Upon getting out of the car we immediately ran into my not-brother Randy Hoffman
who I hadn't seen since Confluence in July. Randy helped Di, Jon and I carry the
bags up to the room while Liz and Meredith drove to their own hotel. We
checked into the hotel and met up with Mike Stein, one of our roommates
who had brought tremendous amounts of food, quite a bit of it mirroring
the food that we had brought.

Once we had gotten settled in the room I turned to Di and said "snip, snip!" which
is a running gag that we have based on the character of Henpecked Ho from Bridge
of Birds. Di has been offering to cut my hair for just about as long as I've been resisting
having it cut. My hair was practically knee-length at this point, as it
hadn't been cut for five years and was pretty long before that. Around this time,
Diana, our fifth roommate showed up and Mike fell asleep on the bed.

Di set to work on my hair. We set out plastic bags on the floor and I stood
facing Randy on the couch so that I had something to focus on besides the blank
wall. Then we hit upon the idea of video-taping the whole thing. "We could sell
it for Interfilk!" someone said. Jon, my wonderful boyfriend and faithful videographer
rolled tape as Di snipped, Mike snored, and Diana regaled us with the story
of her hair trauma and showed us how her bangs were finally growing out.

Pretty soon ten to twelve inches of hair were detached from my head in a neat
pony tail that we set aside to give to the society that makes wigs for children
with cancer. My hair still reaches well past my waist, but I don't sit on it
anymore, which was really the point of the exercise.

After my hair was trimmed to Di's satisfaction the bunch of us set out to
explore the con. Registration was closed, so we went over to the Marriott Hotel
which was attached to the convention center, and was serving as the party
and filking hotel.

In the lobby we encountered Meredith and Liz who were having a drink to work off
some of the stress of the drive up. The car had been safely ensconced in hotel
parking until such time as Liz could drive it out to Bala Cynwyd the next day.

Di, Jon and I went upstairs to the parties, where we quickly caught up with a
lot of people I hadn't seen in a while, including Amy Fass, Cris Shuldiner,
Elka Tova Menkes and Solomon Davidoff, and many others. People went by carrying
exotic food and drink. What stands out in my mind were the tiny chocolate
lobsters at the Boston party, which prompted a debate about whether the
chocolate lobsters were actually kosher, or just more kosher than regular
lobsters would be.

We also ran into Will Quale of Ilk at Cecelia Tan's Circlet Press party, but
somewhere between the Glasgow party and the Boston party we got separated
again.

Eventually we settled down in one party to hang out with people and chat. Slowly but
surely exhaustion set in, and despite my best efforts, I didn't get to the filk,
which was okay, as I had a concert the next day at 2:30.

As it turned out, my non-appearance in the filk room made Dave Weingart (our
very brave filk chair) somewhat nervous as to whether or not I was going to show
up for my concert. Sorry Dave!

In the morning, we decided to go and register first. So we struck out for the
convention center, where we were greeted by Shanti Fader, resplendent in a
gown I'd helped her hem the week before, and Di and I had a bad incident with a
nasty old man who tried to tell us how to manage our financial affairs.
Oh well, not every bit of Worldcon can be pleasant.

The credit card machines happily took my card, but balked at Di's. It turned
out that someone had stepped on the phone connection and unplugged it, which
gave Di and I time to chat with our fellow Canadian who was running the check
in line. Once we were checked through, I proceeded to check in as a
participant, and then we went to lunch.

Lunch was Kingdom of Vegetarians, which was only a few blocks from the convention
center. Quite a decent little restaurant, with very good food and generous
portions. We had the lunch special for three and the bill came to about $20.

And then it was time to get ready for my concert. Di and I had wanted to make
matching saris for ourselves to wear at the con, hers in red and mine in
green, but we'd been unable to find fabric. So I wore a green celtic
patterned giant scarf as a wrap-around dress and tied it in back.

We high-tailed it over to the convention center where Joe Haldeman was just
finishing his concert. I had just enough time to tune James, hug Dave Weingart
and Erica Neely, and then I was climbing the stairs to the windy stage.

The stage space at Worldcon was set up to share one wall of the ballroom with
the internet room, who made good neighbors, and one wall with something
internal and industrial that occasionally made horribly loud noises. The stage
was set up the the right of the door, and consisted of a not-terribly-sturdy
raised platform made up of interlocking blocks that sank at different levels
when someone walked on it. But the most unfortunately part of the set-up
as I was to discover during my concert was the way the air conditioning
blew directly down onto the performer. Ordinarily the breeze would have
been nice, but the recurring problem throughout was of music blowing away.

