The Mandelbear's Musings

Oh. Right. WesterConChord. A good, mostly-relaxing weekend, which sort of surprised me. Taking a teenager (the YD's friend K) along who was paying for her room and board by taking care of Colleen made all the difference.

I did a fair amount of singing, in circles and a two-shot (where I did Rosie and Riverheart, but not all that well).

The high point was definitely the Interfilk auction, where I got a black leather jacket. After the bidding got up to $75 I asked to try it on, at which point the person bidding against me said something to the effect of "ok, it's yours". N. said this meant I must have looked "seriously hot" in it, but my little bear-like brain is having a great deal of trouble with that concept. And somebody took my picture with the wenches; I hope that shows up on LJ soon. Then you can judge for yourselves.

And the Kazoo award -- "Paper Wings" won in the "Dragons" category. Being the only nominee who actually showed up at the concert to sing their own song undoubtedly helped. Plus the fact that it's serious, hopeful, and has a pretty melody. I wouldn't have minded losing to "Gilda and the Dragon", though.

Art show. We got a lovely print of a dragon and teapot by Sue Dawe (in the auction), a fused-glass tile titled "Eye of Argus", and a Cthulhu-themed ceramic butter keeper and spoon jar that I had come close to buying at a previous con.

The hotel had free internet for the duration of the con, but it wasn't fast enough to make ssh to home a pleasant experience. I did my note-taking on a local copy and synchronized (via git) when I got home. Hence the multi-day post.

Not nearly as much talking with friends as I would have liked, of course, but I introduced a couple of new people to my music.

Colleen was having a pretty bad time of it, between leg cramps, a lot of difficulty walking and getting between the car and the scooter, and the narrowness and height of the bed. Grump. She still enjoyed the con, though. As did I; a lot more than I expected to.

My half-hour concert came off without trainwrecks (and only a couple of glitches, which hopefully weren't too noticable to most of the audience. I got a couple of positive comments afterwards, including from the sound guy and GOH. I got the setlist keyed in and an unsplit ogg up on the web in record time, largely because I had nothing better to do while the laundry was running. Some good conversation, though. Not much singing outside the concert. A couple of songs by request in the con suite.

It was a very small con; well under 100 people. They don't have a date, a hotel, or guests for next year; it may well not happen. Sadness.

(ETA: Nick says that it will happen next year; we'll see.)

A good phone call to Callie, who I think needed a friendly voice about then.

It was a good day, and a good weekend.

So, yesterday we drove down to ConChord. Despite my worries, Colleen handled the trip very well; we had to stop a little more often than usual, but she managed just fine in the public restrooms along the way. She took a spill at the hotel, going sideways along a very gentle slope, but escaped uninjured, undeterred, and cheerful. I love my turbo-snail!

It turned out to be a Forgetful Friday in a couple of ways -- Colleen left her phone at home, and I left the directions I printed. Fortunately all I had to remember was the exit: Topanga Canyon Road. It's 101 all the way down. I also realized too late that I should have packed a badge holder.

I also forgot to take my meds in the morning -- naturally I only found that out when I went to take them at night. I took the essential once/day stuff. The noteworthy thing about it was that I found this very amusing, rather than beating myself up over it. Go me.

No singing -- we crashed about 11pm after conversation in the con suite.

My toastmaster's concert at ConChord, which happened a week ago last Saturday, is finally split up, properly indexed, and uploaded. You can find it here. For field recordings, the sound quality is remarkably good; they were captured on my H2, just in front of the audience. The performances a little less so, but parts of it are, if not awesome, at least served up with win and a modest amount of awesome sauce. I did tear up at the ending of QV, so that says something.

Busy being toast. Concert last went pretty well; good reaction to Wheelin' and QV. Lost a longer update because of stupid Apple keyboard conflicting with 30 years of Emacs habits. Pants not bankrupt, but required a large infusion of cash this morning. Set list later.

