ApolloCon Report

[celticdragonfly]

O ApolloCon, how I loved thee! Karl had just had a weekend off for A-Kon while I stayed home with the kids, so this time it was his turn while I went down to the con with Miles. He got to drive, I got to knit, hah.

We headed off southward toward Houston, having fun, listening to filk, and chatting. Miles mentioned that he wanted to make a surprise stop, something he and Brandy had found once and liked. I remembered them talking about finding a speciality ethnic bakery once, and I was wondering if it was that. I saw a couple of billboards for a Czech bakery place, and I suspected that was it. I wasn't sure until he pulled into the exit lane. He'd hoped to surprise me. But the kolaches were very good.

The other stop I was wanting to make was at a yarn store - Twisted Yarns, down in Woodlands north of Houston and only a little north of the convention. We were making good time and thought we'd definitely make it there before they closed at 5. Then we hit construction and bad traffic. We were getting close, but it was looking like we wouldn't make it. Hey, I have the technology - I called them on the cellphone and asked were they going to leave right at 5? The lady said she'd stay. When I got there, the circle of knitters sitting there looked up happily, the storekeeper asked if I was the one from Fort Worth, and one of the knitters chirped "we got to stay late because of you!" in a happy voice. Nice store. They have Euroflax, which I've been wanting to try. In sport weight - I think the one big project I had in mind may need worsted, and they didn't have the color I wanted for that one anyway, but I got three skeins of the sport weight to try things out with. It's pretty rough feeling in the yarn, but they had samples that had been washed, and oh my, they're nice. I got purple, teal, and brown. They had a NICE sock yarn section, lots of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock yarn, tempting but not enough to buy. I was amused by the basket just inside - two types of custom dyed Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn - self-striping in the Texas A&M colors and in the University of Texas colors.


Darn it, usually I don’t cut for length on this, but this is just tooooo long, and I don’t want to cut it shorter. So…


So then we headed to the hotel. Checked in, found out my room was on the party floor, *directly* next to the con suite! - unpacked quickly and then went to get con badges. Started seeing people, and introducing Miles to them and such. We went to the opening ceremonies, and then the Friday night concert afterwards. I missed part of it from running over to look through the dealer's room - ended up buying a Browncoat t-shirt I wanted, and gave faxpaladin a button I’d made for him. I got to hear Peter Beagle sing some, he talked about and sang The Innkeeper's Song, talking about how he eventually wrote the book to find out what really happened in the song, and listed it as his favorite of his books. Eek, that's the one I forced myself to finish earlier this year and didn't like. I did really like Tamsin, though. Steve MacDonald sang and was funny and very good. At opening ceremonies I got to meet lolleeroberts, who's on my flist and I met her through faxpaladin, and her friend ziactrice. Got to see a lot of both of them through the weekend, and I enjoyed that very much. Nice people. I also got to drop off a copy of Karl’s Firefly card game, Keep Flying, to artcat81 for the Browncoats, as they’d requested it for play that weekend.

I can't remember just when, but we went upstairs and got into our food stash for dinner - the tuna salad and cracker kits, which we ate while visiting in the con suite next door. I got ice and had tea over that. That worked out well. And various con suite munchies.

Of course I ended up in the Friday evening open filk. That was fun. I'm trying to remember now what all I sang. I know I sang the song about the types of lovers from filksings, and I sang My Planet's Child, poorly. Lee Billings sang Overflowing CatBox Blues. faxpaladin and I sang Special Hell. Many other songs I’m not remembering. I know filk ended earlier than I wanted it to! Last song - I asked faxpaladin, as he was packing up, "time for the lullabye?" and I sang Heather Alexander's Close Your Eyes, once through, then on the second go round faxpaladin picked up the round, and then on the next go round Miles picked up the round behind him. That was really nice.

Miles and I ended up going into the media room and watching the end of Serenity - but it was being projected too dark, they had technical problems, and in mono so you could barely hear the music. We went up to the con suite for a while, then back to the room.

Next morning I decided to wear my new browncoat shirt. We went to the breakfast buffet, which was a bit disappointing, actually. Not as nice as the one at Conestoga had been. Oh well, it worked.

Then we checked out the Art Show. Mostly I wasn't much interested in anything I saw, until I got around to the last section, and found one of a purple dragonet with crayons graffiti-ing "Purple Rules" on the wall. I liked it! I wanted it, and considered putting down the quick-buy price, but dithered and decided to wait, and then we went across the hall to catch faxpaladin's concert.

(Side note - they had the filk in a room right in the main hall section, NOT off to some obscure corner or on another floor. Yay!)

After that I went back to the art show and found out someone'd made the minimum bid on the Purple Rules! pic. Darn. I went ahead and put what I'd have paid for quick buy down as a bid. We did some wandering in the dealer's room, and looking at shirts and such. I think we may have gone up to the con suite again for a while. Yeah, that's right, we did - and Miles got out the double Fluxx deck (standard plus the Family version) and we got a couple games of Fluxx going, one with faxpaladin and another guy, one with a 9 year old girl. That was fun. Miles won the first game, but the 2nd one we had to cut short so we could go to - (drumroll please)

Steve MacDonald's Filk GoH concert! Which was marvelous fun. He was dressed up in his Renfaire bard outfit - the flowy white shirt, laced leather doublet, leather bracer on his wrist (which hid a watch), amazing green crush velvet stretch tights (ooooh!), black boots. VERY very nice, especially as he's a big gorgeous guy with a nice beard and long silky hair. Yum. And as if that wasn't enough, he plays great guitar, sings wonderfully, is FUNNY and expressive and just generally a marvelous performer. I hadn't seen him since ConChord back in '93, and now he's moving away to Germany. Nice reason - he's getting married - but pity about the distance. It was a great concert. Tim and Mary Miller were trying to listen but not coming in because Iain was fussy a little - he assured them we didn't mind and he could sing over the kid. Ended up singing "Close Your Eyes" directly to Iain, and using Tim and Iain as props in the song about would someone buy his dragon. After his concert I bought a CD and his songbook and got them autographed.

We checked the art show - and found out that they were sending things to auction on only *2* bids, not 3 as at other cons I've gone to. So there we were, with the art auction at 5, directly across from Cedric and Edmonson's autograph sessions, and me having promised Karl to get Edmonson's autograph on the Firefly CD, and I wanted to get him Cedric's on the On The Drift CD too. So I wrote out my proxy for Miles, told him my bid cap (awfully low - I was afraid I wouldn't get it), and he went to the auction while I went off to the autograph table.

I waited in line for a bit, got to chat with people, saw tygerr in his maroon tux and tophat and chatted with him about that, then got to chat with both musicians and got the CDs signed. They had big bannery things, black with Serenity painted on the top of them, that they were having us all sign. I think Artcat did those for them, I saw her painting something like that when we'd stopped briefly by the Browncoat party room Friday night. That was fun.

So then I went and joined Miles in the room for the art auction. They hadn't gotten to my piece yet. I was nervous, and afraid I'd either end up overbidding what I thought I should keep as my limit, or losing the item. Miles suggested I leave it to him and go out of the room. Very sweet of him. So I left the auction to him and went off to watch part of Done the Impossible. He got it for me, apparently using his ability to look and sound Big And Menacing to the guy trying to overbid everything. Yay. So I got my precious Purple Rules!

(joyeuse13? You would LOVE this pic. But it’s MINE. Feel free to come visit it sometime…)

Got to chat with faxpaladin over dinner – he’d eaten a late lunch, but was willing to come along for conversation and just got an OJ. The restaurant wasn't that great, but conversation was. Oh, he's written a new Browncoat filk - I didn't get to hear it, but it's about someone working for Blue Sun and wanting to get out. I think Karl will like it. faxpaladin has an idea about a Firefly 'verse concept album and songbook that I think is pretty interesting.

We came back in time for the Big Show, although everybody had to wait around in the hall while they fixed technical problems. No big deal, such things happen. Sat with lolleeroberts, ziactrice, faxpaladin and Miles. The bellydancing show didn't do much for me, I just knit mostly. The masquerade was okay, got better as it went on - the last entry of the Three Bad Girls of Fantasy was great. Lots of Firefly-related entries, no great surprise there. The radio theater thing was okay - the one guy did a GREAT Peter Lorre-style Creepy Guy. They got back around to the winners in the masquerade, but by then I was really having pain from the hotel chairs, hip and knee, and needed to go upstairs and get pain meds. Miles and I were signed up for Werewolf at 10, so I promised to hurry back down and I slipped out and went up to get meds. I got my filk books together, went downstairs and put them in the filk room where we'd be going after Werewolf, then met Miles in the gaming room, with the group getting ready to start.


WEREWOLF GAME

Now I have to try to write about the AMAZING Werewolf experience. I only heard about this game after Karl went to BGGcon last fall. Here's a link about it http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html
(Ben and Patrick from http://www.seaborngames.com/ Seaborn Games were running things - Patrick was the moderator for the first 2 games, Ben for the 3rd. )

Karl had described it to me, and it sounded somewhat interesting. But on my own I might not have known about it, I don't generally look at the gaming stuff much at cons. Miles had noticed it and was interested, so I said sure, and we signed up for it at 10 pm. When I got down there, there was a round table with people all around it, and I wedged a chair in next to him. I thought I was the last one there, but a few more showed up so he had to redo directions a few times, and we ended up moving the table and just having a circle of chairs.

I'm not going to explain the directions here, go read the link if you're unfamiliar with it. We had maybe a dozen people, one seer/oracle, and 3 werewolves.

The first two games I was a villager, and I was frankly a bit unsure about the game - it felt hopeless and helpless and I didn't know what to do. The first game I was sitting next to Miles, and I suspected he was oracle - I coulda sworn I heard his breathing change when they called the oracle to wake. But very early on the others accused him of being a werewolf. I voted for him to live, but he was lynched, and not a werewolf. Near the end of the game, with the villagers doing badly, one guy begged for the oracle to reveal themselves - well, it turned out to be a false oracle, he and the begger were wolves. Villagers lost. Miles HAD been the oracle.

Second game, they had us move around, and I was across the circle from Miles. Miles got accused early on in that one, and I must abashedly admit I voted for him to lynch that time - he had that up-to-no-good gleam in his eye. I shoulda remembered that he usually does, he was a villager. The wolves got me partway through that game, and I dramatically threw myself to the floor in death. The villagers did win that one. And I had successfully identified one werewolf before dying.

After that game I suggested we should move from chairs to floor when we died, as it was too confusing elsewise.

Third game - third game made it all worthwhile. I got a Werewolf card. First identifying round, moderator called "werewolves, wake up", and I opened my eyes and lifted my head - to look directly into Miles' eyes, across the circle from me. We grinned. Shane, the guy next to him, was the 3rd werewolf. On our first night, we agreed quickly to kill the guy sitting directly to my left, and pointed at him together. We went back to "sleep", waited for the oracle's turn, heard the wake up call, and there was the moderator behind me, starting to talk about who had "died" that round, and I looked over my right shoulder at him, expecting him to pass by me and get the guy next to me - and he said I'd died.

WHAT? I was a werewolf! Couldn't be me. I had a moment of confused panic in my eyes (fortunately still turned to look at the moderator) and almost said just that - which would, of course, have ruined the game. I did the only thing I could - took that surge of adrenaline panic and turned it into acting. I threw myself on the floor saying "oh no, I'm DEAD!" just as I had in the previous round as a villager. The moderator suddenly realized what he'd done, and said "oh, no, something's wrong - everyone go back to sleep". I did "confused villager" and said "am I dead? am I dead?" and obediently went back to sleep. He called the werewolves to wake, and we all gave him a "WHAT was THAT?" look and pointed again at the correct guy. He woke everyone again, and declared him dead, while I kept on my "scared villager with a near-death experience" look.

The speculation began at once. The villager guy to the right of Miles was speculating that it must mean the werewolves were in the arc of the circle near me, because that meant they'd have a shallow pointing arc at me, much easier to get confused - after all, if it'd been across from me (oh, like Miles and the other werewolf...) it'd have been obvious! I acted scared at the thought that this meant I was SURROUNDED BY THEM! Patrick over to the right of me - the guy who'd been moderator the last two games - said no, he didn't think this was a pointing error - he suspected that I might have been the person the oracle had just pointed at, and the moderator got confused. (Of course, everyone was listening raptly to him, since he'd just BEEN moderator) The one thing we KNEW, he continued, was that I was a villager.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

We took 'em down, bit by bit. I thought I'd heard something during an oracle wakeup call, so I sent us to that side of the circle - found out later I'd had us eat the villager NEXT to the oracle. Oh well. The werewolf next to Miles got accused once, but we got him off unlynched. We continued the acting job down all the way - right to me and Miles both crying out variants of "oh NO" when we lynched that last villager that got us down to even numbers and the werewolves winning. We looked crushed.

