For Old Friends Who Just Met

I've had a few of these in recent months - getting a song, and getting at the same time the perfect gig for it. Harvest song for a harvest supper. Orchard song for an orchard.

Yesterday was another such; a new song, 'A Change of Heart', found its tune on Tuesday, and I gigged it yesterday. That's a pretty tight turnaround, for me, I usually perfer a bit more bedding in time. However, this was the song for the gig, because the audience yesterday was a group of green organisers gathered together by the Wiltshire Worldchangers in Devizes.

I've had successful gigs before, but oh my! It felt like I was setting the place on fire. And I only sang four songs - Jam Tomorrow, Wolf at your Door, Camel (the organiser's favourite, by special request, though I'd have sung it anyway) and A Change of Heart. It's a 'yes we can' green song, which I've been needing, and it was very good to me yesterday. The after-gig chatting was dynamite too... and I went by bus, putting my money where my mouth is!

* * *

After that I met some radio folk in the afternoon for a cuppa, and it seems I'll be doing a bit of a live session on local radio in a few weeks. That'll be fun - just a a couple of songs and a bit of chat.

* * *

And...I'm delighted to announce that I'm performing in Southampton, at the Art House Cafe, on Sunday 29th November from 1.30pm, one of their 'slow Sunday'  sessions. I've not been before, but I believe it's a rather special place - a community cafe with crafts and recycling and green stuff and skillswapping on the side. (The website certainly paints an inviting picture).

Anyway, I'll be there for the afternoon doing a big bunch of songs. If you're able to get there, I'd love to see you in the audience and we'll have a cuppa between sets. Please tell anyone else you think might like to be there!

On Twitter, I'm following a feed that tells me what new music books become available through amazon.com. The latest set of messages are about Hal Leonard Corporation publishing instructional books and CDs based on the music of Elvis Presley. I'm pretty sure I don't need Elvis for cello, violin, or tenor sax. I wonder how big that market could possibly be.

I'm rereading Inferno and Inferno, in parallel.

The Dante is in a dual-language edition, with the original and the translation on facing pages, but I'm giving only occasional glances to the Italian. Mandelbaum's blank-verse translation follows the original faithfully as far as I can tell.

Given the identity of the guide in the Niven/Pournelle treatment, I guess I'm still following the "fascism" thread.

Anyone know how to reach Shelby Vick? And what to do as far as letting Yahoo.com know that his e-mail account has been hacked? Someone's trying to run the Spanish Prisoner scam, claiming he's stranded in the UK without a phone and needs money. Which is absurd, because there's any number of Brits he'd contact if it were real...

Here's the text of what I received.

Hope you get this on time ? Sorry I didn't inform you about my trip UK for a program and am having some difficulties here because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were.. presently my passport and my things are been held down by the hotel management pending when i make payment.

I will like you to assist me with a loan of $1,500 Dollars to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home. I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with, I'll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return, let me know if you can be of any help? ASAP.
I don't have a phone where i can be reached.
please let me know immediately

Ok, if you don't then move along, nothing to see here.

If you do this, they win.

If you do this, we all lose.

I can't stop you from it, but I can tell you it will break my heart to see you leave.

I love you, and hope you will reconsider.

Amber

Dreadfully tedious work day today. You know it's a boring work day when your response to a wingnut caller of the repent-sinner-for-the-Apocalypse-is-nigh variety is to engage him in lively debate. I couldn't reasonably contradict his central thesis that I work for the Antichrist, but his assertion that said Antichrist that I work for is in fact George W. Bush is flawed, as he is no longer in power and was never my employer anyway. Revise your statements to include certain CEOs, and we'll talk.

Meanwhile, I have a pint of Häagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream. The Antichrist has nothing to do with it.

I've done a lot. Yep. That covers it.



It doesn't describe it very well does it? It does encompass everything from when I regained consciousness ~8:30 AM (got in at 12:30 AM and didn't get to sleep right away) to ~10:00 PM. That's when I finished the dishes and had most of today's acquisitions and disbursements and cookings dealt with.

I had forgotten how busy malls are. Ugh. At least I have a lot of breakfast fixings done for tomorrow.

Plea to my friends - Looking for older movies to add to my Neflix list. I like romantic comedies like most of the Aundrey Hepburn classics, silly fun like Gidget, movies like Gigi and Come September. I've got a large number of Gregory Peck, Rock Hudson and Cary Grant movies on my list, and a few Sandra Dee movies. I also love some of the older black and white movies you see on Turner Classics (though I don't have cable, so can't watch those), but definitely lean toward lighter-hearted moveis. I am not, however, a fan of slapstick comedies.

Any recommendations?

( Have fun storming the castle! )
And I lived happily ever after...at least until tomorrow. ^_^

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Well, I'm very curious how tired and achy I'll feel tomorrow. For now I actually feel fine.

I've been itching to try a fast 5km run, so that's what I did this morning. It really didn't feel like it was going well, my heart rate stayed fairly low, I was breathing very hard, and it didn't seem as fast as I'd hoped. In the end, though, my time (25:39) was just seconds longer than my personal best. On the one hand, I was aiming for a new personal best, on the other, essentially equalling my best time on a morning when things were just not going right isn't so bad. Also, I was pretty much totally wiped out when I set that best, today, not so much.

