Bill Roper's Journal

I had a good time.

Oh, more? Ok...

I got out on the road by 6 AM, partly due to having slept badly the night before, which seems to be par for the course on nights when I'm expecting short sleep due to having to get up early. I start out expecting that I'll be tired in the morning and then my brain decides to reinforce the message. Ah, well.

Anyway, the weather was good, the roads were clear, and I managed to pick up Jen by 10:30, losing an hour as I changed time zones. I'd get the hour back later, which would make me very happy on the way home. It was a nice drive with pleasant conversation as Google Maps suggested that we would make better time on the eastern route down I-75, so I saw a bunch of highway that I don't recall seeing before. We got in at some reasonable hour, unloaded our luggage, and after a bit of conversation, I wandered off to bed, where I slept until I was good and ready to wake up.

I walked over to the Barbecue Kitchen down the street for lunch and ate way too much food, to the point where I ended up taking the biscuits back with me. Then it was time to pull the stock out of the van and set up the Dodeka tables, which didn't take too long, because the new packing system has improved that process a lot. I was ready for business by our official opening time, made some sales, then dropped off things in the room, grabbed my guitar, and headed down to Opening Ceremonies.

While waiting for Opening Ceremonies, Bill Sutton tapped me for the My Filk game show. Normally, you try to get folks who haven't done it before, but it's been a *very* long time since I've been up there, so I was delighted to get the chance at this again. We ended up losing the match, but the guitar came in handy for the songwriting portion of the contest and we had folks singing along with us, so I'm going to count that as a success. :)

I ended up in a filk room just down the hall which turned out to be a lot of fun, as it had a great many people in it that I enjoy listening to. And it was still a filk of a comfortable size, which is nice. I got a chance to debut "It's Very Dark" there. Sunnie Larsen pulled out her fiddle to play along and I was able to pass it to her for the fiddle break that goes after the second verse, which made me very happy. I crashed out before it got to be too late, as I needed to make sure that I was awake to open the dealer table at the very civilized hour of 11 AM.

Not too long after I opened up, Amy McNally dropped by to say hi. We chatted for a bit and I asked if she might have time to swing by and join me for a 2x10 if slots were available late in the process. She liked the idea, so we ran over to the registration table, found that the final slot was still open, and dropped our names in there. Then it was back to the dealer table where I sold more CDs and had a lot of nice conversations as folks wandered in and out.

I closed up a few minutes early, as I wanted to get over to the 2x10s on a timely basis. Rand and Erin were on deck at the time and Rand kindly let me know that they were #10 when I asked him. Amy and I were supposed to be #14, so I texted her the info, and she arrived not long after. And I got to see the last several of the 2x10s, which was nice, as being in the dealer room means missing all of the concerts. In past years, they've used a wireless speaker to try to boost the signal to the dealer room, but the connection really hasn't been up to the task and it wasn't set up this year. I found out after OVFF that all of the concerts had been streamed live and that if I had used my phone, I could have heard better what was going on. Maybe that is something I should mention to the GAFilk folks so they can ask the OVFF folks what they needed to do it and if streaming the feed from the board is feasible.

But I digress. Our turn came, Amy and I got up on stage and performed "Everything Ends" and "Shining", which had been the last two songs in my Chambanacon guest concert. This went over well and I had several people tell me that "Shining" was a great song to end the 2x10s on, which was nice to hear.

Off to the banquet! Play It With Moxie sounded great, the food was above average for banquet fare, and I even got to dance some. Unlike a lot of folks, I didn't change for the banquet, largely because I would like my tuxedo to be less tight. Maybe next year. :)

My good buddy, Clif Flynt, was the Super-Secret Guest for GAFilk this year and he decided to scrap plans to give a presentation on writing filk songs and do a concert instead, deciding that most of the people would be benefited more by the latter than the former. This meant that the concert was a bit more impromptu than it might have been otherwise, including Kathleen Sloan and I joining him on stage for "Dreams". But Clif put on a good show and I was in the audience playing auxiliary memory, because if it is an old song of Clif's, I probably have a pretty good chance of remembering the lyrics. :)

(ETA: And I forgot to mention the Interfilk Auction and Quilt Raffle, which was a lot of fun. Sutton, Mark, and I were the auctioneers, there was an *enormous* amount of silliness, including the return of Mike Browne, armed with delicious chocolate truffles for those of you who had not yet had dessert, and a lot of money was raised. Larry Kirby won the Quilt Raffle after some 20 years and was quite pleased.)

Then it was time for the open filk. I went to a room, unpacked my guitar, and just as I got it out of the case, someone walked into the room and took the last three seats where I had been planning to sit. Oops. So I grabbed everything and went to another room. That room never really achieved critical mass and I eventually migrated back to the room that I had tried to start out in, which now had a *great* many people in it. But there was a chair outside the main circle and that would be fine.

Except by the time I grabbed my stuff and got back to the other room, someone had taken that chair. (Do you see a pattern developing here?) I asked Gooch to please hold my guitar for a moment, went back to the room I'd been in, grabbed a chair, and dragged it into the room, because clearly I was having a BYOC night. (That would be "Bring Your Own Chair".)

