The Monday night immediately following a con weekend is not a good night to suffer insomnia. Even considering I got to bed fairly early both nights of Darkover, by con standards.

I had a good time at Darkover even though the only open filking during the weekend happened after I went to bed Sunday morning. With an assist from the Steampunk program, I set a personal best for non-music programming attended at Darkover. We caught two programs from Steampunk Guest of Honor Mark P. Donnelly on "Victorian Travel Advice for Steampunk Adventures" and "Inventions Never Mentioned: Bizzare Victorian Contraptions which Never Caught On". Both are apparently based on research Donnelly is doing for future books. I look forward to those.

We also heard Esther Friesner read the first chapter of her latest Princesses of Myth book, Spirit's Princess. It comes out in April and sounds like it should be an excellent addition to that series.

The concert program was good as usual, with sets from regulars Ellen James, Homespun Ceilidh Band, and maugorn, plus Glyn Collinson back for a second year. And, of course, the Clam Chowder concert with plenty of old favorites (including "I Never Do Anything Twice" and "Boys of Goose Hill") and a few new things (adding "Zombie Pirates in Love" to "Re: Your Brain" and "Zombie Jamboree"). Very nice Clam Karaoke, with the first winner joining Kathy Sobansky for some exceptional harmonies on "Twa Corbies", then Ed Sobansky singing "Brown-Eyed Girl".

For the first time in quite a while, we actually caught a full-length movie at a con. Intrigued by a conversation with a bunch of Tech Fandom, we watched Time After Time, which neither of us had seen before. We both liked it, even if a quick-moving montage of San Francisco city scenes at one point in the movie nearly made my head spin. I also had to laugh during a particular scene set in the Hyatt Regency's revolving restaurant during which the scene behind one character never changed!.

Sunday we got a pleasant surprise upon discovering thatcrazycajun and singing_phoenix had dropped in on their way back to Atlanta from visiting family. We were just heading for lunch at the time and they'd only recently woken up, so we retired to the Nautilus Diner around the corner to eat and catch up.

The only bummer was that once again open filking mostly didn't happen. I'm told there was a little bit of singing which broke out in the con suite sometime around (or after) 2am on Sunday morning, on the back end of a jam session featuring Glyn, John Ward and a couple of other folks. I saw the jam on my way back to our hotel room after giving up on anything happening in the designated music room, but didn't feel up to joining in. This led to talk about suggesting the con schedule the music room for bardic circles at night rather than filking. It would also help if the availability of that room for late-night singing was indicated on the program grid, rather than a note buried in the program book.

Got my Philcon schedule today. Should be a fun weekend; in addition to Sooj as Music Guest we get Heather and Ben and a bunch of the usual Northeast suspects like thnidu, drcpunk, mneme and sodyera. Also at least one performer I've heard of (Nicole "Blue" Dieker) and am interested in seeing. Looks like I'll be busy Saturday morning/early afternoon. My schedule is as follows:

Fri 11:00 PM - Bawdy Songs Theme Circle
Co-hosting with Kathy Sands & Dr. SETI

Sat 10:00 AM - Filk 101
With fellow panelists Lisa Padol, Nicole Dieker, Patricia Wake, Melissa James, and Ariel Cinii

Sat 12:00 PM - Travel songs Theme Circle
One of the two 2012 Pegasus Award Floating Categories
Co-hosting with Roberta Rogow, Heather Dale, and Kathy Sands

Sat 2:00 PM - Filk Concert
A half-hour set of my own. Ariel Cinii has the other half of the hour

Sat 4:00 PM - Gaming Songs Theme Circle
The other 2012 Pegasus Awards Floating Category
Co-hosting with Lisa Padol, Joshua Kronengold, Crystal Paul, Steve Brinich

( And then there's DarkoverCollapse )

Catching up on things...

Darkover was a solid three out of four stars. Might well have rated four stars had there actually been open filking. Unfortunately, due to an assortment of family matters, party invitations, and folks not attending this year we never had enough filkers around to reach critical mass. Other than that, the rest of the con was fun. As usual, John Huff (and a cast of thousands), maugorn, the Homespun Ceilidh Band, Ellen James and of course Clam Chowder all served up fine concerts. Joining this mix this year was the excellent Glyn Collinson, a singer-songwriter and rocket scientist from the UK who's now on this side of the pond working at Goddard. The Instrumental Jam was also fun as always. I tossed in requests for "Childgrove" and "John Ryan's Polka". Had a couple of nice dinners with Marilyn (one of our 3LF dancers) and her husband David (WANOLJ, to my knowledge) at An Poitin Stil and with Glyn and Darkover Music Guru Jim Williams at Nautilus Diner. Also attended a fun panel in the Steampunk track titled "Uppity Women of the Victorian Age". The speaker focused on some of the lesser-known women of the age like Civil War soldier Malinda Blalock (and her husband Keith) and Florence Nightingale contemporary Mary Seacole. Unfortunately, I forgot to take notes so I don't recall all the women who were discussed.

