It's been a little over a week since my last post; probably time for an update. As you may recall, I was complaining about lower back pain in my last post. Whatever I did down had worked itself out by last Thursday, which means it was probably just a pulled or strained muscle. On the other hand, my left shoulder now hurts, pretty much right in the middle of my shoulder blade. Ah well, I still have plenty of cyclobenzaprine.

( BRUUUCE! )

( An Evening with Mr. Rogers )

( Solar Decathlon )

Next up on the social agenda is Philcon. I am supposedly doing a bunch of things including a concert set and a Song Sequitur. They haven't told me what time anything is yet, or if I'm doing any non-filk program items. Guess I'll find out when I get to the con and see the pocket program. Hopefully I haven't been scheduled for anything that's before my planned arrival sometime Friday evening.

Back from the building code hearings. Actually, I got home on Friday (late), but we had the_sheryl's parents in town for the weekend. So between that and other things I'm just getting around to posting now.

Apologies to all my Baltimore friends who I promised to hook up with during the week. Things just didn't quite work out. The hearings didn't end until 9pm most days, so I basically staggered back to my hotel room and collapse. The one night things ended earlier I took a member of $EMPLOYER out to dinner.

I fared pretty well at the hearings. By my count the committee decisions went the way I wanted about 75% of the time. Included in that were some key successes in the area of wind-resistant design and construction.

On the down side, I've done something bad to my lower back. It started when I woke up last Wednesday morning and my back was very stiff. By the end of Wednesday I was hurting enough I started popping Excedrin. I haven't had a good night of sleep in a week; I keep waking up sometime between 3-4am in enough pain it's hard to find a comfortable position and get back to sleep. I finally went to the doctor yesterday and have the good drugs now (and some stretching exercises). Hopefully they will help, although they didn't do much last night.

Yet again, a combination of interesting things going on this weekend and a long list of stuff needing to be done is conspiring to keep me away from Capclave, despite the fact it's only a couple of miles down Rockville Pike from us. The "interesting things" in this case consist of a Cheryl Wheeler/Christine Lavin double bill Saturday night at the Birchmere, and the latter weekend of the biennial Solar Decathlon down on the Mall. The Stuff Needing To Be Done has accumulated over the last month's worth of Jewish holidays, musical events, and RenFest visits. The latter must be dealt with (or at least solid progress needs to be made) before I descend into the ten days of building code hearings and in-law visits waiting with gaping maw to swallow me towards the end of the month.

So, I can't justify a con this weekend, even for a day trip.

However, if any of the Capclave-bound folks out there are so inclined, we can pop down the street for dinner Friday or for lunch on Saturday or Sunday. Just drop a comment here or e-mail me and we'll see what can be arranged.

And other things. But for starters, we're still chuckling over the fact we managed to attend two house concerts with two different female folk performers named Dale. If I'd had any kind of foresight, I'd have invited zencuppa east for a house concert to notch the hat trick!

( Heather and Ben )

( Felicia and William )

( RenFest (which has its share of hills and dales) )

And that's about it for the weekend. Could use another day or two off to finish catching up on all the things I wanted to catch up on (stuff on TiVO, cleaning up my office, first shot at raking leaves). Got a decent start on a few things though.

Time to head off to 3LF practice, but I'll wrap up with a round of hugs for all my friends dealing with a variety of crap right now. Wish I could do it in person at OVFF, but (as mentioned previously) I've got a major work committment that includes the weekend. But of course I'll send the_sheryl with a bunch of proxies!

Been a couple weeks since the last post. The High Holidays were good; had nice meals with my parents, services were decent, actually some good sermons. The rabbi managed to invoke "Chutes and Ladders" in his Erev Rosh Hashanah sermon, and Stretch Armstrong in his Yom Kippur sermon. Naturally, this meant we kept getting distracted from the actual prayers by ear-worms of Artisan's "Snakes and Ladders" and Ookla's "Viewmaster". Luckily, the stanza "For the sin which we have committed by filking the Mahzor" has not yet been added to the Al Heyt.

Meanwhile, it's been busy at work getting ready for the building code hearings at the end of the month. Largely keeping within the usual workday or fairly close thereof (half an hour over at most), except for one night we had members in town and an after-work dinner. But it's pretty much an all-out scramble during the day.

