sad news

Sue Kangas (Clark) - of "Sue and Kevin" at cons, the Naughty Nighty and the Guilty Pleasures parties at conventions, Crow's Nest Beer Wench and long-time supporter of ren-faire musicians - died over the weekend. She had been in poor health for some time, and died while waiting for a lung transplant.

randomness from opening weekend of MiRF

Otherwise known as 'Dress Rehearsal'

• There are 6 turns between Chicago and Flint. We managed to miss 3 of them. Who the hell leaves on a 6-hour road-trip without looking at a MAP first!?! (Boys...)


• The Motel 6 in Flint is actually just fine. Our non-smoking room smelled faintly of smoke and we found an empty pack of Newports on the floor, but since all we really want are clean sheets, hot running water, and towels, it's perfectly acceptable.


• The faire office managed to lose our passes from last year. At first everyone was like "well, did you turn them in last year?". As I suspected, because we were not there closing weekend, when we turned them in, someone put them "someplace special so that they would know where they were". They were eventually located in the back of someone's drawer.


• We have the morning dance, 4 stage shows, Queen's Tea, and Pub Sing. Because of this we were able to only have to do one set with the peasant dancers - because 9 sets is a bit much!


• The 4 sets are all at the Little Guinness Pub - Proud to be the Last Un-Amped music stage on site!


• Queen's Tea has yet to actually run according to "plan", but as pretty much everyone involved is experienced and good at improv that isn't really a problem.


• It was wonderful to see gretchen2149! (Finally) We met online in the old days of Wench Chat, and have kept in touch since. She was visiting relatives in South Bend, and dragged them up to MiRF, in part to see us! It was rather funny "OK - someone is coming to see us. But I have no idea what she looks like!"


• She is also the source of my favorite quote of the weekend. "Wow - you're TALLER than I thought you'd be!". I've NEVER been told that!


• As usual, we were virtually the only act on-time to Pub Sing, so we opened. Bob Ford and the Ragamuffins were also there on time, so they went twice - we went three times. Plus Caleb and Kevin (who were already there) that was pretty much it. I am constantly boggled by the fact that musicians don't show up to the Pub Sing - yeah it's a loud space and there are a lot of people who talk through the show, but you know what - this is your JOB and you're supposed to act like professionals.


• I begged Vince Conaway to show up to help fill time, so in return he set me up to play bodhran with him on a number that I didn't know goes up to light speed. I ended up throwing my bodhran and tipper up in the air and conceding - much to the amusement of the audience. And I'm OK with that - audience liked it, and I didn't have to sing AGAIN. I freely admit I have no pride when it comes to getting a laugh.


• Happily, our best show was the one I noticed the ED watching from behind a tree. A decent-sized crowd all paying rapt attention. Yay us!


• The cheese breadsticks used to be a great value - they were filled with cheese and came with dipping sauce. Now they just have cheese on top, and so it's basically bread - for $4. I has a sad. And now I am on a quest for reasonably-priced not-fried food for lunches.


• I love when the bar volunteers are from choirs or other musical groups. They are polite during the sets and appreciate the music. As opposed to the baseball players, who chat on their cellphones all day and refuse to stop yelling at passersby while we are playing.


• I did my good turn for the week - there were a couple of new music groups, and of course no one had actually taken time to brief them on things like where to get water, or a backstage privy, or the office, or the parade line-up site. So I ran a couple of quick tours for people. It's paying it forward - we spent 2 weeks at KCRF our first season hiking all the way from the tea garden to the beer garden stage for water because no one told us there was a break area about 50 feet from our stage!


• It's weird being half-cast and half-stage show. I went to the fight director on Saturday and said "All right - 'Scenario For Dummies'. What do we need to know". Which was a good thing, because apparently the entire village has a severe case of the stupids because we're not supposed to know that that is macaodghain in that mask (despite him being a full head taller than everyone else, AND despite his forgetting to take off his Order of the Garter when he changed on Saturday...).


• I'm tired this morning but not too badly - mostly in a fatigue-fog. Some rest, laundry, a decent meal, and actually getting the )&($(%)*&(*#( CLOSING scheduled today would help.

*flails*

my closing is falling apart
i have no idea what this means
my lawyer told me to call her but i got her vm and she's not called me back

a little more info

the seller can't make the closing deadline in the contract of Wednesday. Therefore they have to ask us for an extension. They've not done that yet.

So I'll cancel all my reservations in the morning, and call my landlord to see if holding over a few weeks could be worked out. So I should have more info my wednesday I guess.

*flails more*

it gets "better"

I get home and the "new" security system is in, so I try the key they gave me in my mailbox last week.

It doesn't work.

I call the super - he's not around so he tells me to call Irina (a sort of management-assistant-tenant). While I am about to another tenant walks up. His key doesn't work either. We commisserate about the fact that we both can't wait to be out of this electrical firetrap while we wait for irina, a 3rd tenant comes up. You guessed it - her key doesn't work either.

Then irina gets there and HER keys don't work. Luckily tenant #3 knows her kids are still at home, so she calls them and one of them comes down to open the door for us. When I came in, irina was taping the door open and calling someone about it.

I WAS planning on doing laundry, under the theory that I woudl feel better if SOMETHING I was responsible for actually got accomplished! But at this point I'm pretty decided on some light packing, a dinner of leftovers, a nice cool bath and an early bed - that's aboujt all I'm capable of right now....