More Contata brain dumps...

-- Would any of my readers be offended if we get rid of Delaware? The drive up took about 4 hours and 45 minutes. A good portion of those additional 45 minutes were spent in Delaware, I believe. This is largely why we got to the con just in time for starmalachite's Filk Classics concert, in which I rocked my way through Frank Hayes' "Lola the Engineer". And why we split for the hotel's dinner buffet shortly afterwards.

-- Aside from the event coordinators who need to be fired, the Hilton was quite a nice hotel and excellent con space. The alcove between rooms made for lots of quick chats while passing back and forth from circle to circle, going to and from the bathroom, etc. We lucked into a sleeping room right across from mamadeb and jonbaker's fine Con Suite. Yay for Entenmann's donuts and danish and Real New York Bagels! (And lots and lots of chocolate.) I actually slept pretty well I think...or at least pretty solidly (since nobody sleeps *well* at a filk con!) Plenty of food options, the non-existant Hong Kong Buffet notwithstanding. We had enough time on Saturday to make the 0.7-mile stroll up to the Atlanta Bread & Cafe by Rtes 10 & 202. Exercise gooooood.

-- It was great seeing fleetfootmike, who handed off the Intefilk CD I'd bid on last Concertino. I'd actually totally forgotten about it. I think Mike played as many songs on my axes as I did over the course of the weekend. We listened to the CD on the way home--good stuff! Although you can probably guess what we were thinking during "Only The Innocent"...*grin*

-- Wheels come full circle...when I first started doing filk concerts back in 1993 & 1994, including at Contata '94, suecochran played guitar for me. So it was amusing that I played guitar for her at this Contata. Although it would have been even more amusing if Sue had asked me to play "Lullaby For A Weary World", which I parodied early on (along with a million other folks probably) as "Lullaby For A Weary Fan", and was the first song I asked Sue to back me on. (That and "Donuts, Donuts".)

-- I think I got batyatoon good with "Baltar's Song". She pulled her headscarf down over her face when I hit the first refrain. Yes, I'm eeeeevil... 8-)

-- I wonder if a Joe Giacoio/Pete Kennedy double bill would make the audience's heads explode? Or just smash, then burn, their guitars. (Or is it burn, then smash? I never get the order right.) Which reminds me I still need to blog on the Kennedys show a couple weeks back. Maybe together with Carla's show Wednesday (same venue, same series).

-- I should make the observation that Northeast-style Chaos sometimes annoys me. I've been in OVFF filks that weren't as competitive as several East Coast filks have been at times this year (going back to Boskone and Balticon). And that includes the famous OVFF Hallway Filks. At least this time when the main room started to annoy me on Saturday night I did take the initiative to jump to the smaller room where fleetfootmike, folkmew, edstauff, osewalrus, and gimmeahand were hanging out, among others. Even after folks started coming over from the main room, it was still friendlier.

Definitely many kudos to the con-com for pulling together an excellent con despite all the challenges. Looked to my experienced con-runner eye as if everything ran smoothly (other than the hotel idiocy, of course). The sound was great, as always. BTW, I volunteer to help mike wrangle next time. It makes sense, since I'm usually sitting in the first few rows anyway. 8-)

While I still have a few functioning brain cells...

I had a great time at Contata! I'm told they had about 100 folks registered not including kids or guests, which is excellent. I was much in demand as a Trained Stunt Guitarist, accompanying signy1 on "Rich Fantasy Lives" in the Tom Smith benefit, partiallyclips on "Uplift" and suecochran on "God Lives On Terra" in the one-shots/two-fers, and batyatoon on "Mornington Crescent", among other things. I quite enjoy playing for other people; it's something I'd like to have more opportunities to do. It gives me excuses to stretch my guitar skills. My axes also saw action in the hands of starmalachite and fleetfootmike. Got to spend lots of time chatting with and catching up with folks, which is always good and something I don't always manage at cons. (Although I'm getting better at it.)

