It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

So aside from that whole wave of distraction on Saturday involving my favorite Time Lord, highly enjoyable stuff did actually happen over the holiday weekend.

Friday afternoon, solarbird and I went down to Tacoma for the Tall Ships festival therein, and specifically, the Tricky Pixie show being held. Lots of fun, that; it was very cool, as I mentioned in a previous post, to see actual tall ships sailing along the water and in interesting contrast to supersonic planes in the sky. Cooler still was watching the Tricky Pixie show, which had the liveliest crowd of any of the performers there. Dara joined in on the chorus for the final song, the Lost Girls Pirate Academy alma mater. Very fun.

It is also highly worth mentioning that stealthcello, one third of Tricky Pixie, wrote a lovely new song about the ghost of a dryad clinging to her dead tree which has been used for the mast of a sailing ship. Highly appropriate song for the setting of the show and very wistful and sad as well.

Also, I am still coveting her guitar. Or else s00j's guitar, I'm not sure which yet, because Sooj's is a loverly shade of green. Though Betsy explained to Dara and me after that she's actually swapped out her previous black guitar for a wine-colored one she's named Sangria, which is the instrument she wrote the aforementioned song on. I'm swooning at the thought.

Dara and I hung out for a bit post-show and yakked with Betsy a bit, and Dara (mostly Dara) and I yakked with Alec (that's Alexander James Adams to the rest of you, another third of Tricky Pixie). My main contribution to that conversation was a sheepish confession that horses intimidate me, which of course led to Dara telling the story of how I fell off a pony at her behest. Hee.

We decided, though, that next year scratch that, next time they're having it again, which will be 2011, we need to come back to the Tall Ships festival. And actually, y'know, get on some of the tall ships, since they do tours and mock battles and things. And that would be super-cool.

On the way back we stopped in Shoreline to get a few things at the store and also Chinese takeout at Black Pearl. This is worth mentioning mostly because Black Pearl has become full of EPIC FAIL because they are no longer serving the delicious green onion pancakes that were a traditional staple of any order we placed with them. Dara and I were quite sad over this, and Dara learned that apparently making them is quite expensive for them, and hardly anybody ever orders them anyway. Hopefully Dara can find a tasty recipe to stand in for this loss.

Friday evening, of course, went to fireworks. As we did last year, we only had to go down the street a little ways, look right, and watch the show firing off over the lake. This year, we stayed out a little longer as well so we could also get a look at the Lake Forest Park show. Off in the distance to the south, we could even see the top of the Lake Union show... and at the very farthest opposite end of the lake, as far south as I could see, I saw teeny tiny flashes firing off over the skyline. I'm not sure which fireworks show that was, but that was amusing to see too.

Saturday, of course, pretty much went to the Doctor. <3

Sunday was supposed to be me going with Dara to busk at the Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market. But on Saturday afternoon, Rags popped a string--annoying. I'd tuned him earlier, and was rather startled to discover that all six of his strings were down by a half step. But he seemed fine after I tuned, so I played for a while (trying to see in particular if I could transpose "Captain Kidd" down to C, where I think I actually sing it more comfortable) and then went and did other things... until the high E string went PANG, while Rags was just sitting there. Grf.

I had an extra string, but as with all the other times I've had to swap strings, this one needs time to stabilize to its proper note. So I had to skip busking this time around. But at least Dara had an excellent outing and came home with $23.

mamishka came over Sunday afternoon, though, and we had a fun time watching Eureka and New Amsterdam. She also brought me more of season 3 of X-Files, and it's been delightful reminding myself that OH YEAH at least for the first several seasons, that show really did not suck.

New week to get through now--but on Thursday we'll have folks over for video gaming. On Friday, we will go to the Paramount where Mr. Eddie Izzard will very likely deliver us a heaping helping of Funny. And Sunday is JAM!

It will surprise exactly none of you, or at least shouldn't, that I naturally ripped this album right into iTunes and listened to it ASAP after I got home tonight. When I was done with the album, I promptly jumped over to watch everything on the DVD as well.

Fortune's Favour is heavy on the pop, which will put it over on the side of the discography that includes Sea of No Cares, Something Beautiful*, and to a lesser degree, Turn. However, this release has an atypical and unique style going for it, which I'm sure can be attributed to GBS letting someone else produce it for them. I suspect many fans may wrinkle their noses and go "it's different! Scares me!" Me? I like it.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, I'm biologically incapable of disliking a Great Big Sea album. ;) But that said, I hear only one track on this thing that didn't grab me in at least one interesting way, and in at least three different places, this thing has made me blink just because of stylistic choices that are so different from what GBS has done in the past that it surprised me to hear them. I highly approve of being surprised. It's the willingness to experiment and try new things with their music that I hope with all my heart will keep the B'ys vital and engaging musicians for many more years to come.

I'm pretty sure that this album won't dethrone the mighty The Hard and the Easy and the even mightier Rant and Roar for my all-time favorite GBS albums ever. But that said, I'm finding it a good solid listen and am delighted to have it join my collection. Here's to us all having a little more fortune in our lives!

And now, track by track reactions!

( Album tracks... )

( Bonus tracks... )

Onward to DVD impressions!

( DVD impressions... )

It is probably deeply appropriate that Great Big Sea's latest, Fortune's Favour, was waiting for me in the mailbox when I came home tonight from eating sushi--though perhaps not quite as deeply appropriate as it would have been had I done this when I got The Hard and the Easy. ;)

Only a day late, which doesn't surprise me, given that this thing was coming here all the way from the other side of Canada. That it's the very simple thin cardboard packaging, without a jewel case, doesn't surprise me either. I bet that it'd be in a jewel case if I bought it in a store. Also not surprising that I see "Russell" in the list of people being thanked in the liner notes, yay! It seems that the lovely and talented Mr. Crowe contributed some songwriting help on one of these songs, as well as on one of the extra tracks that the folks at greatbigsea.com were handing out.

