Some rest for the wicked, but not much
Greetings from warm, sunny chilly, cloudy California.
I flew out to San Diego on Friday for the IASPM conference. There were some issues with the conference organization that could have been better, and massive issues with the hotel, but overall it was a good time. The people were great-- very friendly, supportive, engaging/engaged-- and I heard some fantastic papers. I went to a lot of hip hop panels (besides the one I was on), as well as one film panel that had some unexpected (but useful) ecomusicology in it as well. I felt really good about my paper on Native American rap, too; I had a little extra time for my presentation because one member of my panel didn't come (so there were 3 of us instead of 4), and folks seemed interested, had a lot of questions afterwards, found resonance in it with their own work, and gave me good feedback. I really liked this conference, but I do wish that it had started on Friday. Since it was only Saturday and Sunday, I felt like I had to go to stuff nonstop, and there were 6 panels happening in each timeslot, which made it really hard to choose what to go to. (It was hard to panel-hop, too, because some panel moderators had question periods after each paper, while others saved the question/discussion period till after all the presenters had gone, which meant that papers weren't starting/ending at the same times across the board. I tried to catch an interesting-sounding paper on Bjork, but missed it for this reason.) So the same amount of papers spread out over 3 days instead of 2 would have been nice.
Sunday evening, I had a chance to get together with retsuko, who kindly took me back to her place, cooked a delicious dinner, and introduced me to her charming husband, yebisu9. We figured out that we hadn't actually seen each other since we both graduated from Smith in 1998, so there was a lot to catch up on. It was great to reconnect, and I had a really lovely time with them both.
I got up at 3:45 Monday morning, collected my bags, and went to go meet my shuttle to the airport. I tried to pay for my part of the hotel room, but the power shutdown on Saturday night (part of the aforementioned massive hotel issues) had messed up their computer software somehow, and the woman at the desk said she couldn't check me out of my room right then. She settled for writing down my name, address, and cell phone number, and said they'd send me a bill... basically, I walked out without paying anything (and they don't have my credit card #, since I wasn't the one who made the reservation.) I do hope that my two roommates didn't get shafted by this later or get charged for my part, but since I haven't had any angry voicemails or emails from them, I'm guessing not.
So anyway, I had a 6:30 flight from San Diego up to San Francisco. I'm here till Friday, staying with dreadful_red and just having some vacation time. The reason I opted for such a painfully early flight, however, was because I wanted to arrive in early enough to catch carpe_jugulum (who'd been in town for the Maker Faire) before she hopped her own flight home to Seattle. (Because these days, I can get occasional fixes of Libby time or Molly time, but it's virtually impossible to get both simultaneously. Sleep is a small luxury to sacrifice for that.) We ended up going out for a tasty vegan breakfast with willowperson (yay!) and a bunch of the other steampunk crew from Maker Faire. It was good to meet some of these folks that I've only heard about from Libby and Willow, but I hadn't realized breakfast was going to be such a production, and I was so sleep-deprived that I was only able to manage coherent socialization with one new person. Luckily that person was Qais, who seemed like a good guy with whom I quite enjoyed chatting. We carted Libby, Willow, and Qais off to the airport, then Molly and I came back to her house to collapse on the couch and veg for the rest of the day. (She'd spent the past three days performing just about nonstop, so she was as zonked as I was.) In the evening, I finally got to meet kingfeurio, who was all I'd heard about and then some.
Today's been kinda slow and agendaless so far, which is fine by me. I'm currently contemplating whether to go do some wandering around the city by myself while Molly's at work, or maybe just to hang here and do some long-neglected exam reading. Tonight I'm meeting my cousin wshaffer for dinner in the Mission, and then heading to the FCBD studio for a Level II class. Tomorrow I think Molly and I are going to wander during the day, and then I'm tagging along with Deshret on their group private lesson with Carolena Nericcio. Squeeep! (That would be a combination of "omg, squee" and "holy fuck, eeep" in case you were wondering.) Thursday night I might be going to a Deshret rehearsal.
Friday morning, I fly back to Indiana. Saturday, I'm tagging along with d_c_m to go pick up Asharah from the airport, Sunday meddevi and crew arrive and we host the Durga Tour (which you're all attending, of course, because you're lovely people that way), Monday we run people to private lessons and generally entertain them, and then Tuesday I go back to work and life becomes normal again for a while. I'm not sure I'm a fan of that last plan, but it does tend to pay my rent and get shit done.
