Eggs and Endorphins

Overall: good con!

Thursday: arrived, had a cider in the con suite fetal dog, crashed out. Completely failed to recognise Emma in the fetal dog.

Friday: hung out in the con suite (geeking at Emma as available -- I was wearing my "Eddie and the Fay" shirt), attended opening ceremonies, enjoyed the Roper concert (not a lot new there, but 'sall good) , then hung out as it turned into an open filk -- noodling on the harp to help things get started, but only leading one song and that an arguable (as I helped Aaron out with "The Dark is Rising").

Saturday: Concerts: yay, concerts! Danced at Emma's concert, vegged and listened to the 2x10s, played with deborah_c's viola (hmm. My crappy bow control is less relevant, it seems, on a viola; I get a lot fewer double-strings than I do when I try a violin and am this rusty) for a while, then did the banquet. Meal was decent, but boring, music was a touch on the loud side, but kick-ass: danced lots. We were among the two tables that got to grab food first -- which had one huge advantage: it meant that when the dancey music started, we had the floor to ourselves (or nearly so) for several songs.

One thing about me and dancing -- I like travelling dances. Swing is a lot of fun, and so are latin dances, but in my experience, both types tend to pick a slot and stay in it (admittedly, swing will and can take up all the space you have available, but if there are varieties that end to progress as I'll describe below, I don't know about it) (this isn't true, btw; lots of latin dances are also ballroom dances, but they have slotted variants). The waltz, though, and a lot of dances descended from it (um. other waltzes, two-step, one-step, fox trot, scottiishe, gallop, and polka, among others) tend to turn clockwise, proceeding around a dance floor counterclockwise (try rolling a bottlecap around the inner circumferance of a larger object -- a plate, maybe, and you'll see what I mean), with all moves continuing the larger counter-clockwise revolution even when they don't turn. And which allows a lot of movement on the floor without people bumping into one another. OTOH, very few GAFilk dancers do much floor movement, meaning that once the floor crowds up, it's shift to slot dances or do a lot of collision avoidance and the occasional regrettable minor collision (actually, one gets this in slot dances too). So it was really nice to get those early dances (mostly swing and two-steps, as two-step is my go-to dance for 4/4 beats that aren't swung (swing), and don't have a strong up-beat (polka or scottishe or gallop), and aren't a tango. I'll occasionally try a fox-trot or one-step instead (all three dances being basically smooth 4/4), but I'm stronger at two-step (admittedly, drcpunk's the only GAFilk attendee (now that pocketnaomi has mostly shifted to ConFlikt) that I know knows it. I'd be tempted to teach a class in, say, round waltz and basic two-step if I were a stronger teacher, just to increase the variety out there).

After the banquet, it was time to change for the Childs-Helton concert. Which was fantastic -- from Sally's wonderful improvisational steell saucer-playing to a selection of Dream of Far Light songs mixed with classic folk (we danced to the last half of the concert, of course). I've varied over the years in my attitude to the Interfilk auction--from avoidng it to enjoying the spectacle. In this case, though, drcpunk decided to try her hand at wenching, so I figured I had a duty to bid--making a number of >$100 bids (and one $200 bid on, IIRC, the unique Emma Bull concert CD), and managing, somehow, to lose everything (oops. Well, at least I helped other people donate money in my willingness to do likewise). I was feeling performance deprived after Friday Night, , so we sought a small circle this time, spending most of Saturday night singing to a circle of four or five before we lost critical mass, then shifting until we were in the more serious of the remaining circles. (they were both in an "almost small enough to be small sized" shape but we stuck around until the bitter end, so got some good filking in there too).

Sunday, we woke in time to make Harold's Interfilk Guest concert (good mix of NE songs, sf songs, and SCA songs as befits osewalrus's rep and repetoire), then did the ecumenafilk (all the songs I wanted done got done, either by me or someone else, and I spent a fair bit of time in moderator mode trying to help people break in), then got a lovely dinner flavored with esoteric debate with bercilaks_lady, deborah_c, drcpunk, and dvtune. And then, there was the dead dog, which was polite, had most people arriving after us (so I could get a fair bit of singing in when it was really small and it stayed relaxed and nice when it got large--best circle for me all con), and ended at
midnight.

Monday, we slept in, got breakfast at Waffle House (oddly, the first time we hit waffle house all con, probably due to drcpunk's foresight in packing lots of pate and bread and some cheese), went to the airport with Crystal Paul and Steve Brinich, and got onto our flight, where I wrote most
of this.

Thank you so much to the GAFilk concom and attendees who made this such a lovely party!