What is surprising is that there's a DVD with this thing! Maybe it's got the same "making of" videos that are now posted up on the site? Clearly this will require investigation, as soon as I'm done listening to the actual songs. A review will of course be forthcoming!

So y'all pardon me, I need to go wine and dine this lovely thing for a while. <3

Great Big Sea in Seattle, October 1, at their now-usual venue of the Moore! That's a school night, but hey, these are MY B'YS we're talking about here. Anybody local want in on plans for this show, let me know!

For the interested all over my Friends list who haven't seen it already, the US leg of the official "Fortunate Tour" for the new album is up on the GBS Tour page. Presales for greatbigsea.com members are starting TOMORROW, so look sharp and grab tickets while they're hot and piping fresh!

And maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday, at the very least some time this week depending on how mail's been behaving between here and Canada, a certain album should be showing up in my mailbox.

And there will be Squee. Oh yes, there WILL. This is your final warning.

solarbird, spazzkat, and I went and saw Avenue Q playing here in Seattle yesterday--and it was hilarious. Very happy to have gotten to see that. Three words: Bad Idea Bears! <3

And today, Dara and I went down to the Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market to busk! We made another $28 to go into the Buy Dara and Anna iPhones Fund, which was quite satisfying. I was also particularly charmed by a couple of little girls who happily bounced around while we were playing. The older one actually sort of danced, but the younger, who couldn't have been more than two, didn't know how to dance any other way than running around in circles. So the bigger one had to hold her hands and go around in circles with her. Then they both came over and dropped a dollar apiece into my guitar case.

As of this past Thursday, I'm back at work. It's a bit of a switch after three weeks off, and I must admit, I'm going to miss being able to be at home with Dara. But ah well, unless I get really lucky with the queries, I'll be at this a while longer yet.

I've had a couple more followup appointments, and have been told that I'm healing up well from the surgery. My energy's back to normal, more or less, though it was a bit of a bitch carrying the guitar up the hill from the market this afternoon. I'm off the Tamoxifen, too, though this has also meant that I'm going to have to take other risk reduction measures to try to keep my remaining breast clear.

Which means, mainly, an overhaul of my diet--because obesity is a risk factor for cancer, and I'm carrying way too much extra poundage.

For starters, I'm going to have to ditch the soda--and get hardcore about rationing the snacks. Dara's generally good about our dinners, but I need to pay harder attention to breakfast and lunch. Tuesday, I'm going to speak with a nutritionist as well to see if there are other modifications I'll need to make to my diet. I was given a big handout with a bunch of foods that are deemed helpful for cancer risk reduction, complete with stats and recipes and the like. Some of this stuff is stuff I eat already, but it'll be helpful to have somebody with a clue go over the other stuff with me.

Also on Tuesday, I have to go in to be fitted with what has now been officially named the Stunt Boob. Surprisingly, this means I go to Nordstrom's. It'll be very strange walking into a department store with a prescription, but apparently this is how the folks at Evergreen handle this. I'm to get the prosthesis as well as a couple of special bras for it. I dislike the idea of having to change bra types, but this is fortunately only a temporary measure, to tide me over until we can deal with reconstruction surgery.

In the meantime, we'll see how much poundage I can drop. Soda elimination and snack reduction efforts, plus the resumption of my usual workday walking, have already started altering my appetite. And I've already dropped a few pounds.

Wish me luck, folks. I'm aiming for 125-130. It'll take me a while; I've got over 50 pounds to go to get there.

Greatbigsea.com sent over its news feed today new news: Fortune's Favour is now available for pre-order on iTunes!

Note that there's a confusing bit in this announcement that suggests that the only way that you can get these extra tracks is to pre-order the album via iTunes. For those of us who have already pre-ordered the physical CD, this would be annoying!

However, not to fret: if you go up on the iTunes store and search for "Great Big Sea", there's a new EP up there that includes "Walk On The Moon" as well as the two new extra tracks, which can be bought individually.

So go! Buy the new digital GBS goodness! The news announcement claims that these tracks will vanish when the album releases, and I don't know if that's also going to apply to this EP. Better not risk it, folks. ;)

(x-posted between my journal and greatbigsea)

I see I've picked up a couple new folks reading: hi there, mrgoodwraith and sar_anon. Things have been slow around here lately since I haven't had much brain for posting--or doing much of anything else, for that matter. However, things should soon be picking up.

Most of this past week has gone to various appointments (chiro, massage, talk therapy), as well as hanging out with the fantabulous mamishka--who's come over a couple of time and introduced me to the TV shows Moonlight and Pushing Daisies. Moonlight is better than I've expected, at least based on the first couple of episodes; it's got a few amusing moments of self-aware humor, and it makes me grin that it has the actress who played Reinette in "Girl in the Fireplace" in it. Pushing Daisies, on the other hand, is hilarious in a quirky, dark-humor kind of way.

As I feared, the replacement X-Files DVD set that Amazon sent me turned out to also be missing the season closer. To wit: argh. I shall have to find alternate means to acquire that season, I fear. But I also jumped ahead and watched the first X-Files movie, on the grounds that okay yeah fine I'm going to go see the new one and I want to be reminded of various plot points. At least the ones from when the show was still good. ;)

solarbird and I went and saw Speed Racer finally, which I liked way better than I thought I would--and I have to admit, the techno remix of the theme over the closing credits was awfully catchy, and I may have to buy it off of iTunes. Coming home to watch the two actual episodes of the old cartoon I have on laser made me doubly appreciate the movie. The cast really did do a good job nailing the various characters, and sure, it's cartoony, but hey, it's a movie based on a cartoon. Though I can see how, if you never were a fan of the cartoon, the movie wouldn't work for you.

spazzkat and Dara and I went to see Indy IV last night. And, after seeing it a second time, I've found that I've downgraded it to a nice enough coda to the original three movies. Dara has said that she feels that Indy as a character really belongs back in the 20's and 30's, because back then, so much of the world is still Unknown and Mysterious to Western culture--but after WWII, not so much. I think I find myself in agreement with her.

