billroper, posts by tag: spacetime - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

| | We had a good SpaceTime Theater rehearsal today. Many funny things happened, which is good, this being a comedy improv group. We have 1.5 new bits planned for the show, so it should be a lot of fun.Y'all should come to Capricon and see the show!Tags:capricon, cons, home, musings, spacetime The good news was that Katie sold a great many boxes of Girl Scout cookies. This meant that I spent a lot of time traveling up and down Wolf Road on Saturday, as I picked up the original cookie order and a restock.The bad news was that the Dodeka sales were not so good. We didn't manage to sell as much as we do at Confusion which is both smaller and in Michigan, where the economy is still more than a bit depressed. But we'll survive -- it's not like we make our living from this.The good news was that the SpaceTime Theater show went really well. Having all four of the girls participating was good for the energy level. And we got a lot of nice compliments on the girls' performances and the show overall.And I had a wonderful time in my concert with Amy on Friday.Folks seemed to have a good time at the con in general. I know of no major disasters, which is always a good thing. :)Tags:capricon, cons, home, musings, spacetime We did a subset SpaceTime Theater rehearsal today while Sam is recovering from his surgery. This gave us a chance to try out some things, some of which worked, others of which didn't.But that's why you rehearse improv. :)Tags:home, musings, spacetime We had a SpaceTime Theater rehearsal today for the reading at Windycon next weekend. It went pretty well and I think we've sorted out most of the sound effects, which is good. :)After the rehearsal, samwinolj and Jerry were good enough to help me unpack the remaining books into the library. The garage is nowhere near empty and yet much emptier. Then daisy_knotwise made superburger for dinner for the lot of us. Katie and Julie, not knowing what they are missing, had Lunchables instead. *sigh*I spent some time later in the evening beating up the old laptop to see if there is anything that can be done to make it run faster. The answer appears to be "not a lot", but I cleaned out such cruft as I could find.So that Julie could take a bath, I went down and lit the water heater (second time today; first was to do a load of dishes in the dishwasher). While she was doing that, I pulled out the P-touch label maker and carefully relabeled all of the many buttons on the X-Touch so that they corresponded to the Cubase usage of them. This makes it much easier to use.And then, before coming upstairs to go to bed, I lit the water heater again (third time today!) so that there will be hot water for showers in the morning. *sheesh*Just now, I've set up e-mail on my phone for work, because the company that was providing synchronization services for us appears to have abruptly gone out of business. So their software goes out and the stock Android experience goes back in. I managed to figure out how to do all of this despite a set of instructions from the company that seemed much better designed for some version of Android earlier than Marshmallow. But I'm developing some experience with these things... :)Tags:computers, filk, home, house, musings, spacetime, studio, stuff, tech, work Having made it safely back from OVFF, here are the lyrics for the song I wrote for this year's songwriting contest for which the topic was "Time After Time". (The over/under on the number of entries containing that phrase in their title was 3.5; we hit the under at 3.)**( Lyrics inside...Collapse )**Or, as I once said in a SpaceTime Theater bit, "Do you have any idea how much paperwork it takes to requisition a comet?"Tags:cons, filk, home, lyrics, musings, spacetime The weather forecast for tomorrow around here is relatively dire, so we decided that today would be a good day for our last SpaceTime Theater rehearsal for our upcoming Capricon show. It ended up being an evening rehearsal, since we had to coordinate all schedules, but that was ok, because we need to practice being funny after dinner.Earlier in the day, we went out and picked up a metric ton of groceries so that we'd have everything that we were short on stocked up and a nice brisket for dinner on Sunday.And this evening, I spent some time in the basement playing with some more trial plugins (I decided not to buy them after going over them with Gretchen) and then with a lovely piano track that quadrivium sent me for Juanita's recording of "The Admiral Graf Spee".Now, we just need to get Katie to go to bed... :)Tags:dodeka, filk, home, musings, spacetime, weather We've noticed that our washer has occasionally seemed to leak some water. daisy_knotwise has assumed this was a result of a too-heavy load backing up the drain hose, which was plausible.I went downstairs tonight to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer and discovered that we'd stopped at the beginning of the rinse cycle due to an unbalanced load. I also noticed that there seemed to be a small amount of water on the floor. Well, that didn't look promising, but it could have been from some previous load, so let's just adjust the load and let it finish.And then I headed off to the studio, where I did a remix on "Teaching Song" for The Grim Roper. This was the only progress that I made on the album over the weekend, because we had a SpaceTime Theater rehearsal and I spent much of the weekend proofreading the Harvest Season e-book so we can get it released for ISFiC Press (How many hyphens at the end of a line can