But the main event was this year's FSGW Getaway, which, as the only major musical event in my October, took on extra significance. Luckily, a good time was had.

( A night on West River wouldn't do us any harm... )

A quick update while waiting for FRINGE to start.

We went to the Takoma Park Folk Festival this weekend (Sunday). One could not have arranged a better day; low-80's, low humidity, cooling breeze, sunny. And there was lots of good music to be listened to. We started with a round-robin of sea songs from Bob Zentz, Janie McNeely, and Seattle-ites William Pint and Felicia Dale. After some nommage and crafts-browsing, we settled back in to see former-local-turned-Maine-iac Kathy Westra, and locals Judy Cook and Joe Hickerson doing "The ABC's of Folk Music"--a round of "A" songs, then "B" songs, and so on. They got up to "E" before the 75-minute set ran out. That was followed by a 30-minute set from Lisa Null. Finally, we caught two rockin' sets from ilyAimy and Tinsmith before heading for home via Mamma Lucia and the supermarket.

Speaking of concerts, according to Heather Dale's e-mail newsletter she's apparently doing a house concert somewhere in the DC area on October 7th. The newsletter did not say where, however. Anyone out there have any details?

Finally, a hearty Shanah Tovah, and best wishes for a good and sweet New Year!

Over the last couple of weeks we've hit a few musical events (and a few other things) along the way. Before they recede completely over the horizon, I should at least hit the highlights.

( The Boys From Newfoundland )

( Our Bouzouki Babe )

( New York, New York )

( We Can Haz Parrots? (And Cheezburgers too...) )

Color me amazed. September has only just arrived, and I've already achieved the 50-book goal I set last year when I kept track for the first time. Granted, five of those were graphic novels (four of them Hugo Nominees), so I do feel like I've cheated just a little bit. On the other hand, I read two 900+ page books last year--Connie Willis' Winds of Marble Arch collection and David Hartwell/Kathryn Cramer's The Ascent of Wonder collection, not to mention the 3-in-1 David Weber omnibus Ashes of Empire and fell short of 50 by a single book. So it all balances out.

So here's the latest list. I think you'll find the leadoff hitter particularly amusing...

41. Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire
42. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
43. Bellwether, Connie Willis
44. Children of God, Mary Doria Russell (*)
45. Dragons Wild, Robert Asprin
46. The Doomsday Brunette, John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem
47. The Orphan’s Tales: In The Night Garden, Catherynne Valente
48. WWW: Wake, Robert Sawyer
49. Saturday, Ian McEwan (*)
50. Emergence, David R. Palmer

(*) denotes read for $EMPLOYER’s book club

( And the commentary )

(pauses to let the hail of peanuts die down...)

So, back at Concertino, I bid a large sum of money ($175, if I recall correctly) at the Interfilk auction to acquire A Certain ARC. I read it shortly thereafter, but proceeded to get caught up in the prep for, trip to, and recovery from Anticipation. Not to mention my usual lazy tendencies. But finally, I've gotten around to a review.

( Strap in and enjoy the ride )

And finally, we reach the installment where we get to the actual convention (sort of).

( Since we did come here for a con, remember? )

I've been known to occasionally make odd plans while traveling. Case in point: making a side trip to Nova Scotia to visit a friend from MST3K fandom (moxieholic) at the start of our Torcon vacation. Thus, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that we decided that we should run up to Quebec City for a day. Since, after all, who knows when we may be back in the lovely province of Quebec?

( Did they know we were coming? )

Not wanting to get to Montreal horrendously late, we set out from Cooperstown around 3:30pm. The early stage of the drive (around Lake Oswego and east along US Route 20) was a bit tricky due to the torrential downpour attempting to drown the Central NY area. However, by the time we were nearing Albany we managed to drive out of the storm and the clouds, and had smooth weather the rest of the way north. We stopped at a restaurant called Steve’s Place near Glens Falls, NY for dinner. Not a four-star dining experience by any stretch of the imagination, but good enough to satisfy. (We probably would have fared better in Saratoga Springs, but we weren’t quite hungry enough yet at that point.)