The Tom Smith Benefit was most excellent, and our special guest Christine Lavin did a great job as MC. Judging from the look on his face, I would not be surprised at all to see Nate Bucklin turn up at the next con with a Boomerang. I definitely must catch Tom Paxton's next local show and find out his reaction at having Christine and all the performers sing "Peace Will Come" to him (and filkertom) over the phone.

Enjoyed all of the concerts that I made it to, even if it looked like I was asleep (or nearly so) once or twice. (I'll note I missed the two Friday concerts, that being the only opportunity to eat dinner.) Of course, it's almost impossible to not enjoy a Heather Dale concert. In addition to being talented performers and fine songwriters, both Heather (as I've noted before, I think) and Ben clearly enjoy being on stage and take great delight in performing. I have observed this to be a fairly consistent characteristic of my favorite performers across all genres.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Before the weekend totally recedes over the horizon, I should wrap up my Balticon report...

( Schedule? What schedule? )

As the con-rep goes rolling along...

( Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! )

See, I promised I'd continue! Even though I seem to be coming down with con crud. Ah well, I'll take getting sick after the convention over being sick before the convention (see FKO '08), not to mention during (see Conterpoint '07).

( On to Saturday )

Recovering today from a fabulous Balticon. Got home around 6pm last night after dropping UT at the airport. Ordered pizza and took care of a few things that needed doing before bed. (Which is why we didn't go to the Dead Dog Dinner.)

( Friday )

To be continued...(I promise this time!)

And finally we've come to the end of the insanity that's been the first third of 2008. Got back into town Thursday evening, after sneaking onto a slightly earlier flight home from Dallas.

( Drives, Dandelions, and Dinners )

( On To Dallas )

So, with these two trips done, it now looks like I won't be on the road for anything other than a con until late in the summer. Yay!

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.

As seen in the_sheryl's LJ, we're having a party!

When? Saturday April 12.

What time? Starting around 2 pm, and going until whenever.

Why? It's the_sheryl's birthday, or at least it's the closest Saturday to her birthday that isn't during Passover.

If you want to bring food/drinks to share, games to play, DVDs to watch, instruments for jamming or filking, go right ahead. The only thing you have to bring is yourself. :)

Note we have two kittens. One will likely be hiding under our bed. Some things never change...

Questions? Directions? E-mail one of us.

Be seeing you!

Back from San Francisco. Actually, got back Saturday night. But didn't get around to posting Sunday and was busy yesterday.

The meetings were long, mind-numbing, and accomplished very little. Luckily, the host organization paid for free wireless in the meeting rooms, so I was able to get some actual work done (or at least keep pace with my work e-mail). They also fed us breakfast and lunch.

But you don't want to hear about the boring details of a standards committee. You want to find out how many filkers and relatives I can manage to see in a 4-day trip. The answer, in this case is many. Of course, it helps that the trip fell across a Wednesday night. So, with the help of a convenient Caltrain station I rode south to Sunnyvale where I had a nice dinner with Bill & Carole, then headed for the Starport to see mdlbear, flower_cat, chaoswolf and the usual Wednesday night gang. Among the folks hanging out were figmo, capplor, the visiting pocketnaomi, and the visiting-from-Israel moshez, who I was delighted to finally meet in person. Also hvideo stopped by with a DVD of chaoswolf and selkit's wedding, so at least I got to see that part of the Consonance festivities.

Thursday I managed to catch up with mysticfig and the rest of Team Bohnhoff for dinner. Yay again for Caltrain! Yay for cities with real mass transit and real commuter rail! I got to see Mystic Fig Studios in all its glory and drool at Jeff's guitar collection. (I did manage to keep the drool off the guitars and the recording gear. Barely.) They took me to an Indian place for another fine dinner.

Friday evening I got together with most of my Bay Area family at my uncle's house in Haight-Ashbury. In addition to Don & Marcia, my aunt & uncle Karen & Jim came up from Santa Cruz (and gave me a ride), and my cousin Talia, her husband Mike and their little one came over from Oakland. Not surprisingly, there was much levity, much cooing at the baby (also much raising of arms and shouting YAAAAY!, which the tyke seemed to enjoy), and yet more good food to be consumed.

