Contata con report

[bunsen_h]

We cut because we care...

The flight to Newark was uneventful — delayed by about half an hour, but no big deal.

I made a stupid mistake on arrival, though: I was a bit tired, and while I was wandering around the airport heading for the taxi area, I was accosted by a driver who told me that his fare hadn’t showed.  Instead of ignoring him and going to the taxi area to take one of the taxis recommended by the hotel, I went with him.  I ended up paying a “limo taxi” fare instead of the regular taxi fare.  (I suppose it could have been worse; it might have been a setup for something even more unpleasant.)  There was something very disquieting about the matter — the guy said that he knew where he was going, but he kept asking me if I knew the way.

At any rate, I arrived at the hotel safely, if slightly poorer than I expected.  No problem checking into the hotel, and I saw a couple of familiar people also checking in.  (And here I must point out, with embarassment, that I’m terrible with names and faces; I recognised them, but have no idea who they were...)  We walked through the lobby to the elevators, past an odd fountain which had streams of water flowing straight downwards.  The others made some comment about Torchwood — something about a similarity to a fountain in that show?  I thought the fountain would be much more interesting if they ran a laser through each of the streams of water, which would act as light pipes but would produce pretty light effects where the water wasn’t perfectly smooth.

I helped a bit with sound setup, though I was pretty much limited to following simple instructions of the “hook this cable from that speaker to this jack, running under this ramp” variety.  Chatted with the usual folks.  I got directions out the “back door” to a Wendy’s, where I grabbed a quick cheese/broccoli stuffed potato for supper (filled out with a soup cup back in my hotel room).

I got back to the main room in time for part of the “Oldies” concert.  A few verses into “Horsetamer’s Daughter”, I ducked up to the con suite for a few minutes.  And got back before the song was finished.

The “Celebration of Life” filk was fun.  I did “Thanksgiving Eve”, and after people sang “The Rainbow Connection”, I followed with “I’m Going To Go Back There Some Day” — messed up on the bridge, though.

I had my “Txulhu” penguin with me for the evening.

We had a big problem with the open filking in our main function space after that, though: there was a high-school graduation event in the adjacent big ballroom, with lots of very loud noise coming through.  The hotel wasn’t able to do anything about it.  We ended up having to abandon our main space and pack into the alternate rooms.  The hotel apologized and told us that they’d give the convention a refund... and promised that we wouldn’t have the same problem on Saturday.

I called it quits around 12:30 a.m., hoping to get a decent night’s sleep and stay up later the next night.  Though I got the room to a comfortable temperature, I still slept poorly.  The mattress cover had heavy quilted padding which made the bed surface very warm relative to the room.  If I have the same problem again, I might go as far as to take the mattress cover off.

I grabbed a quick breakfast in the con suite, then went down to the function area.  I’d misread the schedule, and found myself in the “Move Better, Perform Better” workshop with I Abra Cinii.  I stayed for a few minutes, but excused myself; she was invoking objects that I don’t know anything about (manual transmission, Ace bandages), and the whole energy-flow-visualizaton thing just doesn’t work for me.

Heather Dale’s “Children’s Concert” was a lot of fun.  One of the songs she did was her “Stone Soup”, which reminded me that I really should try to solidify a parody that I’ve been poking at for a couple of years.

In the afternoon there was a benefit concert for Tom Smith, who was to be the toastmaster until he injured himself getting on stage at a Christine Lavin concert a couple of weeks before the con.  The benefit concert was hosted by... Christine Lavin.  Various people sang Tom’s songs; I did his “My Unicorn Song”.

For supper, I got together with ladymondegreen, akawil, markbernstein, batyatoon, sdelmonte, Interfilk guests Nate and Louie Bucklin, and a couple of others, for food ordered from a vegetarian Chinese take-out place — quite tasty, though I was a bit concerned when I found that their home-made tofu had a variety of diced vegetables mixed into it: I didn’t see any sesame seeds, but couldn’t be certain that none were present.  Oh well, I thought, my reactions to sesame haven’t been worse than “unpleasant” so far, and that was with amounts that I could easily see.  And I had my epipen with me, just in case...  Turned out not to be a problem.

I skipped most of the Interfilk auction in favour of chatting with people (and there might have been some open filk too, in one of the alternate rooms; I don’t remember).

Then came the Bucklins’ GoH concert.  By this time, we were starting to get noise from the wedding reception next door, but we did our best.  In his intro for his song “I Pop Pills”, Nate mentioned that he knew of two filks that had been done on it; I don’t remember what he said about the first, but then he said that the other was “I Send Spam” by “some guy in the north-west, I think”.  I stuck up my hand and said “Yo”.

Then there was Carla Ulbrich’s “Retro GoH” concert.  She’d been GoH three years earlier, but came down with laryngitis just before the con; she ended up doing “Carla-oki”, with her providing the music and other people singing her songs.  This time, with Tom Smith out of action, she was pinch-hitting for him as toastmaster.

By this time, the wedding reception was in full swing.  The hotel apologized, again, and promised us that they’d be quiet by 10 p.m., this time for sure.  We waited, and waited... and talked about “March of Cambreadth”, and the bagpiper started detuning her pipes.  And we started singing, as loudly as we could, towards the ballroom wall.  With occasionaly thumping and stomping.  Carla said that it was the first time she’d ever seen this side of filkers.  It didn’t seem to make any difference; the wedding thing kept on going.  Eventually we gave up; Carla did the best that she could over the noise.  The wedding thing finished around 11.