We've had one jam session, about which there will not be a Jam Report still because I haven't had the brain to write them. But it was fun to have folks over, and I hope to resume writing Jam Reports with our next session on the 29th. In related news, Dara has started busking at local farmers' markets--and has made quite a bit of pocket change, which is awesome. I hope to join her next week to help her out, and we're hoping to use the busking money to get us a couple of the new iPhones when they come out.

My energy levels are slowly returning to normal; I've been able to do some decent walking the last few days, going to the aforementioned appointments as well as running errands down to the shops. And my brain's coming back enough that I'm starting to feel a little guilty about not working on the writing (in fact, I finally had an idea occur to me about how to fix one of the skiffy novels I'm working on, about which I need to be taking notes).

I think that's everything for now. A few more days of zzzz and then I'll have to go back to work; in the meantime, though, I got more Nethacking to do!

For those of you who haven't already heard this from me directly, I thought I should pass the word. filkertom, Tom Smith, has apparently badly torn a muscle trying to get onto a stage during a performance, and he's had to have surgery for it. The word is that he'll be okay, but this shoots his convention schedule for the summer all to hell.

PNW filker vixyish has some details here.

huskiebear has more details here, and is offering to take messages and get-well wishes to Tom.

Vixy also encourages people who want to support Tom to go buy stuff from him--because, as she quite rightly points out, he makes his living from his music, which is a pretty amazing thing for a filker. So this will put a bad dent in his income.

I just bought a couple of his albums for download here on his site, to try to help him out. Y'all might consider doing the same, if you like Tom's music and don't already own all of his stuff. If you aren't familiar with him, I heartily encourage you to check him out, for there are quite a few reasons that Tom's made it to being a professional filker. Not the least of which being that he brings the Funny!

Spread the word to any other folks you think need to know, y'all.

Ladies and gentlemen, the surgery as expected will be TOMORROW.

I had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Towbin this morning; we confirmed that yes, even if I keep the left breast, it's okay for me to ditch the Tamoxifen since for the left one, it would be purely preventative rather than active treatment. And since the MRI told me that the left breast is clear, I'm reluctant to do anything to it. We are therefore doing a single mastectomy only. Later in the year as appropriate we'll look at reconstruction now that we know what the best options there are, courtesy of talking to Dr. McMillan.

So yeah. I report in at oh-god-no-o'clock (read: 6:45am) for a procedure at 8:30am at Evergreen. I am to stay overnight, and assuming that nothing scary happens, I go home the next morning. solarbird will be staying with me overnight. I'm told by the admitting nurses that they'll be putting me into a new section of the hospital where all the rooms have little sleeping nooks for family and visitors and such. That will be useful.

Then I come home and fall over and think very calming thoughts for the next three weeks, as this recovery will be part physical and part mental and I am in desperate need of a vacation. The plan will be:

• Pet Dara
  
• Pet cats*
  
• Watch a lot of stuff on DVD**
  
• Read a lot
  
• Play a metric fuckload of Nethack
  
• Assuming I can manage to boot my brain back up after a few days, edit something
  
• Listen to a bunch of recently purchased music***
  

Wish me luck, folks.

* We expect the cats to be massively confused as, at least for the first couple of days after I get home, we're going to open up the sofa bed so I can sleep on it downstairs. The tricky part will be keeping the cats from sleeping on me.

** Watching of things has already included the first season box set of The X-Files, for which I must issue much public gratitude to cafiorello and her family. THANK YOU CATHY! MmmmmmmmMulder.

*** By way of retail therapy, I just dropped fifty bucks onto iTunes to buy a lot of music that's been on my To Buy queue, including various folks who have opened for Great Big Sea shows (Liam Titcomb, Jeremy Fisher, Ashleigh Flynn), the Carbon Leaf EPs, and the latest from the Irish Descendants. I also bought a CD at Folklife by a group called the North Shore Celtic Ensemble, who were pretty cool.

I have been in a very strange, very stressy state all weekend. This is not a terribly good state to be in when Folklife is going on--and at the same time, having Folklife going on is actually a pretty damn fine antidote to stress. solarbird and I have attended the festival for the last two days now, and both times, it's been pretty awesome all around.

We'd already decided to do the Celtic Band Scramble again this year, although I almost backed out of it due to my weird frame of mind. I waffled back into it though and I'm glad I did. Even if it turned out that this year, there were only six, count 'em, SIX people in the Scramble--so we had only the one band, myself and Dara and four other people.

On stage, we wound up doing three songs; "Old Black Rum", an instrumental cobbled together from a couple of ditties the guy with the recorder knew, and something called "Maid on the Shore" that the other guitarist in the group knew.

I went first, with "Old Black Rum". And lest you not grasp the significance of this, people, I sang a Great Big Sea song on a stage at Folklife. In front of actual people. To wit: EEE! The only possible way that could have been any scarier is if members of Great Big Sea had been in the audience. Or maybe on the stage. Yeah, that would have been scarier. And by scarier, I mean "the coolest thing in the HISTORY OF TIME". I think I babbled out something into the microphone to the effect of "this is a song by a band who's way better than we are, and I hope we do it justice; it's called 'Old Black Rum'".

The instrumental was way shakier than it should have been, in no small part because the recorder guy played the A part for an extra time through and I changed keys on Rags too damned early. Oops. But I did figure it out and I did keep going because On Stage Now Can't Stop. Again, EEE!

