Picking up from my brief post Monday with a more complete conrep. As already blogged elsewhere, the fine folks at FilKONtario put on another fabulous weekend. For only the third time in 15 years of attending, I chose to drive, rather than us paying two $450 airfares. Both drives were actually quite pleasant. It took us a little over 10 hours to get up (going the all-highways route via Pittsburgh) and just short of 9-1/2 coming back (via US-15 through Williamsport & Harrisburg). Caught up on a bunch of CD listening, including They Might Be Giants' "Dial-A-Song", a Warren Zevon collection, and the two-disc Lafitte's Return--Pirates for the Preservation of New Orleans Music set. Having taken I-79 up, we passed by Cooper's Lake, which is about as close as you'll ever get us to Pennsic without a kidnapping involved.

( Finding my voice. Literally )

And it's time to go to bed...we'll pick up the rest tomorrow or Tuesday.

Home from another fabulous FKO! Made the drive back in an impressive 9 hours and 20 minutes, which included getting briefly lost in suburban Buffalo. (I'll note I did stop to ask for directions.) Ordered and quickly consumed pizza. Found our bedroom trash can overturned and its contents scattered around. Gee...did someone (specifically two furry "meep"-ing someones) miss us? Tivo appears to have recorded Numb3rs and BSG. Yay.

More when I can assemble a con-rep's worth of coherent thoughts.

Part I because I'm sure I'll miss a few, between still being a little sleepy and (obviously) a bit distracted.

Well, despite Air Canada's best efforts to screw up our plans, we had a rockin' time at FKO! The trip started out on an annoying note--a three hour delay due to mechanical problems, followed by a 30 minute wait on the tarmac at YYZ while they tracked down a gate crew, followed by a slight screw-up with our checked guitars. Nothing serious; it's just that instead of doing the intelligent thing of putting them out the oversize chute directly behind our baggage claim they put them in the chute five or six conveyors over from ours. Bottom line, got to the hotel about 2:00am, got into our room, and fell over.

( But on to the highlights. All 16 of them...*grin* )

I don't usually post plugs for the various filk community honors; there are others who do it much better than I ever could. (And most of my f-list reads those folks too.) But we all have our moments, I guess *wink*.

As hofdave points out, nominations for the Filk Hall of Fame close next Monday, January 15th. The induction ceremony happens at FilKONtario. The form can be found here.

Each of our communities has people who are the linchpins of that community. They're not necessarily the flashiest performers or the top songwriters or the folks who've racked up a dozen GOH & TM slots or chaired half a dozen filk cons. They're the ones who spend most of the con working registration, or put together the songbooks, or run theme filks and other sings at cons, or are just someone whose always there at your local cons, singing songs, helping out, offering smiles and hugs.

Dave Alway's passing got me thinking about Poul and Gordy and Gary Anderson who we didn't get the chance to honor while they were still with us. We won't get the chance with Dave. But there are still many deserving folks out there we can share the joy of an induction with.

I certainly won't claim to be the most prolific nominator of people. (And I've fallen down on the job recently...) I've tried to nominate a few folks who I thought might be a bit "below the radar"--those linchpins I described above. A couple of them have been inducted. (And I've recognized a phrase or two in the citations *grin*.)

Go. Nominate. Tonight.