be dropped? How many spaces can be left out? Stay tuned!). That took long enough that I could hear that the spin cycle was done, so back to the laundry room.Where there was a lot of water on the floor. I moved the two items that might take damage from the water before it dried out and then proceeded to investigate. The drain hose had not leaked, because there was no sign of water there. The intake hoses had not leaked. So pretty much the water had to be coming out the bottom of the washer, which certainly fit the pattern that I was seeing on the floor.Off to Google. There are a number of things that might have failed inside the washer, all of which were likely to be difficult for me to replace, all of which were likely to cost me a substantial amount of money if I called a repairman. And it's not like I have time to disassemble a washer, nor can we really go very long without one here. Yes, I suppose the laundromat is an alternative, but not a good one.And the current washer is 20 years old.I think it's time for the washer to go.I have located a washer from one of the local appliance stores online and have determined that it could be delivered Tuesday. I've also measured the doors to make sure that it will fit through them. (It will.)The only hold up at this point is that I was (in theory) able to qualify for a 10% discount on the purchase by signing Gretchen up for their e-mail list. (I'm already on it.) So she is signed up for the list and I am waiting for the e-mail to arrive either on her machine or in the Spam bucket.This is not catastrophic, because I can afford to pay for a new washer.It is, however, pretty annoying.*sigh*Tags:dodeka, filk, home, isfic press, musings, spacetime, tech I'm working on getting things accomplished today. We had a very productive rehearsal for the upcoming SpaceTime Theater show at Capricon. Yay!After dinner, I came back and went to work proofreading the eBook version of Harvest Season so we can get it released. I'm about halfway through, because this is requiring closer proofing than I'd hoped. All of the hard hyphens that occurred at the end of lines appear to have been removed in the conversion along with a number of spaces between sentences. I've also found two random insertions of a single character. And I've found a few typos that slipped through the initial proofreading for the print edition. I'm about halfway through and my eyeballs are bleeding.Vlad is working on updating the website so that we can turn the file loose on the world, so I will finish up the proofreading tomorrow and we'll get this rolling out.Whee!Tags:home, isfic press, musings, spacetime We all had a good time at Detcon 1. This was through no fault of the hotel, where as nearly as I can tell, they had hired the rejects from Arby's to man the front desk and handle housekeeping.When we got in on Thursday, after unloading to the Dealers' Room and parking the van, I immediately went to the front desk to check in at around 5 PM. I noted that I had four guests in the room and needed two beds and was told that they had me assigned to a room, but it hadn't yet been cleaned. They swiped my credit card, took my cellphone number, and told me that I'd get a call when the room was ready.Having heard nothing by the time the Dealers' Room closed at 8 PM, I headed back to the line. By 8:30 PM, I got to the front of the line with the same clerk who -- after much tapping at his computer -- announced that he had a king room for me."I have four people in this room.""We'll get you a rollaway.""I have four people in this room. Two adults and two children. And you told me at 5 PM that you had a double-double room for me that just needed to be cleaned.""I told you that I had a king room for you.""You did not!" (And he hadn't.)At this point, the manager interceded and I got my double-double, probably the one that the guests at the next station were trying to swap for a king room. Since there was a rate differential for "view rooms" and the clerk noted that I should "enjoy the view", I strongly suspect that they were trying to avoid actually giving view rooms that were available to people who had reserved double-double rooms at the standard rate.I could be wrong, of course.We dropped off our luggage in the room and went to the food court by a long and meandering path. Arriving, we grabbed dinner from Subway, which had the advantage of being open and not being Burger King. :) When I got back to the room, I noticed that there was no soap, so I headed down to the desk and waited in the shorter 11 PM line where I was supplied with the missing critical toiletry for a room with two little girls in it.I noticed when going to bed that there was no Do Not Disturb sign either and decided to chance it. This worked out for us, as they didn't seem to arrive to clean our room until after 4 PM, but not so well for the similarly situated filkertom and Leslie who were awakened at 8 AM by housekeeping.Housekeeping was scattershot about replacing things all weekend. On Saturday, they took the soap from the shower (I had gotten two bars from the desk and dedicated one to the shower as being much more satisfactory than the provided shower gel) and discarded it, while managing to not replace the towel that should have been left hanging in the shower. Ah, well. We still had two and the girls don't shower on a daily basis...Other than the hotel follies (which included a remarkable circular design that left me confounded periodically), the convention was a wonderful time. The programming was good, the SpaceTime Theater show went well, there was a shorter path to the food court that I