billroper | Entries tagged with cons

I had a wonderful time at GAFilk. The van, maybe not so much, as it became somewhat insane about starting in random ways while on the trip. This made the 14 hour and 45 minute drive home more exciting than it would have been otherwise, but happily, I managed to get the van to start on all occasions and -- actually! -- after leaving the hotel parking lot, it started correctly every time.

The van has an appointment at the dealership on Wednesday. I suspect that there is a computer issue underlying all this, but -- then again -- I would. :)

Anyway, I had a wonderful time at the con, got to talk to a lot of people, sold some CDs, got to make some music. All good.

Even if I didn't get enough sleep last night because there were unknown melodies running through my head...

I am four hours down the road and it is time to take a break for lunch. I am past Indianapolis, which is one major milestone on the drive. :)

I almost forgot to pack the restock Dodeka CDs from the basement, but that is now done. My suitcase, save for CPAP and toiletries, is ready to go, as is the guitar I'm taking. The chances of making an early exit on my way to GAFilk tomorrow morning are excellent. We'll see if they stay that way.

The van decided to throw a wrinkle at us with a Check Engine light after Gretchen gassed up. But apparently, she just confused the system. The light went away and a quick check with the code reader that I bought some time last year said that there were no stored codes, so that's very encouraging. Let's hope the van also continues to behave.

See some of you Friday! (And some sooner...)

I fired up the work computer tonight, because I would rather not discover in the morning that it needs an update. And it *did* need an update, so I win the battle.

I also discovered that I had a bunch of e-mail that I hadn't seen while on vacation, because I had managed to pause all of my work apps on my phone. Happily, none of it was something that I needed to handle.

Now, I'm back to work Monday through Wednesday, then off to GAFilk.

I love chaos. :)

It was New Year's Day and I went over to a friend's house for a few hours in the afternoon to play some games, which was a good time. Gretchen stayed home because her knees have been bothering her greatly in the last few days. With luck, that will improve tomorrow.

K has to head back to school on Sunday and there are things to do between now and then. Mostly, this involves picking things up and putting them away. We *may* decide to take the tree down on Saturday when there will be more hands to put everything away. Ok, mostly there will be more younger knees to carry things up and down from the basement. :)

I have started work on the Dodeka taxes for 2025. I'd like to get these filed early this year for a variety of reasons. We'll see how it goes.

And the long-range forecast is for high temperatures in the mid-40s in Chicago next Thursday. If that forecast holds, my chances of being able to get off to GAFilk with minimum weather problems are excellent. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, I had *planned* to take the Dealer Table to Capricon this year now that they have moved back to the suburbs. Then I got this email today:

"Sorry for this late request but all dealers are to have the following
requirements to be a Dealer at the Marriott.

Certificate of Insurance (COI) that shows:
1.1 Comprehensive general liability insurance, including contractual
liability and liability for personal injury, bodily injury, property damage
and $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 general aggregate.
1.2 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp.), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as Additional Insured.
1.3 Marriott Chicago O’Hare, Hotel Owner (Columbia Sussex Corp), ENCORE,
and Hotel management, employees and agents named as an Additional Loss
Payee.
1.4 The certificate must provide General Liability coverage.
1.5 Automobile liability insurance including all owned, non-owned, and
hired vehicles used in conjunction with the Vendor’s services for bodily
injury or property damage with a combined single limit of not less than
$1,000,000 each occurrence."

This was accompanied by two recommendations for event insurance. The first one won't sell me a general liability policy because I don't make any money. The second one will sell me a policy (maybe) for $99 for the weekend, which is simply one more expense than I can manage given the level of sales that I expect to make. The policy would be half that amount if Capricon were a three-day convention, but -- of course! -- it is not.

I am ticked off beyond belief.

Now I have to figure out what the family is going to be doing about the convention as a whole. At least I haven't reserved a hotel room yet.

ETA: Helen Montgomery has responded on Facebook to note that they are having a discussion with the hotel about this now. Thank you all for your feedback!

The new power strip arrived late enough that I didn't mess with it today. It will probably become Saturday's project, because tomorrow it's back to work. Work is going to be happy to see me. :)

The new CD flip racks also arrived. They look good and will, I hope, be durable enough to survive in our environment. They'll ride in the book box with the old flip racks and the three or four remaining copies of Roberta Rogow's Rec-Room Rhymes that make up the last of our songbook inventory. Paper, alas, has fallen out of fashion in our digital age.

In the meantime, I have written the checks for all but one of the CD purchases that came by mail. In the last case, I'm waiting for an amount and an address which I hope to have soon.

Sales at Windycon ended up being ok, largely due to having sold a bunch of the new "Amy & Me" album. Yay! Clearly, I need to do more albums with Amy... :)

Today was the final day for Windycon 51. As nearly as I can tell, everything went well. And I had a really fine time at the filk last night.

The news from Closing Ceremonies is that we are moving to a new hotel next year, the Hyatt Regency O'Hare over in Rosemont. Along with this move in space, we are moving in time, as next year's convention will be on the second weekend of *October*, October 9-11, 2026. Windycon was in October many years ago and is back in October again.

Whee!

Day two of Windycon is in the books. So far, so good, although sales could be better. But we had fun, especially at the art auction.

Things have gone well so far. Opening Ceremonies were fun and Tim did a great job as Toastmaster.

Time to go to bed now. :)

I will be off to Windycon shortly, right after I get the dogs into boarding for the weekend.

Gretchen will follow when school is out.

See some of you there!

The committee and guest banquet was tonight, so I headed down to the Windycon hotel. We sorted out a few small things and now I'm at home, the minivan is mostly packed, and tomorrow I will head back to the hotel.

Gretchen will follow as soon as school lets out.

Go team!

I assembled the racks for the additional bit of grid for our dealer table at Windycon, because I am busily figuring out how to get 18 feet worth of merchandise onto 12 linear feet of table. The answer is to go up! And to bring the CD tower from home too, although that's not a great way to display much of anything.

Meanwhile, I have finished the draft of the Opening Ceremonies script and am off to do Closing Ceremonies now. Happily, Closing Ceremonies is much simpler. :)

Working on the scripts for Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Windycon 51 that is coming up this weekend. I am later than I wanted to be, because of the proximity to OVFF. I should have a good draft by tomorrow and then I can circulate it for any necessary edits.

Deadlines! They're not just for breakfast any more!

Windycon is getting very, very close in the headlights.

Oh, deer.

That said, tomorrow I will finish up the draft scripts for Opening and Closing Ceremonies and we'll see where we're at.

I was on the way back from dropping K off at Ball State and was looking for ways to stay awake while driving. Although I had already written a song for this year's OVFF songwriting contest (Theme: Steer by the stars), I thought about what I might have written if I didn't already have a useful pair of songs to add a third part to with "Four Stars", which I posted several weeks ago. And I got the chorus for this together and sang it over and over again until I got to a gas station where I could write it down. :)

When I was done, I decided I liked this song better, so I entered it in the songwriting contest. And although it didn't place, it was fun to get up there and sing it and see people tapping along to it and singing along with the choruses.

And if nothing else, it is another exemplar for Brenda to use as she looks at *her* Bill, who seems to have more of a problem coming up with romantic songs. :)

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

We got back from OVFF at about 1 AM last night, which is causing me to strongly contemplate the wisdom of staying over for the Sunday Dead Dog. But that wasn't really an option once the kids were in school. This will not be true next year.

But this was *this* year and Gretchen and I both had a great time. Gretchen didn't do any singing, because her knees were bothering her greatly, but she had a lot of good conversations as did I. And although I didn't manage to spend a lot of time in the open filking because of schedules and dealer table, I *did* get to sing six different songs from the stage, three with Amy accompanying me, and two by the greatly missed Tom Smith during the Pegasus Concert. That makes a pretty good weekend of singing all by itself. :)

We also sold a goodly number of copies of the new "Amy & Me" album and a good number of "Liftoff to Landing" as well, which bulked up the sales considerably over last year. This is also a good thing. :)

But it was good to see friends. And new people! I am in favor of new people, because they make the whole affair more interesting.

We are still catching up on sleep, so I think I will head in that direction now.

The dogs have been liberated from their kennels and will get breakfast in a moment. Then I need to take Calvin off to be boarded for the weekend, as he is too much for Julie to handle. By the time all of that is done, Gretchen should be back and we should be ready to hit the road for OVFF.

If I can manage to finish packing...

The week before OVFF is really not the time to have meetings downtown on Tuesday and Wednesday. But that's the way that the schedule worked out, so...

To add to the general entertainment, Julie had a root canal today. Calvin had his last lesson of puppy school and has graduated. More training is likely in order, but it's progress.

And the new CDs are tucked into inventory and the van is packed, save for our luggage.

I should really feel better about this, but it's being a bit of a treadmill. It will be better when we hit the road. :)

I'm prepping things to get ready for OVFF. I don't expect any major problems, but it's good to keep knocking off tasks, especially because work wants me down in the Loop next Tuesday and Wednesday.

One of the things that I did was to buy a new watch. My Seiko Kinetic was over 20 years old and the battery died months ago. I have missed having a watch. You'd think it would be easy enough to get that battery replaced, but it's a unique design for that watch and the entire watch has to be disassembled to get at it, because it was originally a capacitor that went many years between failures. Then Seiko "improved it" by switching to a lithium rechargeable battery. But since you don't know how long the battery has been sitting on the shelf, you don't know how long it's going to last. The second-to-last replacement lasted a year, which is ludicrous. The current replacement lasted maybe three years. And Seiko has abandoned the whole line.

So I have a new watch now. It is a Citizen Eco-Drive that looks very much like my old watch. The only problem is that I need to get a link put in the band to make it just a bit looser. The nearest watch shop that can do this repair is closed on Monday.

Did I mention that Tuesday and Wednesday I am supposed to be in the Loop?

But it's nice having a watch again. :)

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billroper

Filker.com

January 2026

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Bill Roper's Journal

Entries tagged with cons

Home From GAFilk

On the Road Again

Packing It In

Back to Work

Bits and Pieces

This Seemed Like a Good Idea

Knocking Them Down

Day 3 and Over

Day Two

Friday

At Least It's a Short Trip

Windycon Moving

Getting Less Behind

Scripting It

Counting Down

Lonesome Star

Back From OVFF

Woof!

Prep Work

One Step at a Time