Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Month: January 2013

There’s Life And There’s Music, and Music Endures

The last week really has been a blur. Between getting ready for Gafilk, actually putting on Gafilk, and then immediately packing the car to start driving west for our move to Seattle, I haven’t had a lot of time for posting. But there’s a few thing I wanted to get down from the weekend.

An incomplete list of GaFilk highlights:

  • Visiting Atlanta’s new International Terminal
    When I went to pick up Susan from the airport (Sam’s flight having been delayed by bureaucracy), I left the hotel in what would normally be plenty of time…except that I forgot that all international flights were now landing at the new terminal. I also realised that I didn’t actually know where that was. Fortunately, there were signs, but it’s such a long way that I kept thinking I must have missed a turn until I’d see another sign directing me to continue. By the time I got there, I wasn’t entirely sure that the terminal wasn’t actually *in* Canada. Still, I got there just in time to meet Susan (and Morva and Alan) at the baggage claim.

  • Bill Sutton’s “sound workshop”.
    Since a lot of the people who normally help us out with sound didn’t make it to the con this year, we decided to make a virtue out of the need for volunteers and announced that anyone who wanted to learn a bit about running sound was welcome to come and learn it from Bill. Several people volunteered, so the sound went off without a hitch.

  • Tim Griffin
    I’d actually heard (though not really met) Tim Griffin at a previous convention on the west coast, but I’d only heard him do a couple of songs. He was our choice to do the Friday night concert, and he was amazing. He does educational music that is both informational and funny (or, sometimes, poignant), and has a great audience rapport. He also is just a really fun guy to hang out with and talk to, and he was always pitching in here and there where an extra pair of hands was needed. Great guy, and I was so pleased to meet him.

  • George and Teresa as toastmasters
    Two great people who are such a big part of Gafilk since the early days; they did a fantastic job both MCing and on their concert. Since most of the time you see them as part of larger bands, it was really nice to see them do some stuff with just the two of them.

  • Fiana
    I didn’t get to hear as much of them as I would have liked, but everything I heard was delightful. Thanks to Interfilk again for another wonderful guest. I did get to hang with Thom and Christina a bit during the weekend, and they were a lot of fun to talk to.

  • Sam Baardman and Susan Israel
    I already knew they were awesome musicians (that is, after all, why we invited them), but they are also just extraordinarily nice people. Their concert on Saturday was a delight. I’m often in and out of concerts at Gafilk because I’m always keeping an eye on what’s going on elsewhere, but I usually have one that I just allow myself to sit and take in without interruption, and I’m glad I did for this one, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a moment of it.

  • Play It With Moxie’s banquet performance
    If you’ve been to a Gafilk banquet before, you know what this was like. Moxie just gets better and better every year, and I danced and danced and danced. Thanks to everyone who endured my inexpert steps; I have far more enthusiasm than skill, but I never don’t have a good time.

  • Larry Niven
    Larry’s hour was spent between a reading and telling entertaining fandom stories, and it was a great time. He seemed to have a good time listening to all the music, and I’m so glad he could make it out as our SSG this year.

  • Stray Dog jam
    A hallway filk broke out during (and after) the stray dog party, which started when the two fiddlers in residence wanted to trade some licks and ended up with a huge crowd. (I had a conversation with one person over the weekend about “sing-y” vs. “jam-y” circles, and this was definitely the latter.) I was only around for a part of it, but everything I heard was amazing.

As usual at Gafilk, I really didn’t get a chance to play, because by the time open filk starts I’m usually ready to fall over. I never even took my guitar down from my room this year. But I did get to play one song, and it’s my personal best moment of the weekend:

  • Getting to play my Talis Kimberley cover for Talis Kimberley
    Just having Talis there was a treat for me, because she really is one of my favourite people in the world and I don’t get to spend nearly enough time with her. But one thing I wanted to do if I had the chance is play for her the one song of hers that I cover. So when i spotted her in a little circle near the registration table shortly after closing ceremonies, I stopped to listen for a bit, and then asked to borrow a guitar so i could play it for her. Amy was on hand to add Amyness, which honestly makes everything sound better than it would otherwise, and Talis liked what I did with her song.