discovered on my second trip there (along with a wonderfully pleasant staff at the coney dog vendor there), Angie was wonderfully helpful in running the Dealers' Room, and sales were good. And Katie and Julie loved the Children's Programming, which counts for a lot, and had fun playing with Mia.My only complaint about the filking was that the open filks started very late, usually at midnight. When you have to get up to open the table at 10 AM, this seems even later. :) I understand the desire to get as many filk program items, concerts, and theme circles scheduled as possible -- as in, I understand how this happens -- but it meant I could only manage an hour to an hour and a half before I had to head off to bed. (I had intended to show up on Thursday night, but I was just exhausted after the load in.)But it was a good time.Tags:cons, filk, home, musings, spacetime And here we are, home again. We're earlier than we might have been by the good offices of Angie and Sally and various helpful gofers who got us out the front door instead of the loading dock; later than we might have been due to nasty construction in northeast Indiana. But it was good to go and good to return home. More later.Tags:cons, filk, home, musings, spacetime The Dodeka part of the van is packed. The three boxes for ISFiC Press are packed.I have a running order for the SpaceTime Theater show on Friday afternoon, subject to corrections by the cast. :) I still need to print it out, along with the inventory list. And I need to update the inventory list and the copy on Square; then haul the bag of electronics downstairs so that they make it to the con.Eventually, daisy_knotwise and I will pack our own bags.And tomorrow morning, we will get up early and play dodge the Veep.Keep your fingers crossed for us!Tags:cons, filk, home, musings, spacetime This story is a bit old, dating back to February, but I haven't managed to tell it in the general confusion that is life around here, so now is as good a time as any.One of the commercials that ran during the Super Bowl here was for Jaguar, featuring a number of fine English actors noted for playing villains in recent films. The point was that if you wanted a classy villain, he'd have an English accent. If you wanted a classy car, you'd buy a Jaguar.Anyway, SpaceTime Theater did an all-improv show for Capricon this year. Since the convention's theme was time travel, we closed with a time travel "Make a B-Movie" where each of us is assigned common characters from that sort of film and we then construct the plot on the fly.I was the time-traveling terrorist. And before too long, I was talking to the saloon keeper at his bar, expounding on my plot."There's going to be a war, you know. Flames reaching up to the stratosphere. It's going to be splendid."All delivered in my best cheesy English accent, of course.Tags:home, musings, spacetime After weeks of rehearsal, the kindergarten through second grade students at Katie's school put on two performances of Go Fish, an undersea musical. Katie even had a line! (She had to share it with another student, because there were many more students who wanted lines than lines that actually existed, but that was ok.)Katie -- and the other students, from what I could see -- had a wonderful time.Now, Katie's going to start asking about going on stage with SpaceTime Theater again...Tags:home, kids, musings, school, spacetime And today was the last rehearsal for the SpaceTime Theater show at Capricon. We were minus Steve, because he was stuck in Kalamazoo tending to his bathroom renovation, but other than that, things went well, I think.Two weeks until show time! :)Tags:cons, home, musings, spacetime There are places in the house that never get cleaned up in the general confusion around prep for Cleaning Lady Day. One of them is the top of the stereo cabinet in the family room. It has a lovely glass and metal sculpture on top which has been eclipsed for years by a pile of DVDs of varying size.Today, daisy_knotwise and I cleaned it off. I then grabbed the Windex and removed a metric ton of dust from the sculpture.This is not a major accomplishment, but it sure does look pretty. :)Among the other things that I found were four poorly labeled VHS video tapes. Two of them were completely disposable (and have been disposed of): a recording of the pre-game show for the first episode of the second season of Heroes and a tape we used to record Frasier for later viewing.One of the other tapes turned out to be Christmas 1994 at Jeff and Carol's house.The other was a SpaceTime Theater show: The Case of Fantasy vs. Science Fiction, which we performed at ConClave some years before Katie and Julie were born.It is amazing how much better everything looks recorded in HD nowadays. Of course, HD adds at least ten pounds...Tags:home, musings, spacetime, stuff, tech We had a productive rehearsal this afternoon for the upcoming SpaceTime Theater show at WindyCon. Katie wanted to join in when she got back from the birthday party she was at, as she was fascinated with the "Switch" improv.Daddy's little ham(let).Tags:home, kids, musings, spacetime, windycon We got together with samwinolj, Bonnie, and Jerry today to watch the recording of last year's SpaceTime Theater show. (I almost said "tape", but the new video camera records directly onto an SD card in HD.) We've got tentative plans to remount the show again for Windycon in 2012, so it was good to review.This may be the earliest planning session we've ever had. :)Tags:home, musings, spacetime, windycon Previous 25 EntriesTop of Page | | 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