The Mandelbear's Musings

It occurs to me that I haven't written about Saturday at Baycon yet; guess I'd better do that before I forget even more of the details.

Actually, not much went on most of the day, except for the Cynthia McQuillin memorial. That wasn't as well attended as the one at Consonance, of course, but well enough. It could easily have run longer; we only had one 90-minute timeslot, and we had to circle the chairs ourselves, then uncircle them at the end. Not really enough time. One of the high points for me was Don Simpson singing "Ship of Stone"; I sang "Green Passions" (the flower_cat's favorite) and joined in on anything else I knew.

Dinner in Spencer's (the hotel's expensive-but-good) restaurant with cflute, and Alisa and Luis of Puzzlebox. The trick to eating cheaply in Spencer's is to order a variety of appetizers and side dishes, and share them around the table Chinese restaurant style. It came to just about $20/person including drinks, which isn't bad for a place where entrees range from $25 on up into the $40's.

The concerts I went to (Tony Fabris and Michelle Dockrey -- tfabris and vixyish -- in the first slot, and the Bohnhoffs in the second slot) were excellent, as usual, as was the open filking. I skipped the Avalon Rising concert (I like them, but they're loud), confirmed that the party floor was almost totally dead, got my guitar, and joined the circle. Cornered cflute to work up a duet version of House Carpenter. Over the course of the con we eventually did all of our concert songs in open filking.

Yesterday's housefilk was good, though a little smaller than we expected. According to flower_cat, who's better at paying attention to such things, we had about 25 people drifting through. A few more sent their regrets due to illness or car trouble. We had a total of four guitars, though not all at once; I got in a lot of singing.

Along the way I ended up running off a couple of copies of my songbook -- a 22ppm laser printer makes fast work of 105 pages, but you do have to remember to top off the 250-sheet paper tray. If I'm going to do this for profit, and eventually I intend to, I'm going to have to fix the scripts to make two different books: one for my personal copy, and one for publication with only my own songs in it.

Sometime last week -- might actually have been last Sunday -- I picked up some cedar closet lining for the walls in the back bathroom. Unfortunately, it's about 2/3 the thickness of the stuff we installed 20 years ago. Grumble-grumble-don't-make-it-like-they-used-to-mutter-grumble. Fortunately, the tub installers put in plywood instead of drywall, so it comes out just about even.

I also acquired an Elfa file cart at the Container Store, taking advantage of the final weeks of their 30%-off sale. Hopefully that will make it easier to organize my receipts for taxes. Don't laugh!

I'm still hoping to do some recording this afternoon, though I'm likely to end up spending most of my time on laundry and dishes.

Cynthia McQuillan died in her sleep Saturday morning, at the age of only 52. The flower_cat and I got the news Saturday evening as we were about to sit down for a quiet drink in the lobby of our B&B in Carmel. Naturally, we drank to her memory, and I spent the rest of the weekend with her songs running through my head.

Cindy was one of filkdom's most brilliant and prolific singer-songwriters; her songs ran the gamut from sublimely silly -- "Gay Vampire Boogie", "Green Passions", "Gilda and the Dragon" -- to rollicking adventure -- "Luck is a Jade" -- to hauntingly beautiful -- "Blood-Red Roses", "The Chieri", "Dragons in the Deep". Sometimes all at once. I could sit here for hours trying to pick a favorite or ten. Her songs and her beautiful, clear voice have been part of our household soundtrack for decades.

She was always encouraging to less-talented filkers like myself, a perfect example of the filk community's welcoming attitude toward newcomers.

We will miss her terribly.