    (The song in question is “Harbouring Hopes”, which is the final track on her album Archetype Cafe. As I commented when I played it, “I’m sorry to say the song first came to my attention at a time I desperately needed it, and I’m happy to say that I haven’t needed it for a very long time.”)

There were some more personal non-music related highlights as well, but they all come down to “getting to spend time with people who are dear to me”, and if I started to list them I’d leave someone out. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed every single moment of every single conversation, every single hug and cuddle, and every single story.

And so another year is kicked off in grand fashion with a successful Gafilk. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen (I have the best concom ever), and thanks to everyone who came up to me and wished me and Larissa luck on our upcoming move. Gafilk has always been and will always be a family gathering, and I always feel blessed to be in the middle of it every year.

Submarines are lurking in my foggy ceiling…

Well, tonight was another total insomnia night. At least I actually made a virtue of it by getting things done that needed to be done.

I actually had an astoundingly productive day. I pretty much knocked off everything on my to-do list by lunchtime, so I rewarded myself with a bit of social frivolity in the afternoon.

Things are coming together nicely for Gafilk. Name badges are printed, hotel paperwork has been acquired and looked over, My Filk questions have been written, and various and sundry things have started to collect into a staging area for transporting. It’s going to be another awesome year, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone who’s coming.

Meanwhile, the last push of packing is underway. Both desks are completely clear, the closets are pretty much empty of everything that won’t be going into a suitcase soon, and my fear that we’re going to end up with a lot more than will fit in the car is subsiding.

In a couple of hours, I have my final appointment with my massage therapist, who I will miss tremendously, and then perhaps I’ll ponder a nap.

Everybody’s working for the weekend…

Or in my case, working through the weekend. We got a lot done the last two days, though I remain frustrated that every time we finish packing a box, I look around at it seems like there’s 10% more than there was before. (hsifyppah suggests to me that this is because all the things that were packed in are all saying “Oh, that’s better, there’s space! *Streeeeeeeeetch!*” Little by little, though, we are getting things done.

Four boxes of clothing are stacked by the door. We will ship these, rather than make space in the car, because they’re relatively light and we won’t need them until we get to the other side of the journey anyway. Our washing machine and dryer, which were only six years old, have been given to a good home, along with a number of tools and other miscellany. The remaining books have been sorted into “the ones we’re taking with us” (because we have to have SOME books, or it won’t be home) and “the ones that go to storage).

Gafilk prep (which is happening simultaneous to all this) continues apace. I will check the mailbox one last time tomorrow before checking badges. And hawklady texted me earlier with a photo of the lovely cheeses that are being smoked for the con suite, which I passed on to Twitter:

“Sharp cheddar, 3yr cheddar, Gouda, Manchego, Pepperjack & Jarlsberg in smoker about to be turned #gafilk #consuiteprep http://pic.twitter.com/70EREJFH ”

Between these two things, I have a long list of things to do tomorrow, but still quite a lot has been accomplished over the weekend! We celebrated by sitting down to watch two more episodes of Season 2 of Game of Thrones, which we had gotten sidetracked from earlier in the year and never gotten back to, and a very old episode of The Big Bang Theory to cleanse the palate afterwards. (I love GoT, but it’s unrelentingly grim and there’s only so much of it you can watch at a time before you need something light and cheerful to chase it with.)

How was your weekend?

The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it

Last week, my friend Joey posted something on Facebook referencing the 2004 Will Ferrell vehicle “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy”. I mentioned that I’d never seen it, and he encouraged me to giving a try, noting that it was a dumb movie but quite funny.

