And now, we bring you a break in our relentless, round-the-month coverage of All Things Toddler for a brief fannish/filkish interlude: I'm definitely going to FKO this year ( Read more... )

All hail mon462 for noodging me into registering for guitar classes at the Old Town School once more, after a multiyear hiatus where I only seldom touched my instrument, and then only to whizz through very basic accompaniments for songs I already knew how to play. All hail ( Read more... )

When I was a child, I was what is politely called 'precocious.' [1] This had advantages, but it also meant that when I *didn't* pick up a new skill quickly, I got very frustrated very fast, threw tantrums, and generally just didn't understand why it had to be so hardMy Grampa Beltz sat me down and explained it to me, over and over. Some things are ( Read more... )

John found, unexpectedly, one of the utterly unobtanium-coated Rock Band box sets with a PS2-compatible game in it [1], and he and I enjoyed playing some two-guitar multiplayer songs. Then he did guitar while I did vocals, which was also fun, and unexpectedly challenging. I never even considered trying the drum set, because it looked likely to ( Read more... )

Specifically, Walles Music on North Avenue at Oak Park Avenue. It's awesome. Small business, GREAT enormous retro sheet-metal-and-neon sign, good selection of guitars, good selection of non-guitar instruments (everything from 30 harmonicas in stock to a CHOICE of accordions and trumpets and flutes). They seem to be focussed on electric guitars, ( Read more... )

Well, I did speak to a lot of good friends (most of who were amazingly good sports about how hyper or unfocussed I was), but for the most part, from my point of view, Windycon looked like this:

( Lots of rambling bullet points, most involving the word 'concert'. )

What did I do this past weekend? A nonexclusive bulleted list follows, and if I feel like expanding any of them in full entries later, I shall do so. First, though, some highlights in case I get too busy to do anything more thorough.

• Sang but not nearly as much as in some previous years, mostly because I:
  
• Talked for hours to a whole string of ( Read more... )

Woohoo!
The large, stuck-for-months piece of the "making Grandma's finances marginally solvent between now and when we sell her condo" process has finally come unstuck, three days before I was expecting it to, meaning I now have several months of not needing to worry about her money situation (or figure out how to get someone to lend *ME* a couple ( Read more... )

One of them being, well, a con last weekend. :-> But I've been explaining my two other recent pieces of fiscal irresponsibility/moderately-big-ticket-purchases to myself as birthday presents ( Read more... )

Just in time for printing out before the Milwaukee housefilk this weekend or FKO! Ok, that makes it for my convenience, not yours, but I figured some of y'all might be interested. :-> In no particular order. Now, if only I had ink in my printer ... Not all of them are songs, proper, in that several don't have tunes, but all are neat.

• You're So Vain ( Read more... )