Last Saturday we hosted my traditional birthday housefilk. A week early, I suppose, but that's what worked out with most people's schedules. As housefilks usually go around here, we had about an hour of singing and storytelling surrounded by about four hours of conversation. But that's fine. We don't get to see folks like osewalrus and beckyfeld, thelongshot and katrinb or stevezeve that often, so a chance for some nice conversation is a very good thing. We're still nomming our way through leftover bread, pumpkin pie and other munchies.

Speaking of music, we're planning on attending the Chromatics' annual Holiday Concert at Greenbelt Arts Center next Saturday the 18th. Always a fun event.

"But wait," I hear you say. "Shouldn't you be cleaning for the housefilk?"

Why yes, but cleaning is tiring business and one must take breaks. And, on a 25 Mbps fiber optic line, you can imagine it doesn't take particularly long to upload pictures. So, time to start working through the backlog!

Pictures from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

Pictures from Quartercon 2010 (mostly the Garden District)

Pictures from Darkover 2010

We had a good time at Darkover last weekend. For the second year in a row, we actually attended non-musical programming, something that hasn't happened since the two years back in the 90's when I filled in for David Honigsberg running the Shabbat Service. We attended the Librarians – Secret Masters of Knowledge panel on Saturday afternoon, which featured Catherine Coker, Jennifer Heise, Devra Langsham, Craig Levin, Don Sakers, and Lee Shapiro offering up Amusing Tales From The Information Desk. (Subtitled "Filing a FOIA Is Like Using A Hammer When A Screwdriver Will Do.") We also went to Esther Friesner's reading, where she read her story from Darrell Schweitzer's upcoming Urban Werewolves anthology. It was fun. Can't really say much without giving the story away, but--y'all will be amused.

I strummed for the Playford dance on Friday. We didn't see the music until the dance itself, but luckily Susan had Books With Chords. Yay! And only two dances that needed barre chords. I've actually been practicing my barre chords lately (finally), and managed to make it through one of those dances on the first, slower, run--then ran into trouble at normal speed. For the second of the two I decided discretion was the better part of valor, pulled off the capo, and transposed like usual. But hey, I'm trying!

We caught Ellen James's concert, the Mike Stoddard and Friends set, and John Huff's set with Cliff Laufer and Dennis the Fiddler (last name escapes me). All were enjoyed.

Clam Chowder was excellent, as Clam Chowder always is. As a kick-off to my 40th birthday celebrations, I bid on and won (for $500) the House Left Comfy Chairs for the_sheryl and me. They were indeed comfy! I am reminded that I need to steal John's setting of "The Boys of Goose Hill". Dennis the Fiddler was a great addition to the crew and had a really awesome electric fiddle--picture a "Flying V" guitar boiled down to fiddle size and you'll have a pretty close image. Forgot to get a close-up shot--oh well.

Got an unexpected surprise Saturday night--Fran, the partner of my father's first cousin Jim (who both live in Columbia) turned up at the Clams concert. Apparently she was invited there by a friend of hers whose husband (who I gather was big in the local reenactor community) had recently passed away (and who the Clams commemorated from the stage). Apparently Fran also knows about half the people at Darkover, including Fred and blueeowyn, Marty Gear, and a number of other folks we also know. Gotta love small, intersecting worlds! 8-)

Filking was tiny both nights; basically maugorn, osewalrus, drcpunk, the_sheryl and starmalachite. One pleasant surprise--Mike Briggs, the husband of Darkover GOH Patricia Briggs, stopped by the filk both nights. On Friday, he offered up a couple of sea shanties and sea songs.

Had lots of nice conversations with various folks, including Esther and her husband Walter, Gerry and suecochran, Kludge (who joined us for a Friday night Indian dinner run), redaxe and maya_a, and assorted other folks. Also got together with osewalrus to plot for GAFilk, where I will be his Trained Stunt Guitarist. I also took the opportunity to bounce some ideas for one of my stories off him. This particular idea involves a bit of media policy, and I wanted to make sure I had some plausibility to my backstory. I'm sure the writers on my f-list will agree that logical backstories are good things *grin*.