( The tail...er, tale continues )

While I work on the next piece of my Anticipation report, here's an amusing video of an attempted building demolition (in Turkey, IIRC) gone horribly wrong:

http://www.videowired.com/watch/?id=4048259603

Our Worldcon trip starts with me fulfilling a childhood dream to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. I realized while using a road atlas to study driving routes to Montreal that Cooperstown was not far off one of the potential paths, and only about an hour past the halfway point on that route. I had also decided to break the drive into two days, thus making the detour to Cooperstown an easy call.

( Take Me Out To The Ball Game )

Before I dive into the Cooperstown/Montreal/Anticipation reports, I should do a Confluence report before that con recedes too distantly into the past. The con was fun and relaxing, as usual, with another excellent program of concerts organized by mrgoodwraith. We caught sets from Cedric the Bard, Rin Barton, Clif and Carol Flynt, Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps, Toyboat, Pete Grubbs and Maugorn. It was good to see and hear from everyone. Clif and Carol especially, since it has been several years since we last caught up with them.

Had a nice breakfast with Juanita Coulson on Saturday morning. I mainly wanted to touch base on next year's Conterpoint. But it was also a pleasant chat in general. Speaking of food, we also had a nice dinner at Ya Fei (our traditional Saturday night Confluence meal) with happyfunpaul and ultimatepsi. We also, for the first time, got to both Paoli's (Friday dinner) and Eggs n'At (Sunday brunch).

This was the first chance I've had to see John Scalzi. His guest speech was more Q&A than speech, but interesting and frequently very funny. This of course will not be a surprise to readers of his blog Whatever. He talked a lot about life in Ohio, how the cost of living differs between the Midwest and the coasts, and about breaking into publishing--including how he's managed to sell books just from his web presence. It's interesting that I've become a Scalzi fan, given that I was disappointed by Old Man's War. However, I enjoyed both The Last Colony and Zoe's Tale, as well as Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, all three of which I recently read in preparation for this year's Hugo ballot.

The Musical GOH this year was More Difficulties--3/4 of Technical Difficulties (Linda Melnick, T.J. Burnside-Clapp and Jean Stevenson) plus T.J.'s daughter Jessie (who shows the apple does not fall far from the tree *grin*). They were great fun and wonderful to listen to. For the occasion, they made up four T-shirts reading, in turn, "MORE", "DIFF", "ICUL", and "TIES". Watching the various permutations as the members rearranged themselves was amusing. Many old favorites were performed, including "Lies", "Mr. Coffee", "Cranes Over Hiroshima", "Lullaby For a Weary World", "Ladyhawke", and "Dedication".

I've posted my pictures here. Some are better than others. I'm trying to be a nice guy and shoot without flash, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. Partly this is me failing to keep my arms stable while holding the telephoto lens. I probably need a tripod, not that I really want another piece of gear to schlep. I also need to research the right settings for shooting in dim rooms.

As reported elsewhere on mailing lists, and LJ, long-time gamer and BSFS member Hal Haag passed away yesterday after a heart attack. I didn't know Hal well, but certainly saw him at many conventions and BSFS meetings, and we at least always exchanged cheerful hellos.

I also just learned tonight that a long-time member of the DC-area traditional folk community, Mary LaMarca, finally succumbed earlier this week to a long battle with ALS. Mary (along with her partner) specialized in Australian folk songs, among other things--I'd joked once that she and John Huff were my two "pushers". I have a long list of songs I need to learn on account of the two of them (three, counting Mary's partner George). Mary also gained some degree of notoriety for her "Ring Cycle" parody of "Barrett's Privateers".

Add Les Paul, Mike Seeger, and (during Worldcon) John Hughes to that, and this is becoming a rather mournful week...

Back home from Worldcon. Much fun was had, and many sights were seen.

Now, we have three evenings (including tonight) to get the house ready for Sheryl's parents to visit for the coming weekend. Yes, we're crazy, but it was just about the only available weekend in June, July or August for their traditional summer visit. As a result, don't expect much in the way of Anticipation reports until next week. Not to mention the Confluence report and Rosemary and Rue>/i> review I still owe you, among other things.

