The Mandelbear's Musings

... or was that down the rabbit hole? So yesterday I gave my first livestreamed concert, which you can find here on YouTube. It consisted of the two songs I'd been scheduled to sing in the Listeners' Choice concert at Consonance, plus a few extras in between. The songs were:

1. Daddy's World
2. The World Inside the Crystal
3. Ship of Stone
4. Bells of Norwich
5. The Mary Ellen Carter

(Links are to the corresponding s4s pages. Start times can be found in the YouTube comments, thanks to Rocketsong.)

I don't think it was all that successful, partly because I didn't get links posted soon enough, but I'm going to declare it okay for a first attempt. I probably didn't spend enough time rehearsing, but I did run through it once on Thursday afternoon to make sure that the setup actually worked. And spent the morning using Audacity to try different mic setups and adjust levels. (My hearing is not the best anymore, and I'm no good at picking up subtle problems like channel balance, or even not-so-subtle things like clipping. Audacity's meters and waveform display let me see those things.)

What I ended up with was my two Behringer C2 mics, normally used as a stereo pair, with one pointed at my mouth and the other pointed at my guitar. I had some trouble tracking down mic stand fittings and accessories; some were still in boxes in the garage after the last move.

I could, of course, have used a music stand and couple of mic stands in a more conventional layout, but I wanted easy access to the laptop, and had this crazy idea of using my 24" monitor to display two songbook pages side-by-side. That worked perfectly, using a shell one-liner to put up a series of PDF-viewer windows which Xmonad obligingly laid out in separate tabs. (I note in passing that a 12" laptop screen is almost big enough; it would work if the lyrics were re-formatted with smaller pages and no margins.)

The main event this last week was, of course, Consonance . Fun! I signed Lookingglass Folk up for a 2x10 on Sunday, along with international guest Rika Koerte, who is one of N's dearest friends. We sang "Lord Of the Buffalo" -- we'd been planning to sing The Fox as well, but the sound crew had an incredible amount of trouble setting us up. No idea why.

I also got a surprise 2x10 slot on Saturday, because they were short on sign-ups. Did a quick solo of "Bigger On the Inside" (with an extra Rainbow's End verse scribbled down during the previous two songs) and "Wheelin'".

Both sets were well-received. I also had a long conversation/song-swap with a guy named Ashton (no relation to the UXBF), a Mills College grad student working on a paper on filk as an oral tradition. Many songs, including QV, Ship of Stone, World Inside the Crystal, and Keep the Dream Alive. Others.

I re-packed for the trip, going from the JanSport backpack/shoulder bag (itself a re-pack from the old REI shoulder bag) to the new rolling backpack that I picked up a few weeks ago. Both modes proved extremely useful. A couple of things didn't get packed, though, including a small power strip, which would have been handy in the airport.

The con was back in the Milpitas Crowne Plaza (which calls itself the San Jose/Silicon Valley CP, because who's heard of Milpitas); recently remodeled. The changes are mostly a win -- there are more power outlets in the lobby, and our (accessible) room had a door that opens outward, which is a major win. The toilet, not so much, and the bed was as usual way too high for Colleen. Wait staff spread seriously thin.

Anyway, good con.

We also met with our realtor -- the Starport should officially go on the market sometime around the end of May.

I also got my WiFi extension hooked up, via a dumb travel router; it has a bridge mode, but won't connect to a secured network in that mode. I promptly ordered a set of high-speed power-line Ethernet interfaces, but haven't set them up yet because they don't work through surge suppressors. Which we have on both ends, because electronics.

Did I mention that I hate roller coasters? This last week has been one.

Tuesday started out great -- Naomi picked me up and drove us down to Cortiva, her massage school, which was having a free clinic day. I had two lovely massages, concentrating on my back, shoulders, arms, hands, and calves. N's new GF was there, too. We had a couple of nice talks.

Then at 4pm I was in a suspiciously small meeting with Ryan, the manager in charge of the Disney ID group, who had hired me back in October. Sure enough, there had been a surprise budget cut. My last day will be March 8th.

Same day as the house closing. Oops.

From there it was all downhill; I gave the bad news to our real estate broker, who at first said to go through with it anyway, and then had second thoughts. Thursday I spent packing, trying to work from home, fielded a phone call from a headhunter and a phone interview with Limelight Video Platform. (I now have three headhunters and one company recruiter working on the problem, and it looks as though there won't be much more than a few weeks of gap between jobs.)

I also spent Thursday getting more and more fragile and frazzled; by the time we got to the airport I was pretty much a wreck, and by the time we finally got in to the hotel and got to bed I was seriously depressed.

Sometime Friday morning, while I was out at Fry's buying a new power brick for the netbook (I'd brought one; I just didn't realize that it was still set up for Colleen's Dell), I got a call from the mortgage broker, Kathryn, who said that the deal was still on. She'd explained to Dave that, although Disney had terminated my contract early, I was still employed by the contract agency, KForce. SHE UNDERSTANDS!

Now, if only the underwriter understands. That's still a risk, and I'm not going to be comfortable until I have the keys in my hot little hands. It could make my last day at Disney rather interesting.

And we could still end up with no house, and a pile of new furniture in our living rooms. If that happens, Naomi wants to build. I think that could work, but only if we can figure out ways to cut the price drastically; a first cut put the construction costs at around $700K, which is about twice what I'd feel comfortable with.

This old spectacled bear is, I'm afraid, also a skeptical bear.

But, after spending much of Friday afternoon chasing down pay stubs and bank statements and emailing them to Kathryn, I felt much more relaxed. Margaritas, prime rib, and hugs from friends completed the process, and it looks like I'll actually be able to enjoy the con.

