Refuse to shop on Thanksgiving
Here's an idea for everyone - share this in your LJ, your FB, your Tumblr, your blog!

Don't shop on Thanksgiving. At all. Buy everything you need for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Don't attend any Black Friday sales until at least 6 a.m. on Friday. Let the retailers know that there is no reason to separate employees from their families on the Thanksgiving holiday.

If we can start pressuring the stores by popular - and popularly EXPRESSED - opinion, they might find it politically necessary to stop opening on Thanksgiving.

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Trivia
Many years ago, at Conchord, I believe it was, a fairly well-known author was in attendance. As a joke (don't know who started it), his name badge (and possibly others') was passed around, and many people had a turn wearing it. I know I did...but I don't remember who it was.

Anyone?

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For the Toronto crowd....
The amazing fiddler, Colin Grant, is playing in Toronto this Sunday 4-8pm @ Fionn MacCool's (21 St. Clair W.) with Sandy MacIntyre & Steeped in Tradition. It's a release party for his way-cool "solo" album Fun For The Whole Family (on which many of his relatives play).

Colin's from Nova Scotia, and played at Dublin Irish Festival with Pogey last year. I highly recommend going to hear him! His album's making me want to practice fiddle again. He's got a great mix of trad and more modern sounding pieces, and his fiddle playing is curvy, and smooth, with a skip to it that's just lovely. It's some of the more insidiously lively fiddle music I've heard.

Go! See! Enjoy!

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OVFF Programming - looking for suggestions
Hi! It's time to program for OVFF, and I'm looking for suggestions for some very specific items:

1) If we had juried one-shots, who would you like to have as the adjudicators?

2) What are your favorite workshops/what would you like to see as a workshop or panel discussion?

3)I'm looking for possibly one new/relatively unknown in filk person who would be ready to do a half-hour concert. No perks - no free membership, etc. Suggestions (from individual or 3rd party) with links to demo recordings welcome.

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So my brother wants to be on Survivor, god knows why....
One of my brother's dearest dreams has a chance of happening. He's listed on the Survivor website as a possible candidate. If you would like to help him to make it to the final 10, click this link and watch his video:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor/casting_call/video_player.php?vid=3078&playvid=yes

Ruthless, smug little bastard, isn't he?

Never the less, cross-posting of this link in your own journals would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

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All the cool kids were doing it....
MEW? Since you missed it in the hallway, this one is for you.

Note: "Variations" is a code word for "Oops, that's not what I meant to do...."

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Heart Walk thank-yous
Thank you to Alan Thiesen, Dave Weingart, Debbie Ohi, Grafton Swickard, Leslie Larkins, and anyone else from my friends list whom I might have missed, for donating to the AHA Heart Walk!

If you'd like to join this august company, they haven't yet closed the website to donations - I thought they were going to do that yesterday. Here's the link.

http://centralohheartwalk.kintera.org/marybertke


Yippee!

And now, Debbie Gates! Double yippee!

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Heart Walk fundraising
It's that time of year again - when I go fundraising in order to walk a very short distance (3 miles) in the cause of raising money to study/attempt to reduce heart disease. I'm participating in the American Heart Association's Heart Walk.

If you would like to help, contributions of $25 or more can be made with a credit card using the web page:

http://centralohheartwalk.kintera.org/marybertke

Contributions of less than $25 can be mailed to me at:

PO Box 21982
Columbus, OH 43221

Thanks!

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July 5 house filk
By the bye, Kathy Mar will be driving through Columbus for dinner on the evening of Sunday, July 5. She would love to see any filkers in the area. As a result, I'll be having a house filk at my place from 1 p.m. until whenever we leave for dinner. We'll be going to a diner - probably Starliner or its sister restaurant whose name I forget.

In list form:

Housefilk
Sunday, July 5 at 1 p.m. - dinner

Email me for address.

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Actual weekend sum-up
Friday:
- Go to Marcon
- Work Marcon
- Hit Dealer's room, art show, Bernstein Neely Sutton concert, attend party

Saturday:
- Get oil change
- Walk about ...2? 3? More? miles, starting and ending at the service station.
- Buy ingredients for guacamole, to use as my contribution to the pot luck
- Drive to Lake Logan, in the Hocking hills.
- Register for Mayapple Stomp
- Juggle some
- Teach 4-5 people to use poi
- Wash hands, make guacamole
- Have dinner, am one of the judges for the potluck competition
- Go kayaking, realize that I can in fact *not* get in a kayak or boat without seeing a blue heron
- Dance
- Play music for dance for 2 hours

Sunday:
- Breakfast, complete with showing someone how to create an Excel spreadsheet with filters
- Teach another person to use poi
- Kayak, see blue heron
- Drag kayak up the hill (with help halfway up - cell phones are a great invention)
- Go home, shower, return to Marcon
- Participate in Dead Dog
- Drag Amy to Irish session, almost convince Christo to go with us. Session is FAST!

Monday:
- Wake up. Roll over, go back to sleep.
- Throw chili stuff in a crock pot.
- Get to store in Cincinnati that has the size I want of a clearanced item. Yeay!
- Visit parents & dad's best friend from high school/college and his wife (Uncle Walt and Aunt Erna)
- Everyone gets worried about how long my sister Karen and Aunt Erna are out shopping - expected them back a couple hours before they return.
- Dad and Walt drive to store to search parking lot for car. I realize no one in the house but me has a %!@$@! cell phone, give dad mine in case K & E come back in the meantime.
- K & E come back in the meantime. They've been to two other malls, apparently looking for the right shade of ... lipstick? *shrug*
- Return home, have very small session at my place.
- Go for 2+ mile walk, see blue heron both outbound and inbound from walk. Maybe it's not just being on water...
- Decide I desperately need to chronicle this weekend in minute detail.
- Decide I am not so hooked on parallelism that I will go back and either have periods on every line or not have periods on every line. Yes, it bothers me. No, I'm not fixing it. So there.

Current Mood: tired

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Too much retail therapy
I've been buying waaaaay too much stuff lately.

CD.
Stuff from Beckett. (Well worth it.)
Shoes.
Headset.
Bugs. (Yes, you read that right. $40 worth. To be little buggy assassins.)
And now....a Lamy Studio Fine Point fountain pen.



Blaim it on Neil Gaiman. And my coworker T, who uses them. And blame it on the rain.

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Woo hoo! Beckett has an Etsy shop!
My friend, the amazingly fantastical artist Beckett Gladney, has finally set up an Etsy shop. She has just a few items to start with, but they range from prints to very pretty knitting markers. Go check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7160505

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Doctor Who realization
Queen Elizabeth I has to appear in one of the final three David Tennant Episodes, or the writers should be soundly flogged.

Re-watch the ending of The Shakespeare Code.

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Dear little thing...

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Post-Consonance Thank-Yous
Ah, yes. The thank you post I had intended to write about this time, two weeks ago....when I was instead trying my best to hack up a lung.

Now that coughing is almost entirely gone, and just a fair bit of *tired* remaining...(yes, I'm whining), I should finally say those very well-earned thank yous.

Thank you first and foremost (in my mind, anyway) to Paul and Beckett for hosting Erica and I for a week, playing chauffeur all over creation, feeding us, showing us cool stuff we didn't even know we would have been missing, providing excellent photographs of the occasions, teaching shading techniques (gee, wonder which of them did that? ;-), and just generally opening their hearts and their home to us, providing us with laughter, music, and lovely conversations.

Thank you to the boys for giving up your beds to us!

Thank you to the Navahos, wherever you may be. (New Mexico, somewhere, I presume.)

Thank you to Interfilk, for sending me to such an awesome con, and for selecting me as a guest in the first place.

Thank you to the concom for having us, for hosting the con at a hotel with a lovely pool and adequately-stocked exercise room, feeding us excellent Indian food, and for putting up with my antics throughout the weekend. ;-) (I wonder if anyone has a picture of me with the cup on my head? Or Naomi and I doing silly stuff with the percussion toys?)

Thank you most especially to Kristoph and Mud, and any other sound crew people. You were *awesome*. You provided way better sound than I ever enjoyed at an Irish festival (granted, those are outside and that's challenging, etc.). I never winced at feedback, I never had to worry if people could hear me. THANK YOU!

Thank you to Kristoph for playing some songs with me; it was especially a help on The Miner and the Queen of Fairyland - it kept me from panicking about remembering chords whilst doing complex lyrics.

Thanks to Mich and Marilisa for providing an actual *song* for all of us to do. It took my vague "wouldn't it be cool for all of us to do something together?" and made it actually *happen*. That was excellent! Great to play with you guys.

Thank you, finally, to all the folks who came to Consonance. I enjoyed playing for you!

Edit:

...I knew I forgot folks.

And thank you to Erica for being an excellent travel companion, and for the Christmas card.

And thank you to Brooke, for the excellent card she drew for me! (Which is what reminded me of the Christmas card, actually....)

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Barman baiting
How best to make a barman look at you with disgust:

Bring in your own (giant) mug, and ask for mugsfull of hot water to make tea throughout the evening.

Good session tonight. Still not over this ^$@%#$@ cough, though it's not as bad as it was.

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PSA
General announcement, since I met/got to know a lot of cool folks at Consonance:

Please do not associate my real name with my LJ userID. Use of one or the other is fine; please don't use them in conjunction. This makes it at least slightly less Google-able. Thanks!

(No, I haven't seen anyone do so, yet, but I know it's fairly common practice unless I let folks know that I'd rater it not happen.)

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Everybody's learning how
One of the many fun things I did whilst I was in California was learn to surf. Thank you, Beckett, for sending on the pictures!

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MS Access question
Got a question about combining records in MS Access. I can think of a convoluted way to solve this problem, but I'm hoping for a simpler solution.

Is there a way to combine multiple records into one?

If there are two rows for Name1, the first row has an X in column 2, the second row has an X in column 3. This difference makes them unique entries, incidentally.

What I want: A single row for Name1 with an X in column 2 and an X in column 3.

Is this possible?

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Why yes, I *am* having trouble sleeping... thoughts on listening to music
So, I made an interesting (to me) realization last night: I have little to no aural depth perception. I knew I tended to hear recorded or amplified music as a wall of sound, having trouble listening to the line of a single instrument. Even when I'm sitting amongst instruments, it's sometimes hard to hear just one.

Last night, for a brief moment, I was able to listen to a recording and track the guitar part. It was if the music sprang into 3-D. There was space between the melodic lines, a front and a back and I could move between the strands of melody.

I remembered hearing the NPR interview with the woman who spent most of her life without depth perception because of weak eye muscles. She finally developed depth perception by means of doing exercises to force her eyes to work in tandem.

I think the various musical exercises I've been doing have been forcing my ears to work in tandem.

Also, tonight whilst working on HBPhD.com that I could hear the difference in how the melody felt depending on the particular combination/order of notes I used, figuring out (maybe) what worked and what didn't.

Also tonight I was able to pick up a half-known tune (the wrong one, as it turns out) more quickly than expected. It would seem my musical education is making progress.

Kinda cool.

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