Now I actually get to mostly be home for several weeks before the next time I have to play road warrior again. (The exception, of course, if FKO. Definitely not gonna miss FKO!)

Watchin' the planes fly away...

Yep, here I am back on the road again, this time to an engineering design standards committee meeting in San Francisco. Just a quick post so my readers know I arrived.

The weekend was fun. We saw Jonathan Coulton + Paul & Storm at the Birchmere on Friday. The JoCo/P&S shows appear to be getting to be like Clam Chowder concerts, where the audience plots get stranger and stranger. This particular show featured the tossing of panties onto the stage during the appropriate point in Paul & Storm's "Opening Band", followed by a barrage of stuffed animals during JoCo's encore. (The latter appears to be a running plot related to "Code Monkey"). Much good music was heard, and we saw partiallyclips and scifantasy. Then on Sunday went to Jen & Steve's wedding shower, which was also fun.

After tomorrow's meeting I'll be having dinner with Bill Laubenheimer & Carole Parker (who may or may not be on LJ), then heading down to the Starport.

They say all work and no play makes Jack (or Gary?) a dull boy. So, while I was toiling away at building code hearings, I still found time to enjoy Southern California. For starters, Palm Springs makes a nice venue for a convention; especially compared to previous sites Rochester and Orlando. No offense intended to the residents of either town, but a downtown that mostly closes at 5pm and a resort that's 15 minutes from any food other than its own restaurants limit one's dining options, especially when one only has 30-45 minutes for a meal. Palm Springs, OTOH, has lots of restaurants open all day and late into the evening, and all within a 5 or 10 minute walk from the convention center. So even though many meals were takeout, it was good takeout, including Shakey's Pizza, Mexican, Chinese, and several sandwiches from Sherman's Delicatessen.

( Fun, Friends, Food, and Filk )

Our thoughts and prayers are with lovensong87 and kyttn tonight. As most of my f-list knows, their townhouse burned down last night and filkergem died in the fire. Obviously, we are all stunned, particularly those of us who just saw Greg & Maya a few weeks ago at GAFilk.

I can't think of a time I didn't see Greg with a huge grin or a laugh on his face. I think my favorite memory will be him and jslove flanking the stage at an FKO, in formal dress, acting out verses of a song about penguins Ellen Kranzer sang to the tune of "Pomp and Circumstance". (I think madfilkentist was on keyboard, but my brain is suffering a few bad sectors). I may even still have the lyrics around somewhere. Greg also was part of my backup chorus at FKO in 2000 when I performed Technical Nerdy Guys as a one-shot, waving his PDA in the air behind me.

In my usual scatter-brained way, I managed to post about New Years Eve, but of course blithely skipped over the rest of the weekend. Granted, much of it was spent around the house, but that was OK since I finally caught up on a bunch of things that needed doing. For example, raking the rest of the front yard, cutting up the branches that had fallen off our tree, and carting stuff over to the dump. Also got in a couple of treadmill sessions and guitar practices. Meanwhile, watched the Terps lose (bleah!), the 'Skins win (woo-hoo!), Michigan win (I can hear the cheers from my friends up North!), and USC leisurely stroll up and down the field.

But most importantly, we did have a filker in town--catalana, for the APA conference. We shuttled her up to Stately Zeve/Andrews Manor for dinner and hanging out. starmalachite and stevemb joined the party. We had an excellent dinner at Liberatore's up in Owings Mills. Lots of food--big dinner plates and the salad could almost have been a meal in itself. A most enjoyable evening was had by all.

I've heard it said that what you do on New Years' Day determines what your year would be like. In my case, that would mean I'll get lots of exercise (used the treadmill), make lots of music (played guitar), and see lots of sports (watched bowl games). I think I can deal with that! 8-)

Happy New Year all!

