Just my little plug…vote for Jen in the Biggest Blog Whore category, and the fabulous Lee (Glitter for Brains) in the Best LGBT Blog category.

🙂

Vote Here

Leading to my blog, of course:

I was “Raped” by four men and it felt so good

I�ve never had an easy time meeting people, making new friends. I guess that�s why I have a habit of surrounding myself with people who do. Recently, I�ve been thinking in particular about both Rand and Jen, and of all the amazing people who are in my life because of them.

Of course, Jen and I were in college at the same time, and had a lot of friends in common, but there are a bunch of people who I never would have gotten to know because of her.

First, of course, her brother and his lovely wife.

And because of Tim, we got to know his best friend Paul, who spent many a day of his freshman year at Allegheny hanging out at our house my senior year. And through Paul, his lovely wife Trisha.

After I graduated, Jen became very close with Rachel and Stephanie, who I now feel lucky to count among my friends.

Rachel�s husband Brian was a friend of Jen�s ex.

It was also Jen�s friendships with Tracy and Susan that brought both of them closer into my life.

Not to mention all of the wonderful Buffalo bloggers!

And in just the past year and a half, Rand has brought so many amazing, talented people into my life. There�s Adam, his college friend and music partner (check out his Amazing Me program!). *be warned…lots of music and flashy things at his site*

And of course Debbie, along with Allison and Jodi.

Dave Huth, John, Thomas, Greg Klyma, Lady Turpentine, Celia, Joe and Carla, Michelle and Tony�not to mention his brothers�and I could go on and on and on�

Both of them have enriched my life musically as well.

Without Jen, I wouldn�t know Lowest of the Low, Great Big Sea or Carbon Leaf, easily three of my most favorite bands in the world.

Rand has brought me his own music, the music of his friends, and has also introduced me to many lesser-known but wonderfully talented artists like Jim Boggia, Jill Sobule, Einstein�s Sister and the Shins.

So the point of this post is just to say thank you to both of you. My life is better, richer and fuller for knowing you. I love you!

Finally. 🙂

I had a great time at GAFilk, and I’ve been very excited to post some of the highlights of the weekend.

There’s a pretty comprehensive entry on filk in Wikipedia, which should answer a lot of questions! And here are the highlights:

-GAFilk is the third convention I’ve attended with Rand, and it’s the first one I’ve attended with both Rand and Adam. I enjoyed having the chance to just “hang out” with Adam and get to know him better. There was, of course, lots of late night hotel room overtired silliness. 🙂 This also meant I got to see Rand and Adam play together again, which I always like. They did a bunch of old stuff, from Less Than Art, including Still Can’t Buy Me Love and Dollar Fifty Movies. These are always crowd pleasers.

-I got to spend some time with Mark Osier, who, sadly (for us!) is moving across the country to Seattle. It was fun to watch Mark’s face as Tony and Michelle, joined by Rand and Adam, performed Jonathan Coulton’s song SkullCrusher Mountain. It was priceless.

-I got to watch Adam react to Dan Glasser’s performance of his Demon Lullaby (Close Your Eyes). Apparently, Adam had never witnessed this before. The song, which is very clever and funny (if creepy), got second place in an OVFF songwriting competition in 2002. The theme of the contest–“For Our Children.” BWAH!

-Always a pleasure is seeing and hearing Michelle Dockrey perform her fabulous song Girl That’s Never Been. Do check out the lyrics, although it won’t give you the full experience. I get chills when she sings this.

-As a special treat for me, Debbie and Jodi, with the help of Michelle and Tony, put together a performance of Library Boy, which was written as a birthday present for Rand in 2002. I adored it, Rand blushed a little, and I really, really wish I had a recording of it online that I could point you to. 😉

-The banquet was great fun. Jodi and the rest of the band were fantastic!

(Debbie has much better photos from the banquet!)

-Watching Debbie watch people perform is one of my favorite experiences in the world. She radiates a joy and warmth that fills the entire room.

