Good weekend

[mdlbear]

Following our 4- or 5-year tradition, we drove down to Loscon on Thursday, having our traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Pea Soup Andersen's in Buellton. This is almost exactly 250 miles from home; we left a little after 9am and arrived in time for lunch at 1pm.

At the con, we saved quite a bit of money by eating only two meals a day in the hotel coffeeshop, filling in at lunchtime with pre-bagged snacks: cereal mix for the kids, nuts and dried fruits for the grown-ups. We saved even more because the kids have decided they'd rather have cereal mix for breakfast and graze the con suite and parties for dinner -- the only meal all four of us ate together was Sunday breakfast.

Loscon seemed a little smaller than usual. Filking was rather light, and the concerts were poorly publicised, having been scheduled at the last possible moment. On the other hand I got a 45-minute concert slot, so I'm not complaining.

After my concert Blake Hodgetts came on, playing a borrowed DX7 (which I had to point out wasn't Blake's 7). Some wonderful -- and seriously demented -- stuff. He needs to get a CD out. (So do I, as my teenaged daughter delights in reminding me at every opportunity.)

The following is the set list from my concert slot: lyrics can be found, as usual, at theStarport.com/people/steve/Doc/Songs/.

1. For Amy -- I would not normally have started with this, but when I hauled it out to practice in the filk lounge Colleen burst into tears. So I put it first so that she could come in late and catch the rest of the set. It actually worked out pretty well.
2. The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of -- Colleen's not too fond of this one, either. Anyway, it's probably not too bad an idea to split up the ose parts and put the funny stuff in the middle.
3. I Wanna Be a Webmaster
4. When I Was a Lad -- I need to work harder on cutting short the inevitable discussion with/among the audience. Better than last time, though.
5. Mushrooms -- some things don't change!
6. The World Inside the Crystal -- ok, now it gets serious again
7. Desolation Row (Bob Dylan) -- or something. This is one of the few songs I've actually memorized; for some reason this surprises people. I really need to learn Do You Know Any Dylan (Eric Bogle) so I can sing them back-to-back.
8. Millennium's Dawn
9. Ship of Stone (Don Simpson) -- I've been ending my sets with Millennium's Dawn lately; Colleen suggested ending with Ship of Stone, and she was right: it makes for a stronger ending.
10. (encore) Uncle Ernie's

My performance seemed to be pretty good this time; only a couple of minor flubs. My biggest problem is still that I tend to get distracted in the middle of a song and bungle the chords. I should probably add chords to all the verses on the songs I have trouble with, but it's a lot of trouble and in some cases will make the song longer than one page. That would be bad.

Driving home went pretty well -- in spite of getting a slightly later start (about 1:15pm) than usual, I didn't get nearly as sleepy as I usually do. I attribute this to a double cafe mocha before setting out and, more importantly, to driving straight through without stopping for a meal. Back home at last, the kids had eggs for dinner while Colleen and I went out for Chinese.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Awful pun! Peanuts incoming!

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

The World Inside the Crystal - is that a song that Bruce Cockburn has recorded about god making a world inside a crystal globe and it being perfect without him so there's no room for him to go inside and the snow falling?

[mdlbear]

No, it's my song about the world inside computers. See lyrics at: http://thestarport.com/people/steve/Doc/Songs/world.html

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

ah! it's just that my recording has him saying 'this is a great song by mumble mumble mumble' ;-)