I gave a twenty minute set, starting with Invitation. Then I started to
play The Miller's Daughter and the first page blew away. I tried
to hold the sheet music to the stand with the stock of my guitar, but then
it was covering half the page, and away from the microphone besides. At
that point Randy saved me by rushing up onto stage and holding up my music
for the rest of the song, until Dan Glasser was able to produce magnets to
stick the music down to the metal stand.

I got through Beggar at the Feast, Clothing Time, and Many Huns,
One War without incident, but during Song for Arbonne
my music blew off the stand again. I closed with Sleep on the Ledge and
was grateful to get off the stage, which was starting to feel like a windy
promontory. Randy helped me carry things down, and Gary McGath, who had
introduced my concert got up to introduce Valerie Housden, who did an amazing
set, complete with opening and closing ditties about her trip across
the pond (Valerie is from Britain).

After an entertaining set Valerie stepped down and Daniel and Melissa Glasser
got up to play. I remember hearing When I Go, because they made a
comment that since the last time they'd played it in public two of their
friends had filked it. The other filk is by Larissa March and deals with
space flight. I had intended to do a space flight filk, but instead did a
short parody. More on Larissa's song later.

Dan and Melissa also sang Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love and Tanglewood
Tree by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar. They also sang Silver Wings
by Alex Bevan and Cat Faber's Wings of Human Knowledge which appears on
the new Echo's Children CD, A Dancing World, which also features Bob
and Sue Esty. Definitely worth picking up. Cat Faber was not able to
make it to Worldcon due to recent hernia surgery and the happier fact that
she has just been married. Callie Hills, our resident flute goddess also stayed
on the left coast, having just made an appearance at ConChord.

At this point I discovered something else about the Marriott filk space. It was
freezing. Jon and I went back to the room, and I put on something warmer. In
so doing I managed to miss three concerts that I had wanted to see. Mark Mandel's,
Jordin Kare's, and Barry Gold's. But avoiding hypothermia was a necessary
evil, and I went off in search of a cloak. I later learned that I had also
missed Lynn Gold's concert. I hope to catch them all again soon.

Around 6:30 I headed back to the convention center to find Liz who had had to dash
out of my concert with Meredith to dress for the Regency Ball (is it any
wonder that the lot of us have such trouble coordinating schedules with all our
hobbies?) I was tremendously happy to see so many of my friends at this concert.
I've never played this close to home before, and having Di, Liz and
Meredith in the audience made playing my first east coast concert less scary.

Then I was due to be on a panel about Anime. A bunch of my friends from the Columbia
Games Club showed up to good-naturedly heckle the panel, which proved to
be much larger than I had expected. Along with Colette Fozard, who is on the
Katsucon committee, and jan howard finder, also known as Wombat, who
was a relative Anime newbie, we answered questions on where to find anime,
what manga are, the whys and wherefores of tentacle porn, and which anime
we liked best. The discussion was lively, and a lot of fun.

Unfortunately the panel was smack up against shabbat services, and so I wasn't able
to attend. I then proceeded to miss the Retro Hugo Awards in favor of eating
dinner. I heard later that Farmer in the Sky had won for best novel and that
Robert Silverberg had been best fan writer. It's hard to imagine Robert
Silverberg as a fan, but to paraphrase a song that Ben Newman sang later in
the con "pros are just people who do what you do."

Dinner was quiet, uneventful, and tasty. Liz had brought schnitzel from somewhere
near her home in Jersey, and Mike brought wine from a local store and we
made a salad and opened the last box of Stella D'oro cookies from before they
changed over their machines to make only dairy cookies.

And then we went to the parties. Or intended to. Jon and Liz went off to the parties
and I was hijacked by some of the members of Ilk, a singing group from
Swarthmore College comprised of Ben Newman, Will Quale (pronounced Kwah-leh)
and Daniel Fairchild. Alyssa Latham also aided in my abduction.

We sang rounds for about an hour, and then my friend Lyra Madril showed up, as
did my ex-boyfriend David. After a brief struggle to split my attention three ways,
I wound up talking with Lyra and we slunk off down the hall to catch up on
things. I later discovered that I had essentially pulled a disappearing act on Jon
who upon returning from the parties went to the filk to look for me and was
told that I'd been at the round-singing, but that was the last time anyone
had seen me, as I spent several hours with Lyra. Eventually our friends
Meredith and Susan de Guardiola caught up to us, along with Donald, a filker
friend. The bunch of us sang bawdy filksongs until Jon showed up. Susan knows
a large quantity of lewd, lascivious, and downright promiscuous songs
but she often has to be prompted to sing. So if you're ever in a room with
Susan de Guardiola don't listen to her protests that she shouldn't be allowed to
sing on account of her voice. Just get her going on The Three Whores
or Bend Over Greek Sailor.