Well, thanks to HBO, I’ve now seen the first half of the movie. While I found it sporadically funny, it really wasn’t grabbing me, and at the point when the dog gets drop-kicked off the bridge, I turned to kitanzi and said ‘We can stop.’ She noted that if everyone had been dumb *except* for the Christina Appelgate character, that might have been salvageable, but when she turned out to be (or at least appear) just as much a moron as the rest, we quickly fell into the Valley of the Shadow of Idon’tcarewhathappenstothesepeople, from which few ever escape.

One item of note from the movie. I do believe that’s the first time in recent memory I’ve seen Fred Willard play a character where he was the *smartest* guy in the room.

A much more agreeable film was “I Love You Man”, a 2009 bromance romcom starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, and Rashida Jones. Peter (Rudd) is engaged to be married, but has no close guy friends, which worries his fiancĂ©e Zooey (Jones) and her girlfriends. So he sets out to make some, and in the process meets up with Sydney (Segal), a sort of man-child guru who gets Peter in touch with his inner bro, but ends up creating tensions between Peter and Zooey as he spends more and more time running off to spend time with his new friend. Rudd is fantastic as the uptight straight man, Jones is charming and attractive, and Segal plays a familiar-for-him character with all his usual flair. The ending is predictable, but sweet, and there’s an interesting subtext to the whole thing if you view it through the lens of polyamory.

On the whole, I’d give “I Love You Man” a recommend, and “Anchorman” a skip.

My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will leave a mark…

I was just now linking someone else to the brilliant work of Ze Frank, and it occurred to me:

1) How much I love the first episode of his new web show
2) How much it still affects me
3) How I need to listen to it every day until I internalise it.

…And never worry about the fall

Earlier today in the #frogpants chat room, Malynor (my 19th favourite Canadian), asked how I was doing on my first real day of unemployment, and commented that planned unemployment was probably less stressful.

I said “Well, planned unemployment is slightly less stressful in that it’s, well, planned and I have resources set aside to deal with it. But it’s still weird for much the same reason skydiving is.

Because of your careful preparations and precautions, you have a strong belief that everything is going to work out fine at the end of the fall, but you still can’t quite shake the fear that you just stepped out of a perfectly good aeroplane.”

A long December, and there’s reason to believe…

…maybe this year will be better than the last.

To be honest, 2012 wasn’t a bad year, as such. It was a slow and frustrating year. It was the year of holding still, the year of planning, the year of being restless and unable to proceed. And now, having run in place for so long, things are about to move very quickly, indeed.

As of today, I am a professional hobo. At least, for a time. I will be aggressively looking for new employment as soon as we get to Seattle, which we will do within the month, but for now, I am an agent without portfolio for the first time since 1996. I have no words to describe how utterly weird that is to me. Yesterday, I went out to lunch with my manager and those of my team who were in the office that day. I’m going to miss working with them (though I have a suspicion they will miss working with me more).

Over the next week, my primary focus will be on packing and shifting things to the storage unit, and planning how to pack what we’re bringing with us. Because of the financial uncertainty brought about by not having our income locked down, we’re choosing to leave most of what we’ll eventually move in a storage unit here in Georgia, to be sent for when we know the money won’t be needed for rent and food and such. After that, it’s crunch time for Gafilk, and I have plenty to do in the leadup for that to keep me busy until we actually have the con and then we’ll hit the road.

One of the things I’d like to try and do in the new year is write more, and in particular write more in this journal. For a variety of reasons, I stopped posting much a few years ago; primarily, it was because what was mostly on my mind at the time wasn’t really for public reading, and then I fell out of the habit. But when I go back and re-read my journal from 1999-2006, I like how so much of what was going in my life was documented there, and I dislike the big empty silent place my journal turns into. Of course, it’s harder due to the fact that fewer and fewer people are participating here, and I’m a comment-driven writer to a certain extent, but since I’m mostly writing for myself, I should be able to get up a regular schedule. Expect to see my prattle on a bit in the common weeks, and possibly live-blog our drive across country.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful turning of the year, and may your 2013 be full of health, magic, and prosperity.

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