"Maid on the Shore" was last and that went better, and it wasn't a half-bad little song. Kind of a downbeat thing to end on, though, and I hadn't really had time to pick up enough of the lyrics to sing along much with the other guitarist. But all in all I was pretty damned pleased to be up there on the stage with my little Rags.

However, today's activities were even more awesome than that. For the first time in our lives, Dara and I busked.

We did every GBS ditty I could play and sing at the same time ("Old Black Rum", "Lukey", "Mari-Mac", "Trois Navires de Ble", and "Jack Hinks", with one attempt to go through "Goin' Up" even though I'm still kinda shaky on the lyrics), Meg Davis' "Elf Glade", and several of Dara's pieces. People stopped to look at us. One girl went WHOOP as I was belting out "Elf Glade". A couple other young girls sashayed past us in the middle of one of Dara's flute pieces... and another one made an elaborate point of gifting us with a stuffed horse toy which she laid in the case.

That was pretty neat, even though it turned out that the toy had been dropped by some poor kid whose mother recognized it when they went past later. So of course we let the kid have the horse. But we were kind of sad to see it go. ;)

And we actually were given MONEY. A couple of older folks made a point of hanging around to listen to entire songs, too. Dara's pieces got the best attention in general, especially when she whipped out Splinter, the big flute. We made a whole $6.50, just enough to buy me a piroshky. Hee!

We're going to do this again next year. Maybe even more formally. I've already told Dara that if we're doing that, I need a guitar with more muscle to it. Rags is a scrappy little guitar, but just does not have the carrying power to busk at Folklife. And if we get on a stage again... well!

So yeah. Busking at Folklife: AWESOME, with a heaping helping of WIN on top.

ETA 5/26/08 8:42am: Oh yeah, we played "Captain Kidd" too while we were busking. I left that one out!

Just to pay appropriate note to the various and sundry other things that have been going on in my life:

Jam Reports. There have not been Jam Reports for the last couple of Jams, and I apologize in advance, but there will probably not be. I just haven't been focused enough to get proper Jam Reports written. However, it is worth noting that there is much promise with GBS' "Chemical Worker's Song" with the current set of voices. cflute in particular has some very impressive harmonies coming together for that, and kendaer is feeling some potential for rumbling out the lead on this on days when mamishka isn't available.

On a related note, solarbird and I went to go visit stealthcello this past Friday night, which was made entirely of Win. She and her family have a lovely home full of lovely large Maine Coon cats as well as six two-week-old kittens, with whom we visited as well and ZOMG TINY KITTENS. Dara shared some of the music she's been working on, and Betsy answered with some of hers, and me, I was impressed by Betsy's shiny new black carbon-body guitar.

One giggleworthy moment of the evening: Dara hitting a chord on the mandolin and announcing that that sounded like "ass minor". Betsy's daughter lost it laughing, and Betsy herself pondered the question of what precisely "ass" sounds like. Dara's response, entirely inevitably: "Here, pull my finger!"

I will also not be doing review posts for the most recent BSG and Doctor, again because short on general levels of cope. I will however say that the most recent BSG was quite solid. We actually haven't watched the most recent Doctor yet, but will hopefully be getting that in soon.

Current book on the queue: desperance's Bridge of Dreams, which I have scarcely begun, but already I am impressed by the liquid rhythm of the prose.

And because I could, I went and got RAM upgrades for both my MacBook and Dara's. Now Winnowill and Kiliandra both are at 2 GB, though I have observed that I'm still taxing the CPU a bit if I try to do too many things at once. Less so than before, granted, but the problem hasn't entirely gone away.

Working on listening to s00j's Sirens, to be followed up by vixyish and tfabris's Thirteen. I have however also squeezed in Capercaillie's shiny brand new album Roses and Tears, as well as Nickel Creek's first album, since I've been meaning to listen to them for ages. This marks the first official time I have ever purchased an album calling itself country. However, listening to it, I find it definitely upholds the Alexander James Adams Principle of Celtic and Country Music, to wit: same music, different whiskey. ;)

Dara and I are planning our assault on Folklife this weekend and we are for once actually looking at doing three of the four days. We definitely want to hit the Celtic Band Scramble on Saturday, but there are things that interest us quite a bit on Sunday and Monday as well. I'm thinkin', a great big (not to be confused with Great Big) glorious burst of Folklife just before surgery should be a good way to get ready.

And, it has occurred to me that as I am about to be lying flat on my ass for two weeks, I can finally read Deathly Hallows.

And have another Movie Suckoff. Because there will be another Movie Suckoff, oh my yes.

Last but most definitely not least: tomorrow night, JONES. Meeting casirafics and mamishka for the midnight show at the Cinerama, and there will be much fangirling. What can I say. There are only a few people in the world that can really get me to fangirl, but Harrison Ford is one of them.

And, just because I haven't done this in ages, here's an exercise update as well. I am now on my way back to Hobbiton!

Miles since April 5th: 107.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2863.8
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 26.8
Miles to Hobbiton: 1598.2

ETA 10:42pm: Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my Ubuntu VM problem has been solved thanks to help from blargh. The issue seemed to be that VMWare was confused by my machine's having both a CD-ROM and DVD drive, and when I changed the VM settings to tell it not to auto-detect a drive, it started behaving. So now I have a functional Ubuntu VM to use as a test platform at work. Go me! And thanks, Traest. :)

"Walk On the Moon", the first single from the forthcoming album Fortune's Favor, is now available to listen to up on greatbigsea.com! Just scamper up there and look over on the right part of the page--they've got an embedded player there that you can launch to play the song.

Having listened to it, I can now say with assurance that I'm more sold on this being the lead single for the album. It's got BELLS! <3 And ooh, very nice full harmony on the choruses. As I was suspecting, the studio version gives the song a bit more weight than the YouTube video of a live performance of the song that raise_a_jar linked to in my earlier post.