After a while we all felt more social and we went out to visit the bigger filk.
The room that had been the Revolutionary Filk was jammed full, and narrow,
so we beat a hasty retreat down the hall to where the Monster themed filk had
been. This was where I got to meet a bunch of neat people from the Midwest
that I'd only ever known on-line, people like Becca Allen (why did this woman
not have a concert?) Chaz, who was a friend of Becca's but whose last name
I wasn't able to catch did a song about a couple and their '52 Vincent that
I hope we got recorded on our rather flaky mini-disc recorder.

I'm planning to buy a better mini-disc soon. This one seems to flake out whenever
the battery isn't fully charged. I'm beginning to see why they discontinued
this model. Just FYI it's a Sharp 722, which has great features
but seems to be plagued by a particular bug which causes the driver not
to be able to read information written to the disc.

We hung out with Gwen Knighton, Dan and Melissa Glasser, and others in a very
nice, mellow filk sing. I got Gwen to sing Little Boy Blue for Meredith
who had really liked the lyrics. While she was playing, a few of us got up to
stand behind Gwen and harmonize. Lyra sketched us, and later showed me the
completed drawing.

My energy petered out at about 4:30, and we went to bed.

I forgot to mention that between having lunch on Friday and my concert, my
con badge disappeared. I suspect I might have dropped it when I was on my way
back in from the restaurant. After the concerts I attended I went looking for it
with Jon. We checked the restaurant, and the place where I had bought the badge.
The people behind the counter gave me the bad news that if I couldn't locate
my badge I'd have to pay full-fare again. $200 extra that I certainly didn't
have in my budget. Thankfully someone had found the badge and turned it in at
Operations. I hugged the lady at Ops who had fished my badge out of the box
and at her suggestion I posted a heart-felt thank-you to the unknown person
who took a few minutes out of their con to return my badge.

While I understand that Worldcons have had problems with gate-crashers using other
people's badges in the past, I can't really see charging full fare again to
someone who's already paid a membership. I guess until such time as we do have
bar-coded badges that can be canceled like hotel room keys we'll have to
put up with such an archaic system, but I'm awfully glad that an honest fan saved me
the time and money.

Saturday we got up at about noon, and ran off to catch the concert being given
by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, the co-editors of Rise Up Singing
a book which has been a definitive filk source for as long as it's been in print.
The two, who were much younger than I expected gave an hour-and-a-half long
sing-along concert which I thoroughly enjoyed.

During and after the concert we encouraged the Blood-Pattersons to come to the
filksing. I'm not sure if they ever did show up, as I arrived to the filking
rather late on Saturday for reasons I will relate later.

Then came my next panel, Filk: How to Find the Good Stuff, which I hosted with
Crystal Paul and Terence Chua. Terence had a congested throat, which later
caused him to cancel his concert, so Crystal and I carried most of the dialog
with Terence inputing commentary about finding filk in Singapore.

After the panel I ran back to the hotel to change out of the fifteenth century
dress I'd been wearing for the last 5 hours because it was giving me a neck
cramp. Then Jon and grabbed some food and hurried back to the main filking
area where Steve Macdonald was getting ready to record for theWorlDream.
I wound up standing next to Cacie Sears and Amy Fass, though Cacie had to
duck out and look for her father after the first run-through. But I saw that
she made it back in time to record, albeit from the other side of the room.

The recording was enlivened by Steve breaking a string during the instrumental
section of the third go-through on the recording. Thankfully, since bits will be
swapped in and out by the intrepid recording engineer, Scott "Kludge" Dorsey
this wasn't a problem. Steve commented that this was the first broken string
of the WorlDream tour. Probably a Steve record for not breaking a string on a specific song.

After the recording, I ran over the catch the last ten minutes of a concert/panel
featuring Peter Blood, Ellen Kushner, and Annie Patterson, about transformational
and religious music, which ended with a stirring rendition of By the Waters of Babylon
to the Don McLean setting.

Then I dashed back to catch most of the Pegasus concert set. Highlights included
hundreds of Nessie hand "puppets" rising out of the audience during the Creature
section of the concert, sometimes in chorus lines, The Three Weird Sisters in
matching pointy hats, and Leslie Fish unexpectedly coming up to do a "write-in"
song that I only half-caught because I was busy promising Dave that I would
feed Erica Neely some dinner and get her warm after sitting around in a
freezing concert hall in a leather costume.

Erica, Jon and I went back to our room and we feasted on fresh corn-on-the cob
that Mike had brought back from the Reading Terminal Market. We also introduced
Erica (who, it comes to light, has never been to New York) to the joys of
pastrami. I also learned that Erica is allergic to fish, and something
in the majority of commercial Chinese food, possibly MSG. We sat around and
chatted for a few hours, and then we headed down to the Marriott to catch
the Harold-Feld-hosted Gloom and Doom filk. Unfortunately, I encountered
some real-life gloom and doom and this point.

I parked my guitar and my wrap in one of the filk rooms, and went off to the
parties with Jon and had a terrific, long conversation with Lynn Gold at the
I-5 in '05 party where she was chopping fixings for tortillas with fresh tomatoes
and tomatillas from her mother's garden. We discussed scatter bands,
particularly Columbia's of which Lynn and I are both alumnae and talked
about Worldcon filking for the upcoming ConJose, where my friend Seanan
McGuire will be running filk.

Jon and I bid Lynn farewell at about 2 a.m. and went down to the lobby.

I was walking across the lobby, bent on returning to the filk, when I
encountered Abby Cinii in the company of Galana, her partner. I hadn't seen them
all con, so I came over to see where they'd been. Abby told me that they'd
arrived just that day and that her car had been totaled on the way over. The
story went that their tire went flat on the road, and while trying to get
over to the shoulder, they were hit from behind. The crumple zones of their
car had crumpled appropriately, but, while only somewhat shaken, they were
left without transportation back, and had only intended to day-trip.
After some extensive searching and a quest for coffee for Galana that sent Jon
to the con suite we secured crash space for them, with Josh Kronengold and
Lisa Padol, who graciously made room for them.

Finally, at about 4:30 a.m. I made it to the filk. My memory is fuzzy at this
point as to who was there, but I do remember belting out W*O*L*D with Steve
Macdonald sometime around 5:00 a.m. right before he had to catch a train to
his 7-mumble plane to Chicago. I remember a conversation with Crystal about
her parents finally coming wise to fact of her being a musician after 21 or
years and giving her her great-uncle's mandolin from the 30's or 40's. I
remember thinking the con was going by way too fast. I stepped out of the filk
to wave to Steve and wish him a safe journey and wound up on a lobby couch
with Sue Cochraine, talking with a man whose name I'm remembering as Ricky
about why there's so little compassion among strangers, but so much among fen.
At some point Ben Newman came out to tell me that he was going to play his
Rivendale Pie song. On the way back to the filk room, Ben told me
about how when he turns 33 he hopes to have a week-long reading of The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings cycle.

Soon afterwards I went to bed, after bidding everyone a fond good-night.

Sunday morning, well, afternoon actually, Jon and I ran out to see the Three
Weird Sisters concert. While we were buying orange juice on the way to the
concert I realized that the woman standing next to me was Connie Willis. I had
to fight down the urge to really fan-girl at her, and just let her buy her
milk containers and escape before I tried to drag her to the Three Weird
Sisters concert to hear their song based on her Doomsday Book.

The concert was wonderful. The hats were back. Teresa and Gwen wore green hats
while Brenda's was black and embroidered with flowers. Their set included
Little Boy Blue, Dumb, Dumb Dorothy, Pity Party, and
the song I almost manhandled Connie Willis over for, which was their closing
song. Gwen previewed this song for me when we were having sushi at
ConterPoint and I've wanted the album ever since. I just got my copy this
morning though, so I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.

Terence Chua had to cancel his concert, due to a sore throat and congestion,
though I did get to hear him in the open filk a few times, including his
song about The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore when the room was
in the middle of a comic books theme on Saturday night. Instead, Ellen
James, a harpist I know through friends in Boston played a set on two minutes
notice, in a lovely tie-dyed dress. Her harping was flawless, and her quiet
voice kept the room at a hushed, reverent level.

Next up were Bill and Gretchen Roper, who did a rollicking set, with songs about
the horrors of trying to organize a small dinner run at a con, making filk
songs about things around your home, and one about the dangers of ambient
music when one is married to a filker.

One shots followed the concert, and unfortunately didn't come out on our mini-disc.
Larissa March sang her When We Go, the parody that Dan and Melissa
had mentioned the day before at their concert. Joe Giacolo did a song with
what I can only think of as guitar juggling. I was fascinated watching him
alternately smack and strum the guitar, keeping perfectly in tempo and tune.

Dave Clement's concert featured lots of great hand-clapping, everybody joining-in,
singing. Dave was in fine form playing Kathy Mar's Drink Up the River
and Northwest Passage. Trying to remember all the great music I heard
over the weekend makes me understand why Will Quale takes such copious
notes about what he sees and hears.

