Baycon: Saturday

[mdlbear]

Yesterday was surprisingly hassle-free. Breakfast with the flower_cat and Y.D., joined by cflute a little later. She and the newlyweds had knocked on our door hoping for coffee, but not only had we gone down for breakfast, but we'd forgotten to bring a coffeemaker.

The hotel's buffet breakfast was only $10. You get what you pay for -- it was still overpriced. The bacon was particularly awful. Going out today.

After breakfast and a little running around, I went home to fetch coffeemaker, filters, kleenex, and a few other last-minute items. Didn't even glance at the computer, which is a little unusual for me.

I was on two panels: "Every OS %$#@!", and "Filking for kids" The first was particularly wide-ranging, in spite of my efforts as moderator to keep it somewhat on topic. The latter included the Bohnhoffs, Paul Kwinn, and Taunya Gren. cflute had been planning to join us, but dropped by only to beg off from lack of spoons. I handed her a room key and sent her off to bed.

Between the two panels I was actually on was the "Growing Up Geek" one that the chaoswolf and Jordan were on. Ended up being mostly about how geek kids cope with middle school and high school. Interesting, but could have been better.

There was a 90-minute wait for tables in the hotel's little coffeeshop; we cobbled some chairs together and ate in the bar. It is occasionally useful to have a wheelchair in the family.

After dinner, chaoswolf, selkit, and I went up to the room for coffee, and were eventually joined by cflute. Got a call from the Cat just before the concerts started, but was just settling in to another talk with Callie. Both of us would much rather talk or make music with a small number of friends than sit quietly in a room listening to someone else sing.

That's true of Colleen, too, but she occasionally forgets. So when she called again when the open filking was starting up (and I was starting to think I should head downstairs anyway), I could tell that she was starting to get a little upset and guessed, correctly as it turned out, that she was feeling excluded.

By the time I'd put together my things for filking, I'd already arranged things with Callie to have coffee in our room this morning, and for her to spend some exclusive time with Colleen today. So I was able to go downstairs and remind Colleen that she had the same priorities, and soothe her feelings before heading in to the filk.

A month or two ago, I don't think I would have handled things this well. Didn't, in fact, causing a trainwreck that constituted a real wake-up call for me. I'm working on it. Still kind of new on this planet.

Got down to open filk a little after it started. Small circle, but good people. I set up directly across the circle from the niche where Colleen was ensconced with Igor, and started off with "Eyes Like the Morning". Like "The River", that was a Valentine's Day present for Colleen; the two will bookend the next CD. Other songs included "World Inside the Crystal" (following "Where the Magic is Real") and... I forget.

We went up and crashed about 12:40.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

You get what you pay for -- it was still overpriced.

You don't always get what you pay for, but you usually have to pay for what you get.