... because this guitar of mine, apparently all uppity with his shiny new black and silver strings and silver tuning pegs, was bound and determined that I was going to play Elvis songs.

So I whipped out all three of my Elvis songbooks--with three Elvis songbooks, you'd think I'd know more Elvis songs on the guitar by now, but no, I really need to get on that--and started playing around tonight. solarbird jumped in with me some, which was extremely nifty. We played around with three songs, more or less, with occasional glances at other things I wanted to play but at which I immediately cringed because the chords were written out in OH GOD NO keys.

"Home is Where the Heart Is" is one of Elvis' more obscure little love songs; it's a song he does in one of his earlier movies, the ones that sucked less, and it's a simple, sweet song he sings to the girl du jour in the film. Key of C. I like it. I can more or less play it straight through.

"Suspicious Minds" is well known to anyone with at least a passing acquaintance with Elvis' various big hits; for those of you who are perhaps too young, it was one of his bigger hits in the late 60's and a concert staple in the 70's. I grew up adoring the concert version of this in Aloha Via Satellite. I can mostly play this except for the bridge, because there it hits a B7sus4 immediately followed by a B7 and um, NO. Not happening. Not yet. ;)

"Starting Today", another early 60's obscure ballad. Tried to go at it with one of the songbooks, found it mostly simple and with a couple of unusual chord progressions I hadn't played with before, A to A6 to A7 in an odd rhythm. However, I was immediately shot down in flames when I tried to fire up this one on the iPod to try to play along. The problem? The songbook has the song written out in D. The damn song is half a step down. AIGH. Capos do not work in reverse.

I tried looking at "Can't Help Falling in Love", for generally obvious reasons. I worked my way through this at one point but damned if I can remember how to play it now. The songbook though has this thing written out in F, to wit, BUH? I'm pretty sure Elvis did it in D, but I'll have to doublecheck the recording. I am confused about the time signature, too. I could have sworn the damn thing was in 3/4, but the book's got it written out in 4.

"Don't" is a 50's-era ballad, off the second gold records collection 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong. This is another one written out in the correct key for once in the songbook, but it's got a few funky chord progressions I'll have to learn properly. So I could barely get into this one.

Then I swung around to "Fame and Fortune", which I do more or less know, well enough that I wanted to practice singing the lyrics. I have the same issue with this one as I do with Great Big Sea's "Goin' Up"--to wit, the lyrics are delivered in this syncopated sort of rhythm that sprawls all over the strum pattern, and I don't know the song well enough yet to sing without thinking while I'm playing.

And last but not least, I tried glancing at "Love Me" again. If you don't know this Elvis song, go find it. Preferably the version he did in the '68 Comeback Special, in the acoustic circle where he's in that black leather outfit and he and his posse are jamming for a small audience. Most excellent. Especially played dirty.

So, yeah. No editing. But a hell of a lot of guitar practice. This failed to suck. <3

Didn't do a bit of editing either on Friday night or yesterday, and blame for this rests thoroughly upon the shoulders of TV and of instrument fun. This did however mean that I had to edit a lot extra today, even during a Tricky Pixie show. Happily, solarbird found me a table in the cafe, ideal for parking Winnowill, and it was surprisingly productive to edit while surrounded by cheering people and with musicians in front of me. I did, however, get my ass up for "March of Cambreadth". Which was pretty much required.

The Tricky Pixie show was fun. Spotted several familiar faces there, of course: cflute and technoshaman were in attendance, as was kendaer and a few other old friends of mine and Dara's that we hadn't seen in a while. I'd never been to Soul Food Books before, but it has a neat stage in the corner, ideally sized for the trio of s00j and stealthcello and Alec. The place was thoroughly packed, though, which was extra special impressive given that there had been maybe two days' advance warning of this show. If that.

Best moments for me during the show were listening to the "Chickies in the House/Napoleon's Rant/Duncan's Dance" set and thinking "HAH we've been playing that in Jam!"--though not nearly so fast and not even remotely in one coherent whole yet. I have my ambitions about this now. D minor will be mine, oh yes. Also, the ninja song, which was very giggleworthy in the wake of the commentary last Jam about how we ought to do an all-ninja Jam to go with the pirate one. Now there exists an actual ninja song for us to do! ;)

After the show was a drum circle. Dara wanted to stay for that, so while she happily banged away on her little bodhran with the rest of the folks making thumpy noises, I wandered around the store to check the place out. I wound up getting another Skinny White Chick CD--specifically, the one to go with the Catherynne Valente book I've bought. I would have gotten Alec's all-instrumental CD, but Kore, his spouse, helpfully informed me that I actually already had all those tracks. Very nice of her. I'll just have to wait a little longer to get the next Alec disc, apparently! But I also got a chance to thank Alec directly for the songbook since we're having so much fun with the songs in that in Jam, and I got to chat with Betsy, and hang out outside with the laptop enjoying the Loud from a comfortable distance while I worked on a bit more editing.

Oh, and the editing tally? All the way through Chapter 1 and into Chapter 2 of Lament of the Dove. The productivity has continued into this evening, as I've gotten a couple more queries into the air and have therefore brought the active query count back up to three.

Meanwhile, I've kept at it tuning Rags to get the new strings to settle in, and I ran through "Elf Glade" and "Goin' Up" a few times. I think if I'm singing lead on either of these songs, I do it best capoed. "Elf Glade" is starting to come along nicely, though. Now if I can just get that meshing of lyrics and strum patterns down on "Goin' Up", I'll feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Wish me luck, folks--on both counts! With a day full of music, it feels like a good day for it!

It has been way, way too long since solarbird and I set foot in Dusty Strings, and it was a delight to go back today for various and sundry instrument missions.

