daisy_knotwise had gone ahead with the kids, but hadn't yet been able to unload the van, for obvious reasons. With some help from Lon's staff, I managed to get everything into the hotel; then with help from fleetfootmike, I got all of the CDs onto the table in no particular order. I got the rearranging done through Heather Alexander / Alexander James Adams before the room closed and I decided to finish up in the morning.We had already dropped Katie off at childcare, so when Lois offered to watch Julie while we grabbed some dinner, we said "Sure!", grabbed Mike, and headed off to an excellent Chinese restaurant nearby that we'd found last year after
qnofhrt's recommendation. Mike thought we'd never make it, being used to the leisurely pace of trips to Chinese restaurants in the U.K. We did the hit-and-run version and had him back in plenty of time for his panel.The open filk was fun and suitably low key on Friday. We'd retrieved Katie from childcare and she was having a fine time bopping along to the music and mostly not making a nuisance of herself. I'm very grateful for
sweetmusic_27's patience as Katie tried to investigate fiddle and bow. Katie also chose to loudly announce "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" somewhere during the first verse as I was singing "Just Play". It's handy to have your own publicity department, I suppose. :)We folded up fairly early, trying to get out ahead of a possible Katie meltdown as well as keeping in mind that I had to get up early to finish setting up the table. But before that, Gretchen and I got to sing "Stuff" and I later sang "Imagination Rising", so it wasn't as if kids and table kept me silent. And
mrgoodwraith made me hurt myself when he sang the song inspired by my problems getting my car towed. In this case, it was pretty funny if you weren't there, but definitely funnier if you were.I crawled out of bed on Saturday morning and got the table set up.
sexybass had invited me to sit in on the making a CD panel to replace the absent filkertom which I would have been happy to do if I hadn't been running out to feed everyone during the middle of the panel. I managed to get there for the last two minutes or so. :)Gretchen gave me most of the afternoon off, so I had time to swing by the art show and say hi to Liz and Melissa, while taking a look around at the massive amount of pottery that Artist GoH Peri Charlifu had brought with him. I'd be seeing much of it again later. I also noted the large number of charity pieces that had been marked to go direct-to-voice and realized that we were probably going to have a problem later in the evening.
Of course, everyone came by to meet Julie. She was being quite well-behaved and very cute, which is easier when you aren't yet mobile. :)
I'd made arrangements with Tom and
sueposter to bring in dinner after the Bohnhoff's concert. I caught most of Ookla -- who sadly had to start pretty late after a complex sound check -- then switched off with Gretchen at the table so she could hear mysticfig and Maia, since I was up one Bohnhoff concert on her so far this year. Eventually, we all got together (including rescuing Katie from childcare, where she seemed to be having a fine time without us), Tom and I ran out and then returned with carryout from Famous Dave's, and a happy dinner was had by all.I headed off to the art auction, where I was joined by
daddy_guido, Dr. Bob, and Uncle Kage. There were a lot of pieces in the auction not counting the many charity pieces and we started a few minutes late. I was delighted that we finished by about 10:20 or thereabouts. And the banter seemed to keep people entertained. Dr. Bob had reminded me of the hobbit milk jokes from WindyCon; this led to me picking up Peri's "Elven Butter Keeper" and explaining to the audience that they might have had apple butter or peach butter in the past; well, here was the elven butter keeper, because there was no problem making elven butter, since elves are also fruits.No one threw anything.
I decided to stay out of the blast radius for the Toyboat concert following the art auction. Unfortunately, it was nearly 11 PM before they could actually get started, so the main room was unavailable for open filk until pretty late. I listened to the first couple of songs from the hall, then was reminded that the alternate filk room was available and headed in that direction. It was a nice, quiet little filk. (But I did suggest to Ang that maybe we shouldn't schedule concerts after the art auction, because they're really hard on the open filking.)
Gretchen had hoped to sing "Apology" before heading up to pick up Katie from childcare. I hadn't realized when she needed to leave, so I cleverly managed to not sing it before she left. Oops.
I packed up and started upstairs not too much later, then found myself in the hallway chatting with my ex-wife, Carol, giving her the answer that I'd promised about the relative pricing of propane and heating oil for the upcoming winter, based on the expectations that my brother has. I rather trust his expectations since he works in the industry. This led to a substantial discussion about perverse incentives and the like.
Then Jeff and Maia wandered by and we started chatting. I suggested we could do this sitting down, so we went back to the now-empty filk room (where everyone else had migrated to another small room and to the big room down the hall) and spent time talking about computer industry horror stories, mixing and the like, as we accumulated more people. It was a good conversation and ran later than I had planned to be out.
I paid for that in the morning when I got up for my 10 AM panel on comic books -- primarily superhero books and their adaptation to other media. I talked way too much, although the other panelists were explicitly encouraging me to keep going. I think they were tired too. :)
Gretchen hadn't managed to get the kids packed out of the room yet, so I grabbed the cash box and went down to open the table. Once she got downstairs, I packed us out of the room, grabbed lunch for us and some friends, and settled down for the afternoon. There was plenty of good conversation all weekend.
After we packed up the table, Gretchen decided to head home with the kids and told me to stay for the dead dog filk. Tom and Sue had overordered stuffed pizza and were good enough to share it with me, so I got dinner despite a failure to reserve anything. I sang a couple of songs before deciding it was time to head home ("Crystal Dance", which the Bohnhoffs followed with "Persian Rose" -- which caused Gretchen to produce an appreciative "Ooh!" when I reported it to her; then later, I followed their "Leather Pants of Evil" with "The Sinister Walk", which seemed appropriate).
And when Katie was crying after Gretchen had read to her and then put her in her crib to go to bed, I finally went back in, picked her up, lay down in the big girl bed next to her, and sang her "Midnight Girl". And she immediately fell asleep in my arms.
That's a pretty nice way to end the weekend.