Surfacing

Wow. I didn’t actually mean to disappear like that. See, it’s like this, first there was OVFF, and then we were both sick, and…

This is gonna take more than one post to catch up. I can tell. 🙂

Sherman, set the wayback machine for two weeks ago…

We flew up to Columbus on Friday afternoon, October 24th, both looking forward to a weekend of friends and music. The flight was uneventful, and we quickly were able to get a taxi to the hotel in Dublin. We immediately ran into several friends, including surrdave and delenara. We got checked into the hotel and then gave a call to quadrivium, who we hadn’t seen in a couple of months and hooked up with her and surrdave for a late lunch/early dinner.

After getting back, I was able to hook up with ladymondegreen and mrlogic to rehearse the one-shot we planned on perpetrating the next day. I was glad for the chance to actually practice the song with the two of them, since I was still a bit shaky on parts of it, and I wanted to do a good job of it. (It’s interesting, really — I stress over my own stuff, but I know that if I screw up my own material, I’ve only let myself down. Being asked to perform this song, written by ladymondegreen, was an honour, and I didn’t want to screw it up.)

Friday night had it’s usual opening ceremonies followed by the Pegasus Nominees concert. The PegNom concert is one of my favourite events each year at OVFF each year, and this year was wonderful. Too many wonderful highlights to list them all, but I especially remember catsittingstill and Juanita Coulson doing “Terror Time in Lancre”, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff tackling Phoenix’s “Bang Today”, and Year and a Day’s breathtaking rendition of “A Thousand Ships”. The concert was closed by an exceptionally powerful performance of “Uplift” by andreweigel.

After the Nominees concert, I did my usual OVFF wander the halls routine, finally ending up in a wonderful cuddlepile in the consuite with a number of exceptionally lovely ladies. I’m told good music was happening elsewhere in the hotel, so everyone likely was having a good time. At some point, i forget when, the various lovelies deserted me to seek sleep in actual beds, so I did the same.

I really should have written this much much earlier. I think this is going to have to break down into various bullet points now.

• Got to have a talk with someone that I had needed to have a talk with for sometime. Got many things clarified and feel much better about where things stand with that person. This was actually a highlight of the weekend, as it removed a stress point that had been hanging around for weeks. Yay!
• Lady Mondegreen’s concert was absolutely marvelous! This was obviously the “fake out” set, and it was wonderful. They led off with “The Three Fine Slayers of Rupert Giles”, which caught most of the audience off guard. Later in the set, they did a bit of stage banter leading the audience to expect the song “Haven” before launching into a medley of Disney afternoon cartoon theme songs. And of course, saying they were going to do “their interpretation of the Pegasus nominated “1000 ships”” and then performing their hysterical recasting of the idea to the tunes of “A Thousand Songs” and The Proclaimer’s “500 Miles”. Much much fun.
• The Oneshot. This was the one thing I had committed to the entire weekend, and I have to say that after all my fretting, it went off flawlessly. See, ladymondegreen had written this incredibly evil parody of mannoftalent‘s song “Solitaire”, but she really needed a male singer to really pull it off, and she asked me about two months earlier if I could do that for her. The song is about a man sneaking into his wife’s closet and enjoying the luxury of trying on her undies. Jordan was tricked up on stage, tied to a chair, and then, with mrlogic providing the piano accompaniment, I sang the song whilst ladymondegreen, batyatoon, and Erica Neely (I think it was those three, anyway — I didn’t DARE look back for fear of losing my composure!) cavorted with the most amazing prop — a long string of absolutely garish silky undies. I had a *great* time, and Jordan took the entire stunt in great humour. Very possibly the single highlight of the con for me!
• The Pegasus banquet was fun. I always enjoy the actual spectacle. And while most of the banquet food was passable (nothing approaching Bouncing Potatoes there), there was a spicy pork dish that was actually superb. Congrats to Bill and Gretchen Roper, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, Cat Faber, Dandelion Wine, and Michael Longcor for their well deserved wins.
• I had been feeling pretty low-energy coming into the con. The weeks of work-related stress moving the data centre had me ready for a relaxing vacation, but for some reason I defaulted to just hanging out and chatting rather than playing any music. As a result, my guitar never left the hotel room the entire weekend, and the only music I participated directly in was the above one-shot. (If you don’t count singing “Carrickfergus” in the pool just to enjoy the acoustics. :))
• Mongolian BBQ was as much fun this year as last year. Of course, it would help if I actually paid attention to what I was mixing together, so my better attempts could be repeated, but that’s part of the charm, innit?
• Finally, as always, the best part of the con was seeing all my friends and family. If I started to name names, I’d forget someone and then I’d feel bad, but I did want to especially mention seeing filkergem and kyttn (it’s been way too long, guys), and also delennara, who came all the way over from Switzerland, and who I was going to miss seeing when I didn’t go to Sixteen Tones.

Monday morning, we had breakfast with kyttn and fikergem, who then graciously gave us a ride to the airport. We were way early for our flight (which turned out to be even later than I had recalled), but it beat paying another $50 for a taxi. It turned out great, though, because delenarra came along to keep us company — turns out she was waiting for a flight to New York just one gate over from us. We got to spend about an hour or so chatting with her before it was time for us to head home.

Once again, it was an amazing and wonderful time, and a great way to celebrate the second anniversary of me and kitanzi getting together. Thanks to everyone, love you all, and see you next year!