Sleepy Cat is Sleepy. Also, Darkover
The Monday night immediately following a con weekend is not a good night to suffer insomnia. Even considering I got to bed fairly early both nights of Darkover, by con standards.
I had a good time at Darkover even though the only open filking during the weekend happened after I went to bed Sunday morning. With an assist from the Steampunk program, I set a personal best for non-music programming attended at Darkover. We caught two programs from Steampunk Guest of Honor Mark P. Donnelly on "Victorian Travel Advice for Steampunk Adventures" and "Inventions Never Mentioned: Bizzare Victorian Contraptions which Never Caught On". Both are apparently based on research Donnelly is doing for future books. I look forward to those.
We also heard Esther Friesner read the first chapter of her latest Princesses of Myth book, Spirit's Princess. It comes out in April and sounds like it should be an excellent addition to that series.
The concert program was good as usual, with sets from regulars Ellen James, Homespun Ceilidh Band, and maugorn, plus Glyn Collinson back for a second year. And, of course, the Clam Chowder concert with plenty of old favorites (including "I Never Do Anything Twice" and "Boys of Goose Hill") and a few new things (adding "Zombie Pirates in Love" to "Re: Your Brain" and "Zombie Jamboree"). Very nice Clam Karaoke, with the first winner joining Kathy Sobansky for some exceptional harmonies on "Twa Corbies", then Ed Sobansky singing "Brown-Eyed Girl".
For the first time in quite a while, we actually caught a full-length movie at a con. Intrigued by a conversation with a bunch of Tech Fandom, we watched Time After Time, which neither of us had seen before. We both liked it, even if a quick-moving montage of San Francisco city scenes at one point in the movie nearly made my head spin. I also had to laugh during a particular scene set in the Hyatt Regency's revolving restaurant during which the scene behind one character never changed!.
Sunday we got a pleasant surprise upon discovering thatcrazycajun and singing_phoenix had dropped in on their way back to Atlanta from visiting family. We were just heading for lunch at the time and they'd only recently woken up, so we retired to the Nautilus Diner around the corner to eat and catch up.
The only bummer was that once again open filking mostly didn't happen. I'm told there was a little bit of singing which broke out in the con suite sometime around (or after) 2am on Sunday morning, on the back end of a jam session featuring Glyn, John Ward and a couple of other folks. I saw the jam on my way back to our hotel room after giving up on anything happening in the designated music room, but didn't feel up to joining in. This led to talk about suggesting the con schedule the music room for bardic circles at night rather than filking. It would also help if the availability of that room for late-night singing was indicated on the program grid, rather than a note buried in the program book.
I had a good time at Darkover even though the only open filking during the weekend happened after I went to bed Sunday morning. With an assist from the Steampunk program, I set a personal best for non-music programming attended at Darkover. We caught two programs from Steampunk Guest of Honor Mark P. Donnelly on "Victorian Travel Advice for Steampunk Adventures" and "Inventions Never Mentioned: Bizzare Victorian Contraptions which Never Caught On". Both are apparently based on research Donnelly is doing for future books. I look forward to those.
We also heard Esther Friesner read the first chapter of her latest Princesses of Myth book, Spirit's Princess. It comes out in April and sounds like it should be an excellent addition to that series.
The concert program was good as usual, with sets from regulars Ellen James, Homespun Ceilidh Band, and maugorn, plus Glyn Collinson back for a second year. And, of course, the Clam Chowder concert with plenty of old favorites (including "I Never Do Anything Twice" and "Boys of Goose Hill") and a few new things (adding "Zombie Pirates in Love" to "Re: Your Brain" and "Zombie Jamboree"). Very nice Clam Karaoke, with the first winner joining Kathy Sobansky for some exceptional harmonies on "Twa Corbies", then Ed Sobansky singing "Brown-Eyed Girl".
For the first time in quite a while, we actually caught a full-length movie at a con. Intrigued by a conversation with a bunch of Tech Fandom, we watched Time After Time, which neither of us had seen before. We both liked it, even if a quick-moving montage of San Francisco city scenes at one point in the movie nearly made my head spin. I also had to laugh during a particular scene set in the Hyatt Regency's revolving restaurant during which the scene behind one character never changed!.
Sunday we got a pleasant surprise upon discovering thatcrazycajun and singing_phoenix had dropped in on their way back to Atlanta from visiting family. We were just heading for lunch at the time and they'd only recently woken up, so we retired to the Nautilus Diner around the corner to eat and catch up.
The only bummer was that once again open filking mostly didn't happen. I'm told there was a little bit of singing which broke out in the con suite sometime around (or after) 2am on Sunday morning, on the back end of a jam session featuring Glyn, John Ward and a couple of other folks. I saw the jam on my way back to our hotel room after giving up on anything happening in the designated music room, but didn't feel up to joining in. This led to talk about suggesting the con schedule the music room for bardic circles at night rather than filking. It would also help if the availability of that room for late-night singing was indicated on the program grid, rather than a note buried in the program book.