No, not the filkertom song.

Five years ago today, the_sheryl and I stood in front of our friends and family, in my childhood synagogue, with the rain pattering on the roof, exchanged rings and wedding vows, and flattened a glass.

Life was interesting the first year or two due to my assorted work crises. Now that I actually get to work normal hours (business trips notwithstanding) and have an employer who appreciates me (and lets me work to my strengths), life is a whole lot better.

As I toasted us during dinner, "Here's to five years, three cats, several thousand books--and many more!"

Happy anniversary, my love ::smooch::

I confirmed this afternoon what I've suspected for a good part of the year--that I will sadly not be able to attend OVFF this year. The next round of hearings for the national model building codes start Saturday, October 25th. The parts I am responsible for covering run solidly from the morning of the 25th through to Friday afternoon the 30th.

Given I have a job that involves travel and fixed-schedule events, there was eventually bound to be a major conflict that completely wiped out a con. I just wish it wasn't what is sure to be the grandest, most rockin' filk con ever. *sigh*

(I'm tempted to simply chalk it up to karma--given I managed while on business travel last year to attend two housefilks, a Starport party, and a convention filk circle.)

In other news, due to the fact the construction industry is still in the toilet, it also turns out I don't have to attend the late-September meeting in Chicago that I was expecting to go to. Aside from not getting to see the group of members I work closely with (who I actually like a lot), I also won't get to hang out with any my Chicago friends.

On the other hand, the Chicago meeting was conflicting with part of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington's annual Getaway, which is one of my favorite non-filk, non-SF/F activities of the year. Since $EMPLOYER decided I don't need to go to Chicago, I can make the entire Getaway. So there's a silver lining there.

The other silver lining is that I'll pick up another two comp days from the code hearings. At the rate I'm going, I may be able to take all of December off and still have leave to carry over!

Not a busy one for programs I'm committed to; just two items.

First, a concert at 1:00pm Friday, Room P-519. I'm splitting a 90-minute block with nimuejohn. I *think* I'm up first.

Second, I'm on the Designing the Perfect Filk Con panela at noon on Sunday, also Room P-519. Along with filkerdave, janeg, figmo, and ccrazy. The description says, "Where, when, what, how, and is anyone volunteering? There is no perfect filk con, we know that, but here’s where we try really hard."

Other than that, lots of time to enjoy the convention! I've skimmed the Convention Guide already and spotted a bunch of panels up my alley. Nothing actually against my two programmed items this time, yay! But some may still require cloning since they're against concerts I want to see too! Choices, choices...

BTW, has anyone pointed cadhla at Page 18 of the Guide yet? 8-) 8-) 8-)

If it weren't 3LF practice night, I would come up with something eloquent and coherent to say. Instead, I'll simply leave you with a personal soundtrack for the day:

( A vision of the past and present )

( And a vision of the future )

I don't usually comment on the deaths of famous people, but, as you will see, I couldn't let Walter Cronkite's passing go unmentioned.

My first couple of years of elementary school were spent at North Lake Elementary in Rockville, MD. (My parents switched me to another school after 2nd grade.) I forget now whether it was 1st grade ('74-'75) or 2nd grade (75'-76'), but one day, the teacher had our class write letters to a famous personality. I picked Walter Cronkite. The reason Uncle Walter came to mind is that his broadcasts during the Skylab missions had left a tremendous impression on me. (You may recall my song "Never Too Late", which has the line "When I was young I watched the Skylab with enraptured eyes".)

I still have the letter, which for your amusement I will now transcribe largely as written:

Walter Cronkite,

I like you Skilab programs. Wish your Skylap programs wouldent stop going. I liked the motols you made. I hope your programs would come back on. I liked them they were good. I like them very much. It was good.

Gary

Obviously, my spelling has gotten much better (that's supposed to be "models" in the 3rd sentence--Cronkite had a Skylab model on his desk). No comment on whether my handwriting has improved. But there you go...a great newsman leaving a deep impression on a young science fiction fan-to-be.

Rest in peace, Uncle Walter.

For the first time in 5 or 6 years, we headed up to Shore Leave this past Saturday. The main excuse was to catch the Maryland stop on Kathy Mar's Summer 2009 Tour.

