Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Builder installing Red Oak floor in basement addition

My GAFilk Trip
Wednesday night John F. came over to ride shotgun on our trip down to Atlanta. This is a two-day trip (a 13-14 hour drive, including rest-stops), following a westerly route (... I-69 ... I-65, I-24, I-75...). We did it last year for the first time. At 9amThursday we set off, and once past the northern Indiana ice storm, had reasonably decent, though rainy travelling weather to White House, Tennessee. (Alas, the wet weather scared away telynor's fairies. :-( ) We left early the next (Friday) morning and found Nashville in a pouring driving rain that could have sunk the Mary Ellen Carter. Fortunately it let up halfway to Chattanooga, and we had decent weather to Atlanta. We arrived at the GAFilk hotel just at noon ...

Folks chatted in the function room foyer while waiting for the badges and registration materials to arrive. I made some Duchy of Filkhaven badges personalized with names of folks I expected to see at GAFilk. (As it turned out, I missed a few, such as mnemex (mneme on Filkhaven)* and filkferret, but I'm afraid perfection isn't me. I will make badges for them when I recover from the return trip, I promise!) I passed these out to folks as they arrived. andpuff, GAFilk's Super Secret Guest, seemed to be especially taken by hers, as did quadrivium, weirdsister, ladyat, Teri W. and Kathleen S. and particularly catsittingstill (who I hope reads her LJ, if not posts to it hint!). I was afraid that Cat had fallen off the face of the earth, but here she was at GAFilk.

As the afternoon progressed, I set up my little display across from the registration desk, so ably staffed by Myra and friends throughout the weekend. I met up with pocketnaomi (who, sadly, was without the Presence of Her Grace, the Wogglebug Duchess). Naomi helped tend with the buttons for awhile, and thinking on't, I should have offered her the opportunity to tend the buttons a little more — it was a wonderful conversation starter, and people seemed to enjoy them. For the non-personalized buttons I asked a $2 donation to Interfilk per button — which helped a good cause and set a value to my little whimsies.

Before I knew it, it was time for Opening Ceremonies. bedlamhouse led, as usual, in the singing Robt. Burns' "For Auld Lang Syne" — and I got tagged to be on a team for "My Filk." Whew! That was hard work — and it didn't help that my mind went completely blank. It was terribly embarrassing. The three of us on Team A counted ourselves lucky to be behind only by a margin of 2:1 after the question rounds ... and we did come up with a nice little parody of "I'm a Little Teapot" which we did manage to sing in rounds (sort of). But when faced with a Team 2 with catsittingstill on it, we were obviously in a hopeless position. It was great fun, though.

Saturday was the big day: As many have noted, the numbers of folks were down from last year. I did miss you all who couldn't make it; but we had fun. Things went quite smoothly — well, one or two things had to be worked around, like a blown equalizer and problems with quadrivium's keyboard. Be that as it may, I spent most of the afternoon behind the buttons, which went steadily throughout. Wisely, the speaker feeds to the foyer and dealer's room allowed us to enjoy the afternoon's line-up in the 2x10's. That evening the dance band was wonderful, with its beautiful women and handsome men; and if pocketnaomi can forgive me, I must explain that I am constitutionally unable to dance.

There were many highlights from my point of view. The kind, sympathetic, and sweet quadrivium listened to the karaoke-robot-jazz-quintet CD version of "Dandelion Conspiracy" while I was scrawling down the playlists for the copies I'd made. I gave her a copy of the CD, and she inquired about peteralway, who has to miss GAFilk because of his teaching commitments. (I gave Mary my only copy of Virtual Dulcimer, Pete, so you'll have to restock me.)

By a thin margin, I think the best highlight was late Sunday afternoon. While I recited H. H. Knibb's "Out There, Somewhere" to andpuff (Canadian content!), I hear the call of an Irish tune on pennywhistle. ohiblather tried to hide it; but it was her, and I had to nearly twist her arm off to get her to play again — what she said — was her one tune. Ah, the power of the wafting Irish music — I now understand fully the origins of legends evoked by such works as cflute's and catsittingstill's "Wedding Dance". Then bedlamhouse came over and played his "Bump the Harper" (which indeed sounds a great deal different than the written notation, as he was demonstrating). It all ended up with me owing a button to the Irish whistle player, Deborah O'Hi, which I hope to redeem at FKO.

By closing ceremonies, button donations had reached more than US$80. A pittance compared to the sum fetched by the Interfilk auction and quilt; but quite a bit more than I expected. It was very gratifying.

The dead-dog was wonderful. I was able to repay ladyat and bedlamhouse for their efforts, by reciting the two poems they most enjoyed. If I knew what it was that they like about them, I'd certainly try to repeat it; but I have a sneaking suspicion that the batch of elixir "Quad Drill" and "Madison's Mourning" came from cannot be remade.

Even though we turned in a little after 11pm Sunday night, we didn't get on the road until about 10:30am on Monday. But the road was good and dry, and with the threat of snow/rain/sleet mix here in Michigan on Tuesday, we pushed on, making it safely to my home here at nearly midnight. John is now on his way home to Lansing.