First and foremost was to get a new high D string on the bouzouki, which was accomplished with reasonably little headache. It would have been ideal if I'd been able to bring in the broken string for comparison purposes--but not vital, it turned out. The guy at the store found me a replacement in short order. So now Spring is in full voice again, yay! This should make playing "Lukey" a different experience in Jam, now.

Second mission, more important: new tuning pegs for Ragamuffin, my guitar. This was partly a cosmetic issue, but also a functional one, since the pegs on the instrument were very old and stiff and creaky, and a couple of them were bent as well. I had initially thought I was going to have to leave the instrument in their repair shop, but no--Dara's plan was simply to get the appropriate replacement parts, and she'd do the swap herself. Since she'd already done the work necessary to get the instrument playable in the first place, she didn't anticipate this being a problem. Happily, the store had a couple of different sets of pegs available. We opted for the $20 pair, partly because they looked cooler and partly because Dara thought they just looked more solidly constructed, as least as far as she could tell just by visual inspection.

While we were at it, we also got an entirely new set of strings for the guitar and the little mandolin, which is now Dara's--I gave it to her, an act which continues to please me every time I see her exploring its capabilities. She'd gone ahead and brought that instrument on this mission with us as well, since one of the strings was being difficult for her to tune. Turned out that the store guy advised her to replace all the strings. Given that I'd never restrung that instrument completely myself--I'd only swapped out maybe one or two of them at different points--it was high time for the thing to get new strings.

And! We both got new picks, and I got a new shoulder strap to put on the bouzouki, since we have four playable instruments with strings between us, and we'd previously had only three straps. All in all, it was a very fruitful expedition.

Much instrument restringing has happened this afternoon. Rags is now wearing his new pegs and strings; the strings look really rather cool, too. They're D'Addarios, which is a switch since I previously had Augustines on it. The coolest part, though? The upper strings are BLACK. So now Rags has got half black strings and half silver ones, in addition to the new pegs.

Tuning with the new pegs is pretty neat, too. It's a little weird doing this without any squeaky noises, and with turns that are so much easier. I'm sure this is contributing to the strings holding their tones better, too; they're still slipping and I have to keep tuning them to get them to stay on pitch, but they're not slipping quite as fast as the Augustines with the previous tuning mechanisms did.

All in all, as Dara has said, Rags has levelled up. <3

So, as previously hoped for, solarbird and I did make it down to Conflikt in Renton today. We didn't make it down there until 3pm or so, unfortunately, because I got conked with a nap in the early afternoon and there was unexpected traffic on 405 on the way down... but we got there. And we plunked down thirty bucks each for day passes, even though we'd missed half the programming already. I figure hey, it's supporting the con. And I wanted into the dealer's room anyway.

CDs purchased in the dealer's room: cadhla's Pretty Little Dead Girl, the Bedlam Bards' On the Drift finally (because I have been a sad little Browncoat that I hadn't owned a copy of that before now), and Shadowbeast by Escape Key. Not long after I also picked up s00j's Sirens, since I noticed several of her CDs were out on a table just before her concert!

Activities done: sat in on a workshop headed by Steve MacDonald that was described as "Performance Strategies" in the program book. Mostly what got talked about while Dara and I were there was how to memorize songs, and the technique Steve described sounded helpful, though also a lot of work.

Afterwards there was in theory going to be Open Filk, at which Dara hoped to play since chances were high that I'd be too wiped to hang around for the post-concerts Open Filk. Sadly, the earlier Open Filk did not materialize, since most of the con attendees were at the Interfilk auction, and then the vast majority of them went to dinner. Undaunted, Dara rehearsed some of her flute pieces for a while, which had the satisfying result of bringing a few people into the room to listen, and even one fellow I saw tapping out impromptu drum rhythms to accompany her.

Later, Dara whipped out the mandolin and we futzed a little with "Goin' Up" and "Lukey". I had not bothered to bring any of my instruments, since I figured and quite correctly that I would not have energy to play. But I had just enough energy to sing, at which point I learned to my satisfaction that I am definitely more comfortable singing both of these songs in the key of A; so, for that matter, is Dara. However, I also learned that at least in my current condition, I apparently can't remember half the damn lyrics. But Dara saw my missed lyrics and raised me flinging the pick right into the mandolin, coming out of the bridge of "Goin' Up". ;)

Persons met for the first time and/or otherwise spoken to: pocketnaomi, stealthcello, s00j, mdlbear, and one nice lady with a five-year-old, neither of whose names I have managed to remember because my brain is the approximate consistency of cheese at the moment. And of course we spoke with cflute and technoshaman, as well as tibicina who actually sat in on our last Jam (about which I still need to write). ETA 1/20/98 1:12pm: Forgot to mention that I also bumped briefly into kendaer!

Concerts attended: Skinny White Chick, at which point I got a load of stealthcello's cello for the first time. Holy crap. Ladies and gentlemen, that there is one sexy cello. I covet it and I'm not even a cello player. I knew some of the set list already after listening to the recently released live Tricky Pixie CD, but did not know the songs from the Orphan's Tales books by Catherynne M. Valente, which were very cool. I shall have to seek those books out.

Then, immediately thereafter, cflute with assorted backup provided by tibicina, pocketnaomi, mdlbear, a guitarist I didn't know named Cindy, and a vocalist whose name I managed to miss. (See previous commentary re: brain, cheese.) Having recently listened to a lot of Echo's Children for the first time, it was pleasing during this concert to actually recognize several of the songs. I have decided that the overall style of Echo's Children works a lot better for me when applied to parody lyrics; I loved the gaming filk lyrics for "Acts of Creation", as well as the Dr. Seuss parody later in the lineup.