Did I mention that I'm at Consonance this weekend? I apparently hadn't mentioned it before, leading to several people wondering whether we'd show up this year. There were times when I had my doubts.

It was a good con. Thursday I packed. The netbook sleeve I'd ordered over the weekend had arrived; it takes up *much* less space than the Belkin bag.

Friday, we got to the con hotel about 12:30. I quickly found out that the hotel's WiFi was among the worst I'd ever seen. It worked pretty well, though slowly, in the room, but was flaky in the lobby and unusable in the function space. Bletch. At least, because I'm an AT&T subscriber, I didn't have to pay for it.

My concert was at 7:30 on Friday evening; it went surprisingly well, and I got quite a few favorable comments on it. Including some on the way it flowed together -- I'd taken a page from Naomi and done a fully-scripted theme concert, on the subject of places and journeys. You can find the script and all but one song in the expected place.

I've gotten used to thinking of myself as a good songwriter; it still feels weird that some people consider me a good performer as well. I think what made the difference this time was that I was able to actually put some emotion into the songs. The occasional trainwreck probably went mostly unnoticed. Well, except for the lights going out one verse into my last song. That was just funny -- three people with flashlights lept onto the stage, and I simply started over. It was good.

I left two music stands in the concert room; they saw a lot of use over the course of the con.

After Friday, we ate most of our lunches and dinners over at Nijo Castle. Cold, raw fish. Yum. Some of the best sashimi I've ever tasted.

The (other) concerts were uniformly excellent. Most of them had Amy McFiddler in them. Everything is better with Amy in it. The Three (4) Weird Sisters' GOH concert was particularly spectacular. All of them were just on.

I'm not going to go into much detail; if you want that you can read the notes, as usual. I didn't take many notes about the concerts I went to, and I did very little singing in open filk. But, yeah. Good weekend.

Gleep. Somehow I seem to have let an entire week go by without posting -- Consonance, two doctor's visits, a huge pile of work, another huge pile of links, ... and only one walk.

Consonance was fun. I had no concerts, and sang less than half a dozen songs in circles. But I heard some good music, and had some good conversations. Not as many as I'd wanted to have. There's never enough time, in a weekend when everyone has concerts and workshops to go to. But... ok.

And the workshops, Carla's on editing songs, and Joe's on open tunings, were great. Some notes from Carla's workshop under the cut.

The Tempered Glass CD, Hearts of Glass, Nerves of Steel, went for $150 in the InterFilk auction.

Lots of work. Not so much fun -- there's way too much to do, in too little time. It's taken me most of the week simply to come up to speed. Not good. Damnit; the factory tests shouldn't have been an afterthought.

Did I mention that we're having our annual "It's Green!" party on Saturday? Yeah. That. Come on over, if you're in the area!

A big pile of links under the cut, which I'm too fuzzy-brained to sort through. So enjoy the chaos.

Spent most of the morning packing out of the room, except for a late breakfast with Colleen). Two trips home, for laundry and luggage, and dinner and drop-off. Then a return to the con for one last TGl rehearsal, a couple of songs, and goodbyes. And picking up the keyboard and guitar I'd lent out.

That first run home ran a lot later than expected due to the late start; I ended up missing all but the tail-end of Dave Clement's concert. Judi Miller is an absolute joy to watch. (I think the best moment, though, was seeing her joy when Callie played a brand-new flute part on one of her songs in circle. I remember that joy from when Callie joined me on World Inside the Crystal.)

But on the whole it wasn't a bad day, and it was an excellent con.

Trying to rehearse and give a concert on top of caring for Colleen and doing the laundry would have been too much. We're going to need a gofer/old-lady's-companion at Baycon.

Somewhat frazzled, with an unexpected trip home from the con (at rush hour, to pick up a couple of forgotten items that mostly turned out not to be needed).

But it's Consonance! Friends! Music!

A very good day on the whole. But my laundry is done, so I have to get back to it.

("But Consonance is tomorrow!" I hear you cry. "Isn't it a little late for planning?" Well, um...

We will be leaving Grand Central Starport for the Consonance hotel sometime Friday, probably in the early afternoon.

I know several people have asked to borrow instruments. Anything not picked up at the Starport (maps and directions at the link above) will of course be at the con. I'll be there with two guitars, so if you need one for a concert or something let me know.

After a frantic morning, including checking out of the hotel, re-arranging sets at the last minute so Joyce (Tres Gique's bass player) wouldn't have to come back on stage for one song with Tempered Glass and filling the gap with something I had to learn the chords to in 20 minutes, I got on stage with minutes to spare and played and sang for two consecutive 50-minute concerts. Tres Gique sounded as good as they ever have. And the new group, Tempered Glass, kicked ass. Or was that glass.

I spent the rest of the day in a happy, bemused daze wondering how in blazes we'd managed to pull it all off.

And in the evening, after taking pocketnaomi and cflute to a well-earned dinner, we went up to Colleen's room at Kaiser and reprised the whole TGl set for her. We win.

Colleen was still unable to walk as of this morning, and her guts still aren't functional. It's beginning to look as though she'll be lucky if she gets to even one day of Consonance.

At this point she is, as she put it, sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm stressed, and going into the con already sleep-deprived. Or was that depraved?

... and I have to spend yet another con without my Cat. Not a happy Bear.

Good thoughts, folks! We can use 'em.

... fortunately I've arranged to take one.

Consonance was, as usual, wonderful. But not in the usual way: this year, my daughter's wedding was at the top of the program for Saturday morning. Eek!

Let's back up a little.

... to be continued.