Then the moderator said "would the werewolves please stand up." We stood and GRINNED. Miles said he was definitely catching some shocked looks. MY, that was fun.


SATURDAY NIGHT FILK

Then after that we went over to the Saturday night open filk circle. Oh my. Were I to try to truly do it justice, the report for it would likely be as long as what I've written so far. It was good. Steve MacDonald was in FINE form. So was Cedric. Lee Billings did Barrayaran Roses. I got to sing various things. I sang Least of My Kind (sigh, poorly), since I had werewolves on the mind! faxpaladin and I got to do Butterbug Blues. I sang "Admiral Miles" - and I coulda sworn I saw ziactrice singing along like she knew it. Has my song gotten around? Cool. I sang Prince Lir's song. I can't even remember what all we sang. The pretty lady from ConOps was coming over and hovering in the doorway to hear, then later found out she could open a door between the two rooms and sit there to listen. There was wonderful music all over. Another pretty lady came by and draped mardi-gras style beads on us, apparently she'd been at some type of a pride parade. Filking went on there until 3 am, at which point the singers were packing up, and faxpaladin did a last song with a chorus "One more short poem, one more for the road" and then they left. I stayed behind to help faxpaladin clean up, pack up all his filk books, and reset the chairs for the 10 am panel, then we walked to the front desk and told them they could lock up the room. I headed for the elevators and asked faxpaladin if he was going up, he said yes, and picked floor 4 - I asked if he was going to see if the room parties were still going, and he said yes, or check consuite. Well, when the elevator doors opened we could hear music from the consuite - Steve and Cedric were jamming. We went in there and pretty much got treated to a paired after hours concert, much of which got bawdy. I finally went to bed at 4:30. Boy am I glad that my room was next door to the consuite.

Sunday morning I slept in later, ended up zipping down and getting only a bit late to the Filk 101 panel with my Zone bar and Te Java in hand for breakfast. That went pretty well. I want to be up on the panel for one of those someday, looks like fun. It was faxpaladin, Steve MacDonald, Cedric, and a lady I don't know. I did plenty of chiming in, though, no surprise for anyone who knows me. Sounded like we got ziactrice hooked on filking, yay.

Next we went in to hear Kandy Jarvis and Lee Martindale doing filk concerts. I loved Lee Martindale’s werewolf song, especially after the game the night before – I gotta learn that one.

After that I decided I wanted to go to the panel on the Kilt in America, which left me thinking we really should get Karl into a Utilikilt. I like his calves! Funny stories. Funny lines. On the "what's under it" query, Steve Macdonald told a story about a renfaire partner drummer who used to say "Well, I'm man enough to stand still if you're woman enough to look", and Cedric told about answering an obnoxious man asking the question with "your wife's lipstick".

Afterwards we went up to the con suite and hung out and talked to people - Miles and I were trying to explain about "Cheese! And! Cake!" and the Healy mice thing to tygerr. artcat81 and some other Browncoats were there, and there was discussion about Keep Flying and about Sci-Fi Expo and Alan Tudyk coming - I think that'd be good for Karl to go to.

Then we finally headed out. Didn't get to find faxpaladin and tell him goodbye, sadly. Did see Todd and Sam and chatted with them briefly before heading out. We stopped and got more kolaches on the way, and then came back here to Saginaw to tell Karl all the stories of the weekend. He and the kids were very glad to see me.

Oh - last Christmas joyeuse13 gave me a wonderful dragonfly-fabric bag, that she thought might make a good con bag. I used it, and it DID. It was big enough to hold wallet, cellphone, sock-knitting bag, book, AND the big program book and schedule, with plenty of room in the interior pockets to tuck away comb, pens, and chocolates. I got compliments on it, too.

Also, I got a bunch of knitting done over the weekend. (After all, like the program book said, “Idle hands are Cthulu’s minions!”) I headed out with one sock just into the gusset - got that sock totally finished, the next sock started, and all the way to starting the heel flap. Haven't gotten more than a couple rows on it since, sigh. It's good that I was getting a lot done on it - that's a commissioned pair, my barter socks - they're going to be partial payment for the weekend of babysitting so that both Karl and I can go to FenCon together!

It was a lovely con, well worth going to, and I do hope to go to it again. Filk was well represented. I never did make it to the Saturday night room parties. Many thanks to the concom for all their hard work!