’ve no reason to add to that burden.

I bring this up because, again, Who, you might ask?  Well, the Piano Guys are the Gel’s favorite musickal group.  She’s got several signed CD’s from them and has seen them at least three times in concert the past few years.  (I went with her to the last one at Wolf Trap last summah.)  The PG’s really aren’t my thing, but on the other hand they’re a heck of a lot better than Miley Cyrus’s “twerking” or your average Boy Band or Gansta Rappa that most of teh kids seem to follow these days.

A sample of their mishmash of classickal and modernsky:

Also, in their stage show, they are unabashedly religious (Mormon, I’ll grant you, but still….).  In this day and age, it is quite refreshing.

Anyhoo, as teh Gel herself admits, as sad as the nooz is, at least the family now has closure, which I suppose is something.  (As I say, I hope never, ever, to have to go through such a process myself.)