Well, here we are at ConChord. Got in about 4:30 after an easy trip down 101. Stopped at Solvang for lunch at The Chef's Touch -- made of yum. Small place, very small menu written up on chalkboard. Two large-screen monitors showing the stove from above, so you can see what the chef is doing.

Dinner here at the hotel wasn't nearly as good, but made up for it by being more expensive. The company was good, though; Joyce, Dave and Jordan; Michael and Allison. Nobody else had shown up by the time we went upstairs at 11:30. Grump.

Spent all evening sitting in the lobby playing guitar: Plink before dinner, and Flame after.

We're borrowing a scooter from Michael for the weekend. It took up an enormous amount of space; we ended up using the back seat for additional stowage. We would not have been able to take two additional people plus luggage, though we could have managed one. So far, the only person who's actually used the scooter has been me.

Musical mayhem starts tomorrow.

Got in a good walk this afternoon after lunch, meaning (in this case) between about 3pm and 4pm. Good, solid exercise walk, three times around the Rose Garden. Or was it four? I lost count.

The route takes me past a high school; it was amusing to be strolling past kids a quarter my age. Of course, they were mostly in groups and more interested in their conversations than in covering ground. But still...

About 30-40 minutes of practicing; mostly stuff from the concert set. I still get distracted; it's usually safe to assume that there will be at least one trainwreck during the concert, but it's pretty solid otherwise. Discovered that I've been playing an F in the first line of third quatrain of QV, not the C that I originally notated. That, in turn, means that the second and third quatrains harmonize, and explains why I occasionally mix them up. Anyway, that means I can use the second (lower) melody with the men's ending, and it'll work.

Wheelin', meanwhile, may have acquired a C-C7-E7-F riff between what I still think of as the verse and the refrain sections. The C7-E7 slide is one I learned from my brother years and years ago, in "Railroad Bill" and "Freight Train". Always wanted an excuse to use it.

It feels like an odd sort of Sunday, not a Tuesday. Grumble. That means that tomorrow will probably feel like an odd sort of Monday, at least until I get home.

My Toastmaster gig at ConChord is now a mere three weeks away. And now that I have reasonably solid timings on QV and Wheelin', I can actually plan out my set list -- as long as I don't write anything new in the mean time. The probability of getting QV on a single is getting lower, but it's still non-zero.

Wednesday was fun. Colleen's friend Bev had to leave early, just after Joyce and Jordan arrived, but we managed to squeeze in her verse of QV, which she hadn't heard. Got the hoped-for reaction: shocked recognition, surprise, and laughter, in that order. Made of win.

Paper Wings [mp3] and Wheelin' [mp3] are coming together pretty well; the latter is especially not bad for having been written just this Monday. We also tried out Quiet Victories with all the extra verses (to date) and some audience participation on the ending. I'm still pretty much winging it there -- that and the intro need work -- but it is going to be flat flaming fantastic.

If I'm going to record Wednesdays on a regular basis for more than just scratch tracks, I'm probably going to need separate mics for the performers to get a reasonable mix with the drum.

Exactly one month from now I'll be eating breakfast in the Warner Center Marriott, getting ready for my Toastmaster gig at ConChord 21. EEEEP!!

Went over to Joyce's last night for some practice; we worked on the three songs in the tentative setlist that we hadn't worked on before: "Paper Wings", "Millennium's Dawn", and "Quiet Victories". Also worked on "The River".

There's still a chance that Joyce won't make it down to ConChord. She just got laid off last week (anyone -- especially a startup in the Bay Area -- looking for a senior tech writer or documentation manager?) and is currently dealing with some medical/mobility problems. So the setlist for my concert Saturday night is still slightly up in the air. I need to practice more of my repertoire than just the setlist, though, so that's ok. I figure on running through about half the set plus a couple of other songs every day.

It's not at all clear whether I'll be able to get a single of QV put together in time for the con.

It's on the ConChord website, so it must be true: I'm going to be Toastmaster at The Southern California Filk Convention, September 12-14, 2008. And if that's not enough to get you to go (and it probably isn't), the GOH is Alexander James Adams.