ETA: Holy crap, one can tour San Francisco in a zeppelin?! Dude.
I flew out to San Diego on Friday for the IASPM conference. There were some issues with the conference organization that could have been better, and massive issues with the hotel, but overall it was a good time. The people were great-- very friendly, supportive, engaging/engaged-- and I heard some fantastic papers. I went to a lot of hip hop panels (besides the one I was on), as well as one film panel that had some unexpected (but useful) ecomusicology in it as well. I felt really good about my paper on Native American rap, too; I had a little extra time for my presentation because one member of my panel didn't come (so there were 3 of us instead of 4), and folks seemed interested, had a lot of questions afterwards, found resonance in it with their own work, and gave me good feedback. I really liked this conference, but I do wish that it had started on Friday. Since it was only Saturday and Sunday, I felt like I had to go to stuff nonstop, and there were 6 panels happening in each timeslot, which made it really hard to choose what to go to. (It was hard to panel-hop, too, because some panel moderators had question periods after each paper, while others saved the question/discussion period till after all the presenters had gone, which meant that papers weren't starting/ending at the same times across the board. I tried to catch an interesting-sounding paper on Bjork, but missed it for this reason.) So the same amount of papers spread out over 3 days instead of 2 would have been nice.
Sunday evening, I had a chance to get together with retsuko, who kindly took me back to her place, cooked a delicious dinner, and introduced me to her charming husband, yebisu9. We figured out that we hadn't actually seen each other since we both graduated from Smith in 1998, so there was a lot to catch up on. It was great to reconnect, and I had a really lovely time with them both.
I got up at 3:45 Monday morning, collected my bags, and went to go meet my shuttle to the airport. I tried to pay for my part of the hotel room, but the power shutdown on Saturday night (part of the aforementioned massive hotel issues) had messed up their computer software somehow, and the woman at the desk said she couldn't check me out of my room right then. She settled for writing down my name, address, and cell phone number, and said they'd send me a bill... basically, I walked out without paying anything (and they don't have my credit card #, since I wasn't the one who made the reservation.) I do hope that my two roommates didn't get shafted by this later or get charged for my part, but since I haven't had any angry voicemails or emails from them, I'm guessing not.
So anyway, I had a 6:30 flight from San Diego up to San Francisco. I'm here till Friday, staying with dreadful_red and just having some vacation time. The reason I opted for such a painfully early flight, however, was because I wanted to arrive in early enough to catch carpe_jugulum (who'd been in town for the Maker Faire) before she hopped her own flight home to Seattle. (Because these days, I can get occasional fixes of Libby time or Molly time, but it's virtually impossible to get both simultaneously. Sleep is a small luxury to sacrifice for that.) We ended up going out for a tasty vegan breakfast with willowperson (yay!) and a bunch of the other steampunk crew from Maker Faire. It was good to meet some of these folks that I've only heard about from Libby and Willow, but I hadn't realized breakfast was going to be such a production, and I was so sleep-deprived that I was only able to manage coherent socialization with one new person. Luckily that person was Qais, who seemed like a good guy with whom I quite enjoyed chatting. We carted Libby, Willow, and Qais off to the airport, then Molly and I came back to her house to collapse on the couch and veg for the rest of the day. (She'd spent the past three days performing just about nonstop, so she was as zonked as I was.) In the evening, I finally got to meet kingfeurio, who was all I'd heard about and then some.
Today's been kinda slow and agendaless so far, which is fine by me. I'm currently contemplating whether to go do some wandering around the city by myself while Molly's at work, or maybe just to hang here and do some long-neglected exam reading. Tonight I'm meeting my cousin wshaffer for dinner in the Mission, and then heading to the FCBD studio for a Level II class. Tomorrow I think Molly and I are going to wander during the day, and then I'm tagging along with Deshret on their group private lesson with Carolena Nericcio. Squeeep! (That would be a combination of "omg, squee" and "holy fuck, eeep" in case you were wondering.) Thursday night I might be going to a Deshret rehearsal.
Friday morning, I fly back to Indiana. Saturday, I'm tagging along with d_c_m to go pick up Asharah from the airport, Sunday meddevi and crew arrive and we host the Durga Tour (which you're all attending, of course, because you're lovely people that way), Monday we run people to private lessons and generally entertain them, and then Tuesday I go back to work and life becomes normal again for a while. I'm not sure I'm a fan of that last plan, but it does tend to pay my rent and get shit done.
ETA: Holy crap, one can tour San Francisco in a zeppelin?! Dude.