After a few hours and some food, I figured I'd go to the Pettit Center. I'm going to be running a half marathon there at the end of January, so I really ought to do some running on the track that encircles the ice. 11 laps is 4.95km, and 27:30 at a easy-feeling pace is not bad at all for me. I'll have to try some different clothing to find something just right for the temperature in there. The rubber running surface is nice even if it is a worn-looking, and just as skaters get to watch the runners, runners get to watch the skaters, so while it's endless loops around the oval there is at least something to see.

Then after a short break I went out on the 400 meter oval ice for a half hour. Now I remember why I like that so much. A long-track speed skating oval is, after all, meant for speed. It's huge, there is lots of space to go fast. Nothing like coming around one of the turns and seeing 100 meters of mostly clear ice ahead. I can never resist applying all available power. I mostly spent the time getting used to skating again after the summer away from it. A few hundred meters backwards (love having the space for easy backward skating), some slow skating, some bursts of speed, 500 meters at maximum effort, and general fun.

I've found that flipping pages in a song book and trying to play whatever chord progressions come up lets me get some guitar practice even when my creative energy is non-existent. In that mood, I came across Teen Angel. I've always been bothered by the song without thinking too much of why...and not just for its idiot plot.

( Far more analysis than the subject deserves )

Of course, the real point of this is that a song should be consistent about its setting and its references to people and things. The other point is that you can break those rules and still make a fortune in royalties. [sigh]

1. Spending the afternoon catching up on e-mail and correspondence. I have gotten behind. One more try, by the way, e-mail me if you want a copy of my "Teaching In The SCA" lesson plan. I made French Toast this morning, cleaned a bit, then took a nap. Made Alethea a late lunch, then came into the computer room. It's 51 chilly, wet and miserable degrees here in the North Country.

2. I got to cover an Americal Hockey League game last night (one step below the NHL, like Class AAA baseball). I covered the out-of-town team, Binghamton, against the Adirondack Phantoms. Binghamton won, 5-0. I had the story done in plenty of time and sent the summary almost exactly on my deadline (maybe one minute late) even though I had to come home, because I could not get a wireless signal at the civic center.

3. After the end of the football season resulted in a couple of free weekends, I am now looking at three straight busy weeks -- the Polar Plunge next weekend, travel to New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the holidays and Alethea's company Christmas party the first weekend of December. Then I get a weekend to myself. Yay!

4. I love headlines like "Outgoing autistic student EHS homecoming king."

From the Killeen Daily Herald.

5. To me, "challenging political correctness" can simply mean "going back to profiling."

PC doesn't kill people. people with guns kill people.

Just my opinion.

6. Oh, and to rant at a random LJ poster in a teaching community, "No, finding a kid having covered his notebook in swastikas is *not* the time to take it as a "teachable moment" and explain how it was once a sacred symbol.

His response, by the way: "Perhaps. My transactional style is heavily filtered through critical pedagogy. As a result, I'm unwilling to grant such power to German Socialists. It does too much violence to others who still use the swastica with great reverence."

7. Sometimes I am in awe of clothiers in the SCA:



Note: This is King Lars and Queen Mary from Northshield at Pennsic 37.

Trivia question for everyone but evilnicola: What Eastern award does Mary hold that few others on my friends list have?

Just bought my ticket to The Longest Night Ball.

Make sure you buy yours here. The website is now live and working beautifully and has all the information you need. If you purchase your ticket on-line, don't forget to put your name in the little drop down box that Paypal provides so you actually wind up on the guest list. Let's make this as easy on the organizers as we can!

Now comes the hard part...figuring out what to wear!!

I can't wait!!

Shabbat is being just what I needed. orawnzva made me dinner last night because I was still sore, and then we watched Totoro (which we decided could be summed up as "fuzzy Shinto movie!"). There was early morning Torah study, where we talked about Isaac, who is one of my favorite characters. Then we picked up the first half of the winter share from the farm and I am now resting, since that was about all the moving and socializing I was up for.

Should have posted this yesterday when people were actually yanno reading LJ and work and stuff. But ah well.

So, Phina, my "happy-go-lucky" gypsy. She started out as a bit of an in-joke, a bit of a Mary Sue in-joke. But see the book she's in came out and people are really wanting more Phina stories and I have this online presence, see, and built on my nickname Saraphina and really? Umm, it looks just too contrived.
So, I am pondering changing her name (because it is a little late to change mine).
She whole name is Delphine Nabokov. Because her immediate family are all named Greek things. (You'll recall Auntie Io from a piece posted earlier here and that you'll *fingers crossed* be seeing in print sometime soon!)
And she's named Delphine because the Delphi shrine was where the seeresses were- Sybil and the like. There is already a Cassandra (Phina's cousin who cameos in Matt's 1001 Insomniac Nights- coming soon [again]!). I suppose I could call her something like Apollonia (although cmpriest 's main character in Fathom is named that) or find another legendary Greek seeress.

So, I ask you, is it just too damn silly to have a Phina? The name suits her so perfectly well, but I get really tired of explaining that no, I wasn't really Mary-Sue-ing, I mean not really, it started out as a bit of an in-joke back when 20 people read my LJ and I never thought I'd actually ever publish A Year and a Day. It takes a bit of explaining and sometimes folks really don't believe me and I wonder if it damages my credibility.

What do y'all think?
And do you have any better name suggestions?
For your convenience, I present this here poll: