Bill Roper's Journal

I'm back from Confusion. We left early, since I wasn't dealing at the con, which meant we got back early, which is good, because I am still extremely tired as I recover from this abominable cold.

I had a good enough time at the con, for having no voice. I enjoyed all the panels that I was on and I got a lot of rest. And I *needed* the rest.

Tomorrow, it's back to work!

If I can manage to finish packing things up, I will shortly be on the road to Confusion. (Yes, I know. I *live* on the Road to Confusion.)

See some of you there!

The van is mostly loaded for an early departure tomorrow. In a little bit, I'm going to go pack my suitcase with everything except my toiletries. And that will be it until the morning, which is going to arrive *way* too early.

See some of you at GAFilk!

I guess I'm going to Confusion for the first time since COVID. I won't be taking the table, because I'm unlikely to sell enough to make it worthwhile, so I'll actually see more of the convention than I usually would.

In that, it will be more like Chambanacon, which I will be missing greatly in a few weeks...

I need to pack up the van, but then I'll be on my way to Windycon with Gretchen (who will drive the van full of Dodeka stuff there, then turn around and go home to pick up kids from school). Eventually, we will be there in toto. :)

Wish us luck!

Let's talk about OVFF, although it won't be nearly as long as it should be.

Other than spending an hour and a half in the lobby waiting for our room, apparently because they forgot to tell me that the room was ready after telling me to go wait there for them to call me, I had a fine time. The room was in good enough shape (although the lamp wouldn't reliably hold a plug, but I had an extension cord and a free outlet :) ), so that wasn't a problem.

The Pegasus Concert was great fun and I really enjoyed getting the chance to perform "The Prophecy Hotline" with K. This is what happens after four years of high school drama...

We grabbed dinner with Erica and Steve. After that, it was time to go off to bed. I had gotten up early so that I could have a chance of getting the table set up in the dealers' room on Friday afternoon, but waiting 90 minutes for the room took care of that plan. And I decided that I would rather have more sleep than breakfast, so I headed directly down and got things set up, opening only about half an hour late. Trace was good enough to bring lunch, which was a fine thing, conversations were good, and business was, well, meh. Sales were down 30% from last year and 17% from two years ago, which is noticeable. But happily, this is not how I make my living. :)

More good conversation at the Pegasus Banquet, a lot of well-deserved awards were distributed, and then it was off to the songwriting contest. I drew the next to last slot for "It's Propaganda", which won the audience choice award, which made me happy. The Interfilk Auction was suitably silly and raised a goodly amount of money.

And now it was finally time to filk. I saw Katy set up in German Village, dropped my checkbook on a chair there, and went to retrieve my guitar. No one moved the checkbook while I was gone, so I had apparently succeeded in buying the chair. The room switched into a theme circle on "Reaching Out" shortly after I arrived, so I contributed "A Distant Song", which was about someone *else* reaching out (and a bunch of aliens who I think I like *much* better than humans). Later, I got to introduce "Wind and Water", which was my other new song for the con (along with "It's Propaganda"), and it seemed to go over well. "You Should Know" started a brief cycle of love songs, and when it was time to go, I pulled out "Third Planet From the Sun".

(On my way home, I had switched to the "Beatles Channel" on the satellite radio, where they have the 24/8 tag referencing -- of course -- "Eight Days a Week". I was contemplating that was something that would be extremely difficult to file the serial numbers off of and repurpose when I realized that "Third Planet" is structurally similar to "The Green Hills of Earth". Just written by *me* instead of Rhysling/Heinlein.)

And that was the extent of my singing for the convention, but it was a fun circle to be in, which was the objective.

The next day, we woke up, packed out of the room, skipped the hotel breakfast (which I'm told was a wise decision), and headed back to the dealers' room. Some time around 3:30, the last customer came through. And I managed to find (with Trace's help) everyone that I owed a check to for new CDs and get those written. I still need to write the rest of the checks and get them in the mail, but work has not been cooperating.

K and I grabbed dinner with Trace and then lit out for Chicago, making it in the excellent time of about six hours and fifteen minutes, accompanied for part of the journey by the USB stick of this year's Pegasus Concert.

Some year, I will find a way to do more singing at OVFF. Staying for the dead dog would help. When I no longer have children at home (or in school), that may be more feasible.

That day is coming much faster than I had expected. I'm not sure that I am going to like it...

The van has the inventory in it, all of the inventory having been added to the inventory list on its way into the boxes as I unpacked it. Checks will have to go out on Monday, because I am out of time. I am going to pack up the guitar in just a minute, having checked to see that the battery in the tuner is dead, so I've replaced that. A wise man would check the battery in the guitar too. Let me be wise for a moment...

Ok, battery nominally good according to the mini-amp in the office. Music tablets are updated, additional sheet music for Pegasus Concert and songwriting contest are in the folder and going into the filk bag momentarily. All of the dealers' electronics were checked out in the last 24 hours and seem to be ok and updated.

I'll pack my bag in the morning and we can get on the way.

Assuming, of course, that I remember to put the bag in the car. :)

Congratulations! You have won and achieved your goal of taking control of my child's medical needs, no matter what they or their parents might believe.

I scheduled the PCR test for K that is required for her to go to OVFF without getting a COVID booster which is of dubious value for teenagers. I took time off from work today to take her to Walgreens to take the PCR test, which was going to cost us $99.99, because it is not covered by our insurance.

They did not actually *have* the test kit, because -- unsurprisingly! -- there is apparently no demand whatsoever in the real world to pay $99.99 for a PCR test. Much like the famous Seinfeld episode, they are good at *taking* the reservation; they just aren't actually good at *administering* the test.

They offered to try to find a Walgreens *somewhere* that had the test in stock. No telling where. No telling *when*. And the test has to be administered today in order to receive the results on a timely basis because the PCR test requires 48 hours to get the results back.

I gave up. I submitted to your demands. And I asked my child if they were willing to take the booster shot and they said it would be ok.

And so they have taken the vaccine, against our and her better judgement, because the little gauntlet that you set up to be run turned out to be a choice that didn't actually exist.

K has a lot of things that she needs to finish before we leave for the con. Hopefully, she will not have any of the minor (or major) bad reactions to the vaccine and will be able to complete them on a timely basis. Tonight, she's running the livestream camera for a band concert. Thursday, she'll be in a concert with the chorus. Somewhere in between, we need to send her college essay off to her Uncle Jeff to give a quick once over, because if there's a professional editor in the family, it's sort of stupid not to take advantage of it.

There's a word that many of you like to throw around, despite having zero clue about what it actually means. And that's the word that I'm thinking right now, although I know that it's the wrong word.

There's a better word to describe this. I know exactly what it is.

But I don't plan to be using it right now.

It was a live, in-person Windycon meeting today. A lot of progress was made. I got to be the substitute secretary for the day, as Cassy had a conflict. The minutes have now gone off in her direction and should go out soon.

Meanwhile, Windycon is going to take my old 60-inch plasma TV for a screen to use at the info desk. This is a good use of the beastie and it makes me happy. :)

And here it is Monday again with no conveniently scheduled holiday, so it's time to get back to work, which was what I did. I'm continuing to work on last week's project which I'm hoping gets into testable condition shortly. It's one of those things where I keep having to tweak the parameters that we're loading, and then we build, and then we have to load the build and see how it behaves.

So far, it hasn't behaved. But there's a new build as of late this afternoon, so maybe it will behave tomorrow.

While waiting on that, I'm working on the other project in my queue and making good progress there.

Meanwhile, I'm sorting out Windycon things.

And neglecting the fence, which I still need to hire someone to fix.

There are a lot of balls in the air.