vacation, day 2

Today, it’s raining. I’m staying home, listening to music, practicing music, and working on some song writing. I’ve listened to Beethoven’s 9th symphony for the first time in ages. (That man was a genius. But you knew that.) I’ve exchanged e-mails with a wonderful new friend in a distant time zone. (This Internet thing is great. But you knew that.) Oh, and laundry.

WindyCon, 2005

Windycon was fun. The hotel, like many, seemed overburdened by all these guests, who have all this luggage, and arrive by car (In the United States! Who has cars there?), and who all want to check out at the check-out time. Who knew they’d do that? Still, it’s tolerable.

Joyce and I arrived late-ish Friday, and after hugs and registration with exapno we saw Joe Connely’s drum workshop and then stayed up ‘til three filking. almeda drafted me as stunt guitarist for “Dragon For Sale”. (I apparently actually play guitar well enough now that someone would actually ask me to accompany her.) I moved next to her in the circle over the course of the night we did a bit of singing together and she borrowed my guitar as needed. I had lots of fun. There was lots of great music, and I sang rather more than I tend to. Odyssey, Technobabble world, The Willow with almeda doing a great job reading over my shoulder, Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Joe’s request, and a bit on the flute.

Saturday I saw Nate Bucklin’s guitar workshop, which I think is going to be very helpful. I’m a very novice finger picker and this is just the sort of thing I need to practice.

Science GOH Mark Osier’s concert was fun. I had not seen him before. Milwaukeean and friend Art Warneke had a concert slot, accompanied by Joe Connely on drums, Nate Bucklin on bass, and an occasionally changing cast of Milwaukee characters, including Deirdre and Barisha. I saw part of Eric Coleman’s concert. Tom Smith did the Tom Smith thing. There was pizza. I saw The Great Luke Ski’s concert. I hadn’t seen him do a concert in quite a while. Even though I don’t know most of the songs he’s abusing I find him pretty entertaining. Nate and Louie’s concert was terrific. They did some old favorites.

I bought a copy of Nate’s new CD from him after the concert. Chatted with some people, including Nate and Erica Neeley. Eventually various people tried to get some music started, including me. I played a Road to Listonvarna / Morris Dance selection on flute, which as usual acquired some other musicians, including tigertoy and, um, was that Rob? I was looking at the music....

It was another nice night of music. Mark did his Old MacDonald Had A Deformed Farm song (which is...just...um...) and then Nate his Old MacDonald Had A Scale. That was also the fire alarm night. It was windy! I mean, it is called WindyCon, but, still.... Naturally, False Alarms At Baycon was called for, sung by Eloise, with Nate on guitar. At some point I sang Ichabod’s Theme.

Sunday, Erica Neeley played a concert. Very nice, as always. People seemed generally appropriately stunned by Nate’s One Chord Song at the closing ceremonies.

I bought some CDs that I’ve been listening to. Wild Mercey is fantastic, of course. Escape Key is great. Joe Giacoio, besides being a goofy fun person to meet (I saw him at OVFF), writes some extremely cool songs. Some serious, some silly, some serious in a silly way. He really ought to sell videos of his guitar playing, though.

I will have photos up eventually.

Creative Math

This is in Spanish again, but the joke is really in mathematical notation, so it doesn’t matter.

Chocolates El Rey

I bought some Fancy Chocolate yesterday and today I tried the El Rey Bucare dark chocolate, 58.5% cacao. I’ve tended to prefer sweet milk chocolate, finding the usual dark chocolate unpleasantly bitter. This stuff, though, doesn’t have that bitter flavor. It has a wonderful intense flavor with nothing to object to. This is the good stuff. It’s much, much better than the cheap stuff. It hardly seems related at all to the $13/kg stuff. I bought a few bars at $60/kg, but it can be had cheaper.