By the tail end of that concert, though, I was fading fast and shivering in what was actually a very warm room; I was sitting there in my coat by the end of it. So I told Dara regretfully that I needed to come home and fall over. We said our goodbyes to folks and came on home... but I am hopeful at the word that registration counts for this con well exceeded expectations (147 where they had expected only around 80), which bodes very well for a Conflikt 2 next year.

Here's hoping I'll be up for the whole thing next time around.

I am full of sulking, because Conflikt is imminent and I'd really like to go for the weekend, only it is extremely unlikely that I will be able to manage all of one day energy-wise, much less the entire weekend. It is particularly unlikely that I will be able to make cadhla's concert tomorrow night, as I would have to pretty much go down there straight from my last round of zapping. And considering that I'll likely be wiped out after that, very dubious that that will happen.

Which disappoints me, because I very much like Stars Fall Home and will be sad to miss the chance to hear her sing live.

But we'll see if maybe solarbird and I can make it down for the Saturday evening concerts, especially since cflute's is one of them. Yay!

And as long as we're on the topic of music, I must note that the sulking is quite a bit made up for by how on the way into work today I listened to just about all of The Best of the Chieftains, and the rest while I was out buying lunch.

Listening to this was really kind of like how I'd never seen Casablanca for so much of my life, but I'd seen the countless references and homages to it in so many other films and media--and then, when I finally saw the movie, all those references and homages made a lot more sense. It was very much a "okay, all you younguns, stand aside and let the grownups show you how it's done" listening experience--suddenly I could see very clearly how much a lot of the groups I love to listen to, even Great Big Sea, owe to this band. Everything I like about my favorite groups was there on this record: vigorous, boisterous playing, the seamless transitions from one melody to another, and the confident (at least on the one track, as this was mostly an instrumental album) flinging forth of Gaelic lyrics.

It also made Fire in the Kitchen, my previous only exposure to the Chieftains, make a lot more sense. Now that I've heard these gents rip through tunes all by themselves, it's a lot clearer to me how they are the underpinning foundation of that album while all the other groups they're playing with are the structures on top.

I very much liked that they had a somewhat more complex and mature sound to their instrumentals than I've heard on a lot of the other albums I own, and a sound very much their own thanks to how they handled their bagpipes and percussion. The liner notes say that these tracks were all remastered for this album as well, and it shows; the mix is stunningly good even on my crappy iPod headphones.

I specifically recognized two different songs off the album as well, which was funny. "O'Sullivan's March" I knew from, of all things, the Master and Commander soundtrack! And in fact, it sounded like very much the same arrangement. I thought for an instant that I'd somehow suddenly jumped albums when that song spun up.

And I recognized the one vocal track on here as one on a Solas album as well. And truth be told, I think I like the Chieftains' take better.

So, Chieftains for the win! I will definitely be buying more of their work. <3

Monday afternoon, by way of taking advantage of a day off from work, solarbird and spazzkat and I went to go see Cloverfield.

(Which is, by the way, a quite tight and intense little movie--but for the love of god, be warned, if you're prone to any kind of motion sickness, sit way, way back in the theater. Also consider taking some Dramamine beforehand.)

(Also, we had the new teaser for the forthcoming Trek flick in front of the movie, which I have to admit really rather made my little fangirl heart go pitter-pat, particularly when the first few notes of the familiar theme song welled up over the pan shot across the under-construction saucer section of the Enterprise... and, well, gosh. <3 Man, I hope they don't screw this up. I'm really in an Original Trek mood after giving Dara the remastered DVDs of the first season, so yeah. Bring on the new kids, and here's hoping they do the old familiar characters justice.)

(But I digress.)

I mention the Cloverfield excursion mostly because both beforehand and afterward, we popped into Barnes and Noble. I had a couple of coupons I wanted to spend, and the first one went to me picking up another Waifs CD. I offered the other to Dara, but she couldn't think of anything she really wanted to get even though she waffled for a bit on the very first season box set for The Avengers. (ETA 10:08pm: Dara says I got the season wrong--it's second series Avengers she was interested in. My bad!) So I settled on spending the second coupon on the last box set for Remington Steele.

Which of course was very foolish of me to do two days before my birthday--because Monday night at dinner, I learned to my chagrin that risu was of the opinion that I Really Shouldn't Have Done That, to which I went "ah" and immediately resolved to not open up the package so that I could take it back to B&N and swap it for something else. *^_^*;;

I did that today, and settled on two CDs: In All Things by Leahy, since I do have quite the long string of good luck with Celtic-flavored Canadian bands, and also The Best of the Chieftains, because I keep saying I should damn well have some Chieftains, so now I do. I'm pretty sure that there is a law written down somewhere, probably in Ireland or Scotland, that all fans of modern Celtic music should own at least one Chieftains CD. And I am a law-abiding citizen!

Anyway, it turned out that the extra box for Steele was actually a get-well present rather than a birthday, but most welcome nonetheless. And between that and the gifts from Dara and Paul, it has been a very DVD-heavy birthday, with emphasis on the Swoonable and the Funny. In the Swoonable corner, we have Steele (the 4th and 5th season box set), the second season of MacGyver ("his mind is the ultimate weapon", says the tagline on the box, to which Paul added that this is scary given that it lives under the ultimate mullet), and, to crown off the lineup, 3:10 to Yuma, the Crowe/Bale edition. BOOYA. And over in the Funny corner, we have the 11th collection for Mystery Science Theater 3000 as well as Eddie Izzard's Definite Article.

technoshaman has come over to help Dara with a server swap, and he brought a card with him which was very cute. My boss even gave me a card today as well. All in all, as birthdays go, a pretty fine one indeed. <3

I just skimmed over the last 300 entries on my Friends list, because I haven't been able to pay much attention at all to Livejournal over the last several days. Between being eaten by the Great Mail Migration of 2008, work being absolutely batshit, and radiation fatigue, I haven't had much leftover brain for reading the Intarwebz.