Anyway, the circle eventually got around to me -- it was about a two-hour bardic circle at that point, which was fine, because bardic is pretty much the only simple way to manage a two-hour circle -- and I announced that I was going to sing something that could be loud, because I was way back here. And Lauren noted that the folks who had been sitting next to her had left and that there was space there, so I grabbed my guitar and music stand, abandoning my hard-fought-for chair, and got to sing from a much better located space. :)

Well, it was better located for a while, but it will be another hour plus until we get to that, so...

And happily, "Third Planet From the Sun" has a chorus that folks find it easy to sing along with and they did, which is another nice thing.

But it was an absolutely lovely filk circle and a lot of good music was being made. I got to hear the PDX Broadsides for the first time (they were slightly downwind of my new position) and was suitably impressed. I am going to need to get some of their CDs for the Dodeka table.

I'm not going to *try* to list everyone who was there, because I will fail dismally and that will make me sad. :) But it was a darned fine time.

By the time things were heading back around in my direction, it was getting late and various people were defecting from the circle in favor of sleep. I figured I could probably play "Falling Toward Orion" next (and last, because "defecting in favor of sleep"), so I had it queued up in the filk book as things were rounding the corner.

And it was about this time that Lauren and I got sprayed by a shower of fruit punch.

I am *still* not sure exactly how this happened, but a cone of a lot of tiny droplets of fruit punch came flying our way. I am not sure of what all of Lauren it hit other than her music journal, but I got some in the side of my head, some on my guitar, some on my filk book...

It was impressive. Not in any *good* way, of course.

I have an emergency tissue in my pocket, which is much less impressive than Will Trent's pocket handkerchief, but a useful thing to have in any case. I dabbed at my head and then at my filk book, and then handed it off to Lauren who was valiantly trying to clean up her hand-lettered music journal, which is gorgeous and not the sort of thing like my filk book where you can replace a page by printing out a new copy. And then I took the tissue back and started cleaning fruit punch off of my guitar.

(I found more fruit punch on the guitar the following night and managed to get it off with a damp paper towel from the washroom. *sigh*)

But the turn came around to Lauren and she was able to sing, and then I was able to sing, and not too long after that, I packed up and headed off to bed.

Where I forgot to set my alarm. Oops. Happily, I woke up in time to get out and down to the Dealers' Room when it opened. Sold some more CDs, had some more nice conversations, and eventually, it was time to pack up and go.

In an interesting coincidence, the sales on each of the three days were all in the same $10 range of each other. I don't think that has *ever* happened before.

Jen came to help me get stuff into the van. Mike Browne was good enough to climb into the rear and position boxes for me, so the load went pretty easily. Then I talked to Jen about dinner plans, she passed around ideas, and we ended up headed back to the Barbecue Kitchen where everyone who had not been there before was greatly impressed by the quantity and quality of food that they had just been served.

Back to the con and the dead dog filk. It was a nice calm filk that broke up fairly early. I headed up to the room, set my alarm, and didn't manage to sleep worth a damn, because I couldn't get the music out of my head.

On the other hand, I got another song idea or two, so we'll see how that goes.

Got up at an absurd hour, met Jen in the lobby, and we headed back north under sunny skies on clear roads, which made me very happy. The conversation was good, we made good time, and I dropped Jen off at home before 5 PM, and then headed back to Chicago, where I made it in by 8:30 PM, stopping only briefly when arriving in town to pick up some dinner for the kids.

I had an absurdly good time. And I had time to talk about some plans for the "Crosstime Bus" album with Jen, which I hope will be useful shortly.

I think I should do this again next year. :)

It's been more than a week since I came home from OVFF, so numerous details are starting to fade. In some cases, that may be good. :) But let's see what I do remember.
( Con report inside... )

It's been a while since the last entry in this series, so let's see what my work-fogged brain remembers at this point. :) As you may recall, we'd just gone to bed on Saturday night, so next up must be Sunday morning.
( Another Concertino Sunday... )

So Saturday morning, I crawled out of bed while daisy_knotwise, Katie, and Julie were still sleeping, because I had a workshop scheduled for 10 AM.
( Saturday inside... )

On Friday, you will hardly be surprised to hear, we slept in and finally staggered out of the room a bit past noon. We ran into various folks in the lobby, including Gary, Robin, Kathy, and Dean, who we chatted with both before and after grabbing lunch at the hotel restaurant.
( And as Friday continues... )

So now let's talk about the con in perhaps a bit more detail than my quick posts on the way to, at, and from the con. :)
( Getting there is always part of the fun... )

So when we left off after Part One, Erica had just introduced Vixy & Tony.
( After the break... )

Let's start with the bottom line: we had a wonderful time.

Ok, now off into the details, which will be completely LJ-username-free, because it'll just be faster that way. :)
( The Con Report )
I'm going to break here, as this is getting long and is as good a place as any to stop for the moment.

This may turn out to be Part I -- and is written completely from memory -- but we'll see how things work out.
( Read more... )