Done this weekend (20120301 Th - 04 Su: Consonance)
It was a good con. Thursday I packed. The netbook sleeve I'd ordered over the weekend had arrived; it takes up *much* less space than the Belkin bag.
Friday, we got to the con hotel about 12:30. I quickly found out that the hotel's WiFi was among the worst I'd ever seen. It worked pretty well, though slowly, in the room, but was flaky in the lobby and unusable in the function space. Bletch. At least, because I'm an AT&T subscriber, I didn't have to pay for it.
My concert was at 7:30 on Friday evening; it went surprisingly well, and I got quite a few favorable comments on it. Including some on the way it flowed together -- I'd taken a page from Naomi and done a fully-scripted theme concert, on the subject of places and journeys. You can find the script and all but one song in the expected place.
I've gotten used to thinking of myself as a good songwriter; it still feels weird that some people consider me a good performer as well. I think what made the difference this time was that I was able to actually put some emotion into the songs. The occasional trainwreck probably went mostly unnoticed. Well, except for the lights going out one verse into my last song. That was just funny -- three people with flashlights lept onto the stage, and I simply started over. It was good.
I left two music stands in the concert room; they saw a lot of use over the course of the con.
After Friday, we ate most of our lunches and dinners over at Nijo Castle. Cold, raw fish. Yum. Some of the best sashimi I've ever tasted.
The (other) concerts were uniformly excellent. Most of them had Amy McFiddler in them. Everything is better with Amy in it. The Three (4) Weird Sisters' GOH concert was particularly spectacular. All of them were just on.
I'm not going to go into much detail; if you want that you can read the notes, as usual. I didn't take many notes about the concerts I went to, and I did very little singing in open filk. But, yeah. Good weekend.
0301 Th * up 6ish; W=192.8; drugs, nose, teeth, laundry ~ 9am: leave for Menlo; take Cygnus, charger. ~ 10am: talk in Menlo. * walk: d=.55mi, s=2.7, c=54, t=12min. DeAnza back entrance. | lower back pain; seemed to be getting worse, not better. @ crowdfunding | Support Black March "This month, boycott the commercial entertainment industry. Buy your books, music, movies, and other goodies from independent producers. Support crowdfunding and other alternatives to the corporate economy." @ Black March Indie Banner | (15:06:08) ***me fights to stay awake. Colleen didn't sleep well last night, and it's been a slow afternoon. : the new netbook sleeve arrived. @ Collusion (LWN) FF add-on. See who's tracking you online * Call to Mom - she's taking good care of herself; recovering from the anemia, and is going to stop driving. _before_ she has an accident. @ Why I Won’t Do Business With Amazon | Jason Erik Lundberg (ysabetwordsmith) * pack a recording rig, since Zoom is up in Seattle! Probably the UA25 : all of my little tube bags seem to have vanished :( 0302 Fr * up 6:40; W=193.6; drugs, nose, teeth, pack, dishes, exercise, light * practice. wheelin first? Boom before Where 8:15 - 8:57, so 42min. * Barefoot and bank; left ~11:30. Very stressed. : lobby has a strong signal, but connection sucks. otoh there's an attwifi connection that works ok; both are up and down every few minutes. Blarf. Somebody's phone?? * audacity works fine with UA25 - have to remember to connect the device before starting audacity, though. Should have checked sooner... * connection in room seems -much- more solid. Wonder if it's my phone that's interfering. Turned off wifi on the phone; still flaky. & forgot book, naproxen, flonase, light, Colleen's cane (fortunately the spare was in the scooter bag, as usual)... * concert. Added The River (next to last) but still a little short. that's perfectly ok. A couple of flubs, as usual, and I think I skipped the last verse of Daddy's World. Many compliments, including a couple on the progression, which I was happy with as well. Themed concerts rock. daddys-world, world-inside-the-crystal, wheelin, landscapes, underground-rail, boom-gone-to-bust, october-country, where-the-heart-is, inherit-the-earth, ship-of-stone, river, when-i-go @ Steve Savitzky at Consonance 2012 & minor meltdown trying to juggle a drink, the flower stuff, and Chami * Conversations with Margaret Davis, Kathy Mar, others. * Lent two music stands (the Stagg mash-up and the heavy-duty folding) to the con. Have to figure out how to get the keyboard home. 0303 Sa * up 6am after sleeping rather badly * generate pgp key. Explore docs : YD never got job callback, so probably didn't get it. Skipping the con. Next time we get a room with a king-size bed. * downstairs ~9:30 for breakfast. Wifi still unstablePassword : Spoke with Jenk; apparently the person running events at Westercon doesn't want to have anyone who performed at Conflikt or Norwescon this year. So the LgF concert is on the back burner. Very iffy but possible. : (13:08:57) mdlbear: Now listening to Tim Griffin, who teaches 5th grade and writes songs about science. Seanan's TM concert was last night, with an unreasonable number of people on stage. Sounded good, but really hard to hear the _lyrics_ at times. : And now the stupid hotel is putting up a login page that doesn't let me log in with my att.net ID because one of the form elements is borked. :( : works fine in the room, though. * dinner at Nijo Castle - huge plate of mixed sashimi, with salad and miso and hot sake. Cost less than our breakfast in the hotel. % 10:13 *very* sleepy. * 11:30ish heading up to the room 0304 Su * up 8:05; drugs, nose. : Colleen in the other bed -- much saner. Unfortunately. * go home to do laundry; eat brunch; come back with van. & The concert recording is unusable. One channel missing, probably due to a loose cable, and sample drops apparently due to a sampling-rate difference -- I had set the UA25 for 48KHz. Bad Mistake. Luckily hms42 has it. * retrieve: naproxen, flonase * imported gpg key from cygnus onto nova @ ysabetwordsmith | Clitoral Art Project Call for Art - After Dinner Party x Colleen will be going out to lunch with friends * transcribed concert narration (from notes in the set lyrics) during Bill Roper's concert. : conference room wifi form still borked : Colleen got more sushi and sashimi for lunch. Finished "lunch" ~3:15 * Got concert recording from Harold Stein * need to pick up music stands. Maybe after the rock jam & John Segher helped me schlep music stands; gave me permission to use the board recording. * drinks and a fruit plate 5:30ish, since we were much too full for dinner * left the dead dog ~ midnight * nice talk with Mary Crowell while dealing with the keyboard (involved walking to the room, fetching the cover, driving back in the van) * bad ~12:30. Colleen had already gone up, but wasn't asleep yet
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