Dave cracked up the audience by thanking the hotel staff for making him feel at
home on stage because it was cold enough up there for a Canadian.

Following Dave's concert, there were three more one-shots. Ian Hanley stood up
to tell the tale of Jaboss and the City Gate, about a much-too-clever man
who managed to madden the sultan. Harold Feld sang Leave Her Johnny to
close out the concert. We gave three cheers for Dave Weingart, and his proxies
and went off to dinner and the parties.

Jon and I ran into Meredith on the way to the art show, and went to look at
prints. There were some terribly impressive sculptures on display in the middle
of the art show. One of which dispensed tickets with the artist's name and
address, and the name of the exhibit, which featured carnival rides rendered
rather eerily in metal with odd denizens riding them.

We ran into Liz who was buying a print of two fire lizards operating an antique
sewing machine, titled "Dragon Singer". I only barely escaped with my life
when I commented that what the dragonettes were sewing would probably be
a "Dragon Thong". Meredith bought a picture called Winter Hazel, of a
horned boy with a star in his forehead, and large, deep eyes.

We returned to Kingdom of Vegetarians for dinner, after setting out for the
Cherry Street Kosher restaurant. As we were crossing the parking lot I heard
someone call my name and yell "Stop!" A bounding figure came out of the dark.
It was Dave Weingart, who related, along with the commentary of his lovely
and patient wife Ellen how the Cherry Street restaurant had made them wait,
and wait, and wait and messed up their order.

We went to Kingdom of Vegetarians instead and met up with Mike, quite accidentally
and had a lovely dinner for four. If you're ever in Philly drop by this
place, they make killer fried bananas.

We then headed back to the hotel to rendezvous with Di and Liz at the Douglas
Adams party, where we all acquired pan-galactic-gargle-blasters (some
alcoholic, some non) and again encountered Abby and Galana, who had been looking
for Mike and I to ascertain if crash space was still available in our room.
Arrangements were made and accommodations worked out, and we departed the
claustrophobic party hall.

The open filk was crowded by then, but I snagged a seat next to Becca and Alyssa
and managed to get a song in for Will Quale and Alyssa Latham who wanted to hear Sleep
on the Ledge before they went to bed, so they could get up early in the a.m.
for the Lois McMaster Bujold reading.

Becca played a particularly heartfelt rendition of a Jewel song, Bill Sutton
played a ditty about a spaceman with an unusual talent for pleasing women
and Gwen, and Brenda played a duet that started "To all the boys I've loved
before/I've left them gasping on the floor ..."

Leslie Fish came in at one point and did a new song to the tune of Cat Steven's
setting of Morning Has Broken about evolution, which had been requested
by Kathleen Sloan, who had gone to bed an hour earlier. I was the one who told
Leslie where the "Queen of Beads" had gone, and was rewarded with a
mission to find Kathleen to give her her copy, a story which I will relate later.

Di showed up to the filk later in the evening and dragged me back to the hotel.
Check out was at 11 a.m. and Jon wanted us to get at least 4 hours of sleep.

By some miracle, probably due to the efficiency of the bellboy the hotel sent us
all seven of us were out of the room, which was clean as a whistle, by 11,
and on our way to the convention center.

Jon, Di and I perused the dealers room, where I bought two books. A Janny Wurts
series collected in a trade paperback for $4, and a signed G R R Martin
collection for $15. I also bought the Three Weird Sisters Album, and finally
bought Her Fabulous Debut by Carla Ulbrich, who rumor has it will be
at OVFF.

Jon and I went to lunch at a local kosher restaurant, and I just had time to thrust
the copy of Leslie's hand-written filk-song into the startled hands of the
first filker I saw, with instructions to give it to Kathleen Sloan before
we were loaded into the car to drive back up through New Jersey, singing
Free to Be You and Me all the way back to Meredith's house.

Liz dropped Di, Jon and I at our apartment (Di is staying with us until she goes
back home to Toronto) and we bid her goodbye and safe journey.

I regretted having to miss the Dead Cheese Steak filk, and never getting to a panel
with G R R Martin, but God willing there will be other Worldcons, maybe
even next year, if things go well.

After all, I'm woefully behind Mike Stein's 10 worldcons, Lisa Padol's 8, and
Josh Kronengold's 5. I've got a lot to catch up on.

"When I grow up, I'm gonna be happy and do what I like to do, 
Like making noise and making faces and making friends like you. 
And when we grow up, do you think we'll see 
That I'm still like you and you're still like me? 
I might be pretty; you might grow tall. 
But we don't have to change at all."