Holder of Places

Back from Seattle. More later...

Interest of Conflikt

Gonna try to wrap up Fri-Sat-Sun here. Wish me luck.

Friday work was busy, I got there a little early so I could leave a little early. End of the day plan achieved - started an over the weekend automation script.

It took an hour to drive to the Doubletree park & ride, 10 miles. Valet parking, so pretty easy. About 10 minutes wait for the airport shuttle. Totally forgot to ask if I got a discount for staying at a Doubletree in Seattle.

SJC TSA is now a mess. Used to be about 5 minutes, but with the big new terminal it was half an hour, and all the lines were served by only 2 check-in people. The stupid hurts. Clear, families, crew, singles all dump into the same two lines.

I had given myself plenty o time, and spent most of it people watching.

Totally full plane, I had an aisle seat, which worked okay because the attendants were average size so my shoulders didn't get bumped much. And the two  folks in my row were smaller than average. Mostly smooth flight, I started a new Kindle book, Ghost In The Machine (Corwint Central Agent Files Book 1)
by C.E. Kilgore. It's entertaining, inventive and kind of like a Sci-fi romance novel.

Landed in SEA at 9:05, too late to catch quadrivium's concert, and couldn't find the con suite for the release party because of the Doubletree's stupid room numbering system. I was in 2316, on the 3rd floor of wing 2, con suite was 1370 (listed in all the things as 1360) but there was no wing 1. :-(

Hungry, but there was nothing but bar bites in the hotel so I trekked across the street in 36° cold to Denny's. Hash whites I think gave me the runs. Or it could have been the melted ice cream.

Back to the hotel, and bed. Could not sleep - bed felt like a padded rock. Finally dozed off at about 3:30.

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Saturday morning, up at 9, downstairs just in time for 11 am two-fers. There were two slots open, I wanted to perform but was seriously sleep deprived and totally unprepared. I forgot to load lyrics onto my tablet and couldn't get a network connection.

Big gripe - all weekend I couldn't get a network connection. I'm a Hilton Honors member, and was given access but their network was a not-work. :-(

Enjoyed the twofers, and became an instant fan of Becca, I think her last name is Fink, but I can't find her by that name on social media. I did get a chance to tell her how much I enjoyed her singing. I also enjoyed just seeing her. Something very magnetic about her.


lemmozine did two songs which were full of names. He does patter real well, I can't hear as fast as he can sing. The second one was about musicians named "Blind".


Hidden behind stands and mikes. The sound crew did their usual sloppy job. Which was the height of irony, because Interfilk, for some unknown reason, chose a sound guy as their GoH, but he wasn't running the sound board.

Judi Miller was GoH, and she was her usual amazingness. Vixy & Tony were toast, and I did not recognize either of them. The years have made them unrecognizable until they sing.

I really wanted to have dinner with my sister, but the con folk didn't release a schedule until it was too late to plan. So I trudged by myself to 13 coins. The good news is I got to sit at the counter in one of their wonderful enfolding chairs, the bad news is the food sucked. Prime rib medium was hardly cooked at all, and was served luke warm. The mashed potatoes were coagulating as I watched. They tasted good, though. The "veggies" was a single Xmas-tree sized piece of broccoli. Yuk! The dessert was alleged rum cake a la mode, but the cake was just a plain sponge cake with only a slight drizzle of rum flavored syrup, and the ice cream was on the side.

Back to the con, Jeff & Maya kept rotating musicians in and out, and Judi was brilliant signing. Loved Judi's GoH concert, where she played banjo & guitar and sang, and then invited special guest filkers to sign for.

Let's see if I can embed a video of Judi signing for Jeff & Maya's classic "DOS" song.

https://www.facebook.com/how3ird/videos/10155059798072566/

Facebook post

Since my time was limited, I sat in on open filk till midnight and was rewarded with another song by Becca, about her pirate corgi, Rowan.

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Sunday once again up too late for breakfast, especially with a lunch ticket in my pocket. I spent some time in the con suite, which was on the 13th floor of the tower, but there wasn't anything to eat except some unidentifiable globs labeled "gluten free". I had stopped in before dinner the night before too, but Jeffrey was still setting up, and it looked like a train wreck buffet in the making. Lovely looking food in slow cookers, but against the corner of the room, no exit. Frankly, I'm not thrilled with the all-healthy full meal con suite offerings. I'd rather be able to just grab a snack. But I appreciate the effort that went into what was there.

Speaking of disappointed, the lunch fare was just plain rude. It was a buffet, which meant walking to the other side of the room from the window seats, and it was just plain salad, torellini salad, and a variety of small sandwhich-like objects. Ivar's clam chowder was great, and the slab of tiramisu was nice except it was impossible to pick up with the tweezers provided. Our table ran out of water quickly, refills didn't happen for ages. Coffee was the only other drink.

Being surrounded by the Legends of Filk made up for a lot of that. Judi on my right, Lem on my left, for starters. Good to see Bret Glass and his wife from the frozen northlands, Kathy Mar looked excellent, and so on. The view at 12:30 or Mt. Rainier was spectacular, but evanescent. By 1:30 it was just clouds as rain came into town.

There were protests at the airport Saturday afternoon, so I planned on bailing early to account for more of that. I did see Char's concert, which was fun. Missed the band scramble, which I very much wanted to see.

Got the shuttle to the airport at about 3:30. I could have walked faster - the traffic route from across the street seemed to go around the airport 3 times before letting us off downstairs across the street from the terminal. SeaTac was designed for maximum inconvenience.

TSA was pretty straightforward, though. Once through I wanted to have a meal, but finally just got a mocha and croissant at Starbucks. Read more from the Kindle app. The boarding area only had about 6 seats. There is a nearby block of seats for the combined gates, but they didn't pipe the announcements into it. Not cool.

Eye candy was all over, but there was a woman who was on the shuttle from the hotel whom I first saw in the lobby. Tall, athletic, wearing a form-fitting pair of ski pants and a half jacket which showed off her figure. She showed up just ahead of me in the TSA line, and then each time I looked for a place to eat or sit she seemed to already be there. And she was on my flight. But not on my shuttle back to the park-n-ride.

All aboard, once again an aisle seat with smaller people in the row, but the flight attendents all were as wide as the aisle, so I was bumped a lot. The two men in my row told each other their life stories, and ignored me. Good. A chiropratic student and an itinerant Italian. They made me laugh, telling each other how there's no good Japanese food in San Jose and the best seafood in Seattle is the fish sandwiches at the "Pine market".

Smooth flight except the landing was 3 bounces. Come to think of it, SeaTac was 2 bounces. Alaska is flying new planes, they need more touch & go practice.

Took a while for the hotel shuttle. San Jose has the hotel shuttle stop all the way past the end of the bus & Uber/Lyft stations. Not cool.

Valet found my car quickly, and I was home by 10.

Conflikt photos are here and here.