However, I will extend big ol' albeit belated congratulations to mizkit for her shiny new comic book contract!

I will also express general appreciation for good music to listen to. I've recently purchased Choice Language by Capercaillie, since they'd come recommended to me--and kathrynt has loaned me another album of theirs, and technoshaman and cflute loaned me a third. I definitely like these folks; I'll be buying more of their albums.

Same notation for the Waifs. I'd been wanting to buy something by them for a while, since they were an opening act for GBS once, and I liked them at that show. So I've picked up their album Up All Night, which was the album they'd had out at the time of that show. A decent listen, somewhere between folk and rock and country, and it's fun hearing that sort of music sung with a strong Aussie accent. I'll be looking for more of their stuff too.

technoshaman and cflute loaned me several other things to listen to as well, but I'm still working my way through those. However, I've gotten to enough of that music to know that I need me some more Captain Tractor, too.

Also, outtakes of series 2 of new Doctor FTW! The annoyance of having to work today was lessened considerably by playing the first three episodes of Tennant's first season, along with the various extras on the first disc. I'll need to take my time watching the rest, I want to pace myself. <3

I have to work again tomorrow, writing test cases, which is also annoying. But more Doctor Who is likely! So not much LJ likely for me tomorrow either. Anybody got anything they'd like to share with me, fling a comment my direction!

So I neglected to mention last weekend that spazzkat, solarbird, and I went to go see Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Not as solid a movie as the original Elizabeth, I think. Yet Cate Blanchett was certainly queenly, and oh my yes the Errol-Flynnesque Handsome-and-Dashingness of that Walter Raleigh fellow was a potent force indeed (the Queen had a great eye for his, aheh, "immensities"). Anybody besides Dara and me grin at the "Bess tending her lady in the bath" scene? I mean, damn. Let's just say, after seeing that scene as well as the Queen pitching a massive hissyfit later, it was pretty evident that her royal jealousy was a lot less concerned with Walter. ;)

I also neglected to mention that after Jam this past Sunday, technoshaman and cflute left a coat and the chocolate sauce that had gone on the pumpkin pie behind. So I took them over to their place, which was the first time I'd seen it, and which let me see a few of the winding back streets behind the Murk. In return, they gave me two more Echo's Children CDs as well as the Echo's Children songbook. Yay!

As one might expect my reading rhythm has been mightily thrown off this week, but I hope to maybe finish up reading rachelcaine's Midnight Alley. And it is worth a mention that I have finally purchased a copy of Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, as I did not actually have a copy in my library, which seemed a rather criminal lack. You don't get much more Classic Urban Fantasy than that book.

The kittens are steadily growing. In the last week in particular they've both suddenly become mightily aware of the virtues of being petted, which for me has meant that if I'm lying on the couch with my laptop, trying to write, one or the both of them will climb up onto my chest and purr like mad. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, this has been documented for posterity by Dara!

I have but a single episode left in Season 3, Volume 2 of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which has some prime silly in it as well as several episodes I remember vividly from when I watched this thing as a kid. No less than six, count 'em, six episodes where Captain Crane gets his head taken over by the Monster of the Week, too. I begin to wonder why the hell he still has security clearance, by this stage of the show. ;) I have not yet acquired any spectacularly crappy movies to watch during my recovery time, but I do not lack for stuff to watch; I've still got the Dresden DVDs as well as the rest of Season 3 of Remington Steele, and the discs from ravyngyngvar as well.

I continue to add to the Buy Anna a Black MacBook Fund, a.k.a. my savings account. I hope to have enough bucks by the end of the year to get that computer--specifically the black one, since Dara and Paul both have white Mac laptops and I want to be able to tell mine apart. I'm pretty sure that once I get said machine, I will be calling it Winnowill--even if by rights any computer named Winnowill ought to be a Windows box. But Winnowill sounds cooler as a computer name than either Venka or Teir, and I've got too many past associations with Rayek to use that as a computer name. ^_^

To those of you who are so inclined, a belated Happy Samhain! I hope your celebrations went well. And belated Happy Halloween as well. We had a fairly quiet one here at MurkNorth; only about ten trick-or-treaters showed up, total. But we did get some interested reactions to the Japanese candy that Dara was handing out--these tasty little chocolate-covered biscuits shaped like mushrooms and acorns. They come in small packages, and you can buy a big bag of said packages at Uwajimaya. Since we had so few trick-or-treaters, we have quite a bit of this candy left. Oh darn, whatever shall we do with it?

And good luck to everybody out there tackling Nanowrimo this year! I will not be doing it officially, though as with last year, I hope to achieve the personal goal of 25,000 words written. Some of these will have to go into the tail end of Queen of Souls, but hopefully the rest of them will go into one of the skiffy novels I'm working on, Child of Ocean, Child of Stars. I'll be posting periodic updates on that to my writing journal as well as to nanonov.

I am now in the Epilogue of Queen of Souls, which means the end is in sight and I should be putting out a call for beta readers on that thing real soon now. I am dubious that I will be able to finish it up this weekend, but we'll see how many braincells the Vicodin leaves me. I still need to send that inquiry postcard to Baen as well, and also review the state I left Lament in and see if there's further tightening up I need to do on its final chapters before I send some queries back out on it.

I have no brain to speak of this morning, thanks to the Vicodin, but have nevertheless been able to putter around and get some things done. I'm very thirsty, thanks to the anesthetic gas they had me breathing during the procedure; they'd warned me it'd leave me with a bit of a sore throat. But all in all, I'm feeling pretty good. And George has now jumped up on me twice demanding pets. Aww. Perhaps a good chunk of this afternoon will be devoted to petting the cats. ^_^

Miles since the 25th: 8.7
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2442.6
Miles out of Isengard: 649.6
Miles to Minas Tirith: 136.4