We rang in 2008 down at First Night Alexandria, our third trip to the annual celebration. We caught sets from the Alexandria Kleztet, the first time we've seen them, and usual favorites Al Pettaway and Amy White. The Kleztet was much fun. You have not lived until you've heard the Star Wars Cantina Theme done klezmer-style. Well, OK, maybe you have, but it was delightfully amusing and very well done. Al and Amy were also great. Not as many goo-goo eyes as in past years. But Al still looks like he's making love to his guitars. Some things never change *grin*. Al has a new Rainsong carbon-fiber 12-string.

Wound up watching the fireworks from the lawn in front of Alexandria's Union Station. There seemed to be a lack of shuttle buses going west on King Street so we had to hoof it over towards the GW Maisonic Memorial (fnord!), and by the time we got to the Metro station they'd stopped running the shuttles up to the Memorial. But we still had an excellent vantage point for the fireworks, which were cool.

On our way to First Night, we met thelongshot, katrinb and Robbie at Busara for an excellent dinner, and slightly late exchange of Christmas and Hanukkah gifts.

Today will be spent doing laundry and watching football, plus some guitar practice and a stroll on the treadmill.

So those of you who've been following catalana's journal know that the fine Doctor is in Baltimore this weekend. We've arranged a dinner mission for this Saturday, December 29th. The plan is to meet at Steven Joel's and France's at 6:30pm; we'll decide what we're eating and where from there. E-mail me or leave a comment if you're interested in joining, so we have an approximate idea of how many folks to expect.

Also e-mail or leave a comment if you need directions. (Granting that the usual suspects know how to get to stately Zeve/Andrews Manor...*grin*)

Since today is the day to be thankful for things, I'll be thankful for friends in many places, and thankful for the ability to travel the country and visit them.

Which brings us to our triumphant return to quartercon, for the first time since 2003.

( Quartered, but not drawn )

For the couple of LA-area folks reading (not to mention the assorted Northern Californians...):

I found out recently a friend WINOLJ who lives in the Irvine area lost his job. He's looking for IT management positions. His concentration is Infrastructure and Networks, but he's also managed applications in R&D or Engineering settings. He has both Windows and UNIX experience and is in the process of getting his MSCE. He's mostly interested in jobs in the Orange County area. If anyone out there happens to have a lead or two, comment here or e-mail me and I can forward a resume.

Thanks!

Got home from work today to find the sad news that writer, game designer, rabbi, musician, and all-around nice guy David Honigsberg died of a heart attack today. To say this is something of a shock is an understatement. He had suffered a minor heart attack last year, but all indications had been that he'd made a full recovery (per his own comments in his LJ). I've known Dave since GEnie SFRT days; not closely, but frequently saw him at Lunacons, Balticons, Philcons, and assorted Worldcons, and almost always made sure to drop by wherever he was playing. (Unfortunately, that hadn't been as frequent lately since I stopped doing Lunacon and missed the last two Philcons. Now I'm even sorrier about that then I was already.) My thoughts tonight are with his wife Alexandra, his family, and his friends in NYC and across fandom.

Bunches of Happy New Year wishes for all! Lazy morning (well, afternoon now...) here watching the Tournament of Roses Parade and reading LJ. We went to the Nookery for the annual New Year's party. Bunch of local folks including katrinb and thelongshot, Steve & Crystal, Steven Joel & museinred, and beckyfeld and osewalrus. Played a round of Munchkin Bites/Super Munchkin, which Chastity won. Ate pizza, turkey, and many many desserts (including both fudge and lemon bars made by France).

( Summing up the year )

Most of this post was written during my much-delayed flight home. Talk about insult to injury; a flight scheduled to leave San Francisco at 3:15pm and arrive in Baltimore at 11:16pm gets delayed almost 2-1/2 hours by a medical emergency, two mechanical problems (one on the original plane, one on the plane they changed us to), late-arriving pilots from another flight, and then a line of heavy rains that moved through the area.

(Note I said rain there. I know what some of you are thinking. Insert glyph of middle finger here…)

( Rockin' In The SF Bay )

Now I get a week-and-a-half to enjoy life at home before we head to Florida for the holiday weekend.