Then there was open filking.  I ended up in the same room as the Bucklins, and sang “I Send Spam”.  A bit later, they did “Everybody’s Moon” by Howard Ashby Kranz, a good friend of theirs, and I followed with my “Everybody’s Moonbase”.  Nate liked it, and said that he thought that Howard would; he wasn’t sure if Howard knew about filk, but said that he’d try to explain that in this community, it was intended as a compliment.  I gave him a copy of the lyrics.  (Another filker pointed out that the song had been recorded on a filk con CD, which I’d forgotten about, so Howard did/does know about my parody — they got his permission for the recording.)

At some point in the evening, I also sang a one-verse filk that I wrote while I was waiting for my flight in the Ottawa airport: “March in Cambreadth”.  It was inspired by the preceding week of heavy intermittent rain, when I’d been wanting to do outdoor work on my house.

By around 1 a.m., I was falling asleep, so gave up and went to bed.  Slept poorly again.

I was awakened by a couple of the hotel maids walking down the hall, yelling something to each other about “they’re artists or something”.  The earplugs weren’t enough to block out the noise.  Hey, folks, guess what those “do not disturb” signs are for..?

Breakfast in the con suite again.  Then the “Double shots” and “One shots”.  I’d signed up for a “One shot” slot for Saturday, but things got rearranged, and the Saturday slots were moved to Sunday.  I sang Tom Lips’ “A Man Must Wear A Tie”, and got a few people in the audience singing along.  I must learn a few more of Tom’s songs, though most of them wouldn’t work so well a capella.

Then the song contest, on the theme of “To Life”.  My “March of the Penguins” got a good audience response, though it wasn’t one of the contest winners.

A couple more concerts.  The group Sassafrass do some lovely multi-part harmony.  I miss the Caldrithig Choir, in which I used to do music with that kind of complexity.  Mary Ellen Wessels and Ed Stauf did an abbreviated concert, as we were about to lose the use of the function space.

Several of us went for a bit of a swim and/or soak in the hotel hot tub.

Then supper time.  A lot of people did a group outing to Applebees, and I gather they weren’t impressed by it.  I ended up going with ladymondegreen, akawil, markbernstein, and the Bucklins to a kosher deli, where I was able to have a decent veggie omelette.

Then back for more open filking.  People gradually trickled away.  I’d mentioned to a few people that I had my other penguin with me, the one that was even more perverse than Txulhu (I showed pictures to a few of them).  I had it with me, under wraps, and brought it out as the evening wore on.  Several people, including batyatoon, told me that it was just plain wrong.  Considering that most of them couldn’t have seen the pasties well enough to read them, I think that counts as a win.

I gave up a bit before midnight, and went up to pack and to go to bed.  Slept poorly again.

For my return trip, I’d made arrangements to catch the “State Shuttle” to the airport.  It arrived on time, took me directly to the airport, and cost me half what I’d paid on the way out.  There was some ambiguity about which terminal I was supposed to go to, since the boarding pass said “Gate A27a Shuttles available from C71”, so the shuttle driver dropped me off at the usual Continental international departure terminal, Terminal C.  The Continental greeter told me that regardless, I should go to Terminal A; at any rate, I had plenty of time, and the inter-terminal shuttle got me to Terminal A in a couple of minutes, at which point I discovered that they’d changed the departure gate to A20 anyway. 

Before I went through security, I bought a toasted plain bagel.  I asked the server to please make sure that she brushed off the cutting board before she cut the bagel, since I was allergic to sesame.  But either she didn’t listen, or the bagel itself was contaminated, because — after I’d gone through security, unfortunately — when I was about a third of the way through eating it, I suddenly tasted something very sesame-like.  I spat out the mouthful, chucked what was left into a garbage can, and went into a washroom and spent several minutes sloshing water through my teeth.  Again, I don’t think I’m that sensitive... but under the circumstances, I thought it unwise to take chances.

On my way through security, I’d told the first screener that I had an epipen with me.  He waved me through with a “No problem, they’ve seen ’em.  We’ve got the best-trained people in the world.”  I managed to keep a straight face and kept my mouth shut. I have no personal gripes... but friends have had run-ins with TSA screeners.

I was pulled aside, though, after my backpack went through the X-ray scanner.  An odd shadow, apparently.  So a screener politely started going through the bag.  Pencil case, calculator case, digital camera in its bag... nothing.  The woman at the scanner called over, “Looks like some kind of wheel or something.”  The screener rummaged farther down while I racked my brain, then: aha.  “Oh, I think I know,” I said.  “It’s probably my pitchpipe.  It’s wrapped in a piece of grey flannel, probably fallen down somewhere near the bottom.”  The guy poked around a bit more, and managed to find it, pulled it out, turned it over in his hands.  “Okay,” he said, “but what is it?”  I explained that it was used for singing, you blow into it to get a starting note.  Blank look.  “It’s basically like a round harmonica,” I said.  Enlightenment dawned.  He handed my stuff over to me and apologized for the delay; I apologized to him for the trouble.  All okay.

My flight was fine, though there were a bunch of grumpy people waiting at the gate because their flight to a different destination had been overbooked.  I was a bit miffed that the flight attendant simply skipped me, at the back of the plane, when she was serving drinks — she seemed to need to head up to the front of the plane quickly, immediately after serving the guy in front of me, and by the time I realized that she wasn’t going to be coming back to serve me, she was starting to collect garbage in preparation for landing.

On arrival in Ottawa, I got through customs quickly,  made perfect bus connections, and was at my front door less than an hour after the plane arrived at the terminal.

All in all, a very good convention.  Kudos and thanks to the organizers!

Comments

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you had a good time. Between lack of money and starting a New Job, there was *no*way* I could have gone, but I'm glad someone from Ottawa went.

Please read my latest LJ posting and let me know what you think. Filking in September? Inquiring minds would like to know. :-)