Unlike our last visit, we made sure to get up there early enough to get day memberships. I don't know if they actually sold out or not (given the economy), but the halls of the Hunt Valley Marriott seemed pretty crowded. Which, given the now-infamous HVM carpets, is a very good thing.

We arrived in time to catch the end of the always-entertaining Bob Greenberger's presentation, including a bunch of trailers. Some good stuff, including "Ponyo", "9", and the upcoming Dr. Who ep "The Waters of Mars". Following Bob was the Boogie Knights, who mixed a bunch of recent and new songs with requests pulled out of a bowl. I have to confess that it was not one of the Knights' most polished sets. We still enjoyed ourselves though.

After lunch we caught the Ethan Phillips/Robert Picardo talk. Despite having given up on Voyager in the middle of the 2nd season, I still enjoyed their reminiscences. They each had a portion of the hour to themselves and a portion where they were on stage together. They actually made quite the entertaining pair. They auctioned off a Voyager script and a Stargate cast photo for charity, both of which went for quite a bit of money (in the $600 range). Picardo also sang a song from his CD of mostly-jazz standards, and showed a clip from some sketch comedy work.

Wound up with third-row seats for the Masquerade. It was fairly short--only 19 entries--but some good costumes, including a recreation based on "Blink", a presentation of ninja evening wear (one was clad in sheer orange fabric, the other in white with red polka-dots), and a sketch titled "KlingonCreditReports" that had a Klingon playing guitar backed by a large Kermit and an Animal. I will eventually get around to linking pictures (along with Balticon and Concertino. I'm such a procrastinator.) After a set of sketches from Luna-C, Kathy performed for about half an hour. She started with "Man of Red", which amused the crowd, then proceeded to bring down the house with hsifyppah's "Wreck of the Crash..." I love watching a fresh, unsuspecting audience react to a song like that (*grin*). The whimpers when Kathy got to the verse about the puppies were particularly satisfying. She ended with her Invader Zim song, which (no surprise) has been ear-worming me all week.

Of course, given we were daytripping, a short Masquerade was good. That meant that we, along with jewelsong and merryb_esq, could colonize the filk room an hour ahead of schedule (10pm instead of 11pm). By the time we left shortly after midnight, there was a pretty decent sing going on. Besides Kathy & Dean, of course, other folks there included Roberta Rogow, starmalachite and stevemb, Mike Browne & Liam, and a couple whose name I didn't get but had some amusing songs. One note for future Shore Leaves though--I suggest not putting the filk in a room half-filled with round tables. That made things rather crowded, thanks to a much larger turnout than I remembered from the last Shore Leave I had attended.

So that was fun. The rest of the weekend was fairly lazy; some laundry, some TiVO-watching, and some catching up on general stuff.

One of the services $EMPLOYER provides to its members is an online bookstore. So once a year, the book-selling division takes all of the excess books, obsolete books, and sample copies of books they chose not to offer, piles them up in a cubicle or two, then yells "FREE BOOKS!" The result is fairly similar to what you would expect if you dumped a pile of books in the middle of a hotel lobby during a con and yelled the same thing.

I walked away with about a dozen books, most of them actually directly applicable to my job. Those are piled in a corner of my cubicle, waiting to be skimmed. Also, waiting for me to figure out where in my cubicle I'm going to put them.

I brought home two interesting-looking books to add to the to-be-read bookcase. One The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, by Nicholas Carr. The other is A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers & Baseball Bats. According to Amazon, the latter book isn't even available yet; the release date is given as August 18, 2009. Now that's what I call a score! It appears to be a bunch of anecdotes, stories, bios, and factoids strung together into a loose history of woodworking and wood construction. It looks fascinating. I'll let you know. 8-)

Third book post of the year. This list got a bit longer than #1 and #2. I hit 30 books in early June, then promptly got distracted by Concertino and the last minute mad rush to get through as much Hugo Award reading as I could before the voting deadline. The sprint is fairly obvious from the list: Books #32-#40 are all Hugo-nominated novels, graphic novels, or related books, with the exception of the one Jim Butcher Dresden novel.

( Books #22 through #40 )