BeigeJournal

Plug and Pray (in Italian or English). Very Special.

I spent the weekend after Thanksgiving in Springfield, IL, at Chambanacon, having a wonderful time. The filk was lively, with a few more people, I think, than we’ve seen in recent years. Dave Alway shared quite a few poems and a few songs. The Suttons were entertaining, as always. We were treated to a wonderful display of musical talent (as well as Frank Hayes Disease) by Joe Haldeman. Juanita Coulson was present, as usual. Ernest (KB9SKI) played some great songs. (Mo is Om spelled backwards…although we who spent too much time in the electrical engineering department think mho is ohm spelled backwards, now known as the Siemens.) Milwaukee fandom was also well represented.

I experienced the joy of having a perfect follower, in my case Jabber-Whacky, a parody of Jabber-Wocky by Isabel Di Caprio using brand-names everywhere, which I’ve set to the tune of “Witch of the Westmoreland,” as a follower for a song about dreaming (or not) of ordering every single item advertised on late-night TV that Bill Sutton sang.

If you would like people to join in on an instrumental piece, Road To Listonvarna would be a superb choice. I think I had two guitars, a mandolin, a fiddle, and a drum joining my flute. I’m having to learn to play it more consistently, to avoid losing everyone.

I learned a useful lesson: Don’t sing Nobody’s Moggy Lands when Jan Di Masie is present. I had just gotten to the chorus when she took my filk book and removed the offending pages from the binder. I’m glad I don’t have memorized. I don’t want to find out what she does then. We had a cannibalism and death theme going, so I figured, why not road-kill cats? Now I know why not. Jan was giving out some excellent raspberry sake (all is forgiven) and brought along the always-entertaining Spot, the Ball Python. Both Jan and Spot are looking good. Spot was fairly energetic and spent some time crawling over me. I have no idea how he moves. He’s pushing somewhere and pulling somewhere else and sliding along elsewhere, and, well, somehow it all works. He knows what he’s doing.

The Cajun restaurant that formerly occupied the thirtieth floor of the Springfield Hilton is gone, replaced by an Italian restaurant with the somewhat cliche-sounding name Capisce?, which, annoyingly, has a piece of punctuation in the name. I guess we should just be glad it’s not CaPisce?DotCom or something. The food, however, was excellent. I had the canelloni alla nettuno and my traveling companion the canelloni tutti carni, two closely-related yet quite differently flavored dishes. Just superb. We thoroughly enjoyed the meal, as well as the view from the thirtieth floor, some hundred meters above street level. I highly recommend the place, if your budget allows it—our dinner for two totaled about $60.

I’ll post my stair-climbing times and measurements later. One can’t spend a weekend in a thirty story building without trying out the stairs, can one? (Stair article now up.)

I’ve just discovered that TV is much more hilarious than usual after a few glasses of Beaujolais Nouveau. Frankly, walking is more hilarious than usual, as well.