Home from OVFF

I am home from OVFF and starting to get my sleep debt under control. I had the good fortune to be reasonably well-slept before the con (probably due to having mostly given up caffeine) which helped, but I never sleep as well at cons and tend to resort to caffeine during them to be able to function which means the problem gets a bit worse and a bit worse till I had to have almost 3 cans of diet Mountain Dew for the drive back.

But I had a great time. I was joyfully reunited with my best bodhran (or bodhran-substitute) which I had left in Canada by mistake on my trip this summer, and which Tom and Sue Jeffers kindly retrieved and drove to the con for me, in time to take it to my rehearsal with Andrew. I played bodhran on The Dolls in the Pegasus Concert, as part of Andrew's little ad hoc band, and I think we did a pretty damn good job. The Pegasus Concert as a whole was excellent and I had a very hard time making my choices on the ballot--there were a couple of categories where I just didn't choose at all, and left it up to the other Pegasus voters.

The next morning I went to the Taking Your Music On The Road workshop/panel and the Spice Up Your Strumming workshop, both of which were very interesting. The latter was unfortunately scheduled against Alexa Klettner's concert so I only caught the last half of it, but I enjoyed that very much. Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps gave a concert to celebrate the release of their new CD, which was also lots of fun. I had a lovely dinner with good company, including a couple of kids who have grown to the point where they have interesting contributions to make to the conversation, which was sufficiently informed, friendly and wide-ranging that it didn't occur to me to worry about the Pegasus Awards.

In general it seemed like there were more young fen at this con than at previous ones--both in the sense of kids and in the sense of younger grownups. This trend makes me happy.

After dinner I hung out around the raised area where the Pegasus Banquet occurs, to hear the results. My choices had been: Best Time Related--Gabriel Gray's Song, Best Adapted--Threes Rev 1.1, Best Classic Filk Song--Ship of Stone and Best Filk Song--Somebody Will. In Best Performer I couldn't decide and in Best Songwriter--well, I was up for that and I felt like I had a conflict of interest, so I left that in the lap of the Hugo Pegasus voters (thank you, Gary), prepared to accept their verdict and be happy for whoever they chose. Because, really, when the competition is Barry, Randy, Kari, and Eva, it's an honor to be considered their peer.

By now you probably know who won. Precious Moments by Phil Allcock, Grabthar's Silver Hammer by Steve MacDonald (Steve got all wordless; it was so cute) Jeff and Maya Bonhoff for Best Performer, Captain Jack And The Mermaid by Meg Davis, and My Story Is Not Done by Seannan McGuire. All very worthy winners and congratulations to each and every one.

And me. I walked up the steps to accept, and remembered something someone had said in the Mark Bernstein's Powderfilk Biscuits (give shy filkers the courage to stand up and sing) workshop, "it's about what you come to the filk circle for?" and Mark saying something like "I'm an atheist; for me the circle is sacred space."

So I said something rather disorganized about I come to the filk circle for communion; and thank you very much I'm deeply honored.

And spent the rest of the con wandering around in a glow while many people congratulated me and said kind things. I attended the Shallow End Filk which went swimmingly--I'm always glad to hear new filkers, and we had a good batch this year. That meant missing the song contest, which was a pity, but so it goes. I then went off to the Fiend Filk because I knew Peter would be at that and I wanted to meet him so we could jam, and had a lovely time there, including singing Least of My Kind because I had the bodhran handy and had been practicing on bodhran for a month for the concert, and thus could do a decent job of it.

Then Peter and I repaired to an empty room to jam properly, picking up Mary Bertke and Alexa on the way and discovering a bass player (whose name I have forgotten but I would like to play with him again; he was fun) already there when we arrived and Yehuda (from Israel--and he bought a couple of CDs--my first sale to an Israeli fan that I know of!) and Mary Crowell showed up shortly after. We jammed for a little bit--I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job on the mando, perhaps because I had spent most of my practice time on other things for the past month--but hopefully everyone had fun and then we switched to a more conventional circle and I got Alexa to do My Berlin again, because I heard it in her concert and loved it. It was originally written by someone else in German but she translated it to English, which is no simple job even with prose, and I'm very impressed she made such beautiful lyrics.

Sunday I declared myself an honorary kid and went to Stone Dragons' kid concert. About halfway through I was apparently declared an honorary Stone Dragon and summoned to perform, which was fun. Then I went to the dealers room, and bought CDs from Bill Roper and Barry Childs-Helton, and a couple of books from Larry Smith, who I was happy to see there, since I knew he'd been in a car crash. I got California Bones and Updraft.

I went to Jodi Krangle's concert but had to duck out of the Farewell Jam halfway through because it was just too loud. I enjoy trying to play along but my ears can only handle so much. Maybe next time I'll try sitting on the opposite side of the room from the drum kit and the PA system.

Alexa had been very friendly so I had put myself forward enough to ask her to dinner Sunday evening and she said yes, so she, I, Alice, and Peter went early to the Mongolian Barbecue. Donald was supposed to come too but we had enough people I kind of overlooked that he was missing when he wasn't in the group by the door; my bad. He called me when he got back from shopping and came out to the restaurant to join us, though.

Alexa was very curious about the fried oreos, which I had never had either, so we got a plate of them for dessert to share out among everyone. It was sort of like a hot donut with an oreo filling, with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup on the side. Tasty but I wasn't sorry to be sharing it with so many people.

After that we came back for the Dead Dog Filk. I noticed that signals were getting crossed and a few people seemed to be getting frustrated, so I took it on myself to direct traffic as much as possible when I saw people trying to get in, though I faded pretty early, sang my swansong and took myself off to bed.

And Monday was driving. But hitting the road early monday meant the traffic was very light, and we could enjoy the autumn foliage in daylight all the way south to my place.

And I have a nice new idea for a song which I'm working on. We'll see what comes of it.