-Seeing Dandelion Wine (Dave and Tom) perform. These guys are incredible

-Can’t believe I forgot this, but Steve and Katy! I got to hear Steve perform Snitch-ball Wizard, from his rock-opera Harry. Hee!

-And finally, a general observation about filk circles. When you hear a song in a filk circle, it’s an entirely new and different experience. You can take a song that sounds fantastic when the performers do it alone and put it in the circle…and it takes on a life of it’s own. Someone adds a fiddle part. Someone else joins in on the bodhran. Maybe someone plays the flute or the pennywhistle. Six or eight or maybe even sixteen people add fantastic harmonies. Others pick up their guitars, figure out the chords, and play along. Suddenly, it’s more than a song; it’s a shared experience, an expression of community and friendship. And that is very, very cool.

🙂

Unfortunately, my full report is probably going to have to wait. 🙂

One of these days, I’m going to have to pay the money for the flickr pro account, but for now, you’ll just have to sort out which photos are which. There’s not *that* many of them.

I like this one:

And here’s one of Rand and Adam playing at the Dead Dog Sunday night. Anyone remember what they were playing?

And of course, you can see all my photos here:

my flickr page

There are some good ones…not fantastic, but decent. 🙂

Remember, it’s still Delurking week!

Oh, and I’ve got a new reading/writing blog. I’ll be posting there about some stuff I’ve been/currently am reading. It’s still in progress, but you can check it out here:

The Places I Go

And that’s about that for today…

🙂

and other randomments…

Jen tagged me with this “5 weird things about me” meme, so here I go. Go here for her answers.

1. I hate, hate, hate stepping in anything wet with my socks on…spilled water, the wet bath mat, tracked in snow…so I wear slippers pretty much all the time. (I refer to this as “stepping in wet.”)

2. Misused apostrophes, especially in public places such as signs at places of business or on menus, really drive me crazy.

3. I don’t have a good “porn star name” using either of the ways to devise your porn star name (first pet + first street you lived on, or first pet + mom’s maiden name). However, the second one gives me a great name for a Pink Lady. (Cookie Morelli)

4. I desperately want to be able to sing well. I can reasonably carry a tune when singing in a group or singing along with the radio, but otherwise, I completely freak out.

5. When I’m playing Scrabble, it’s very important to me that all the tiles go on the board the right way. If I’m playing with someone who puts letters upside down (we’re talking letters that are the same both ways, such as O) I MUST FIX THEM. I can’t stop myself.

Hmmm…let’s see…
annabel lee and Hilary, consider yourselves tagged!

I hear it’s Delurking week. So go ahead, de-lurk!

(in other words, leave me a comment!) 🙂

There will be more to come, like my report from GAFilk (with photos, hopefully!). Meantime, you can check out Debbie’s photos.
(Because Debbie is way cool, and took like a million photos…)

That’s Rand and me at the banquet.

Have a great day!

Logging in for a quick post from sunny Atlanta. (it’s not really all that warm, but it is sunny…)

🙂

I’m with Rand (and Adam) at GAFilk this weekend. The one thing I’m sorry about is that Jam (another of the TC editors) couldn’t make it. Maybe next time, Jam!

This morning, I attended a swing dance workshop…there’s a dinner and dance (with a live band) tonight, and we’ll get to show off our stuff there. 🙂 I also had my first Waffle House experience today.

Last night I bought a couple of books, and I may have found a genre I can get behind. The one I’m currently reading is Undead and Unwed, which is (get ready for it) Vampire ChickLit. No joke. And so far, it’s fun, hilarious and witty. The other one is Carpe Demon. One of the pull quotes on the cover:
“Shows you what would happen if Buffy got married and kept her past a secret.” Now, how could I pass that up? 🙂 Now, all I need is a clever idea of my own…

Here are some musings of mine, recently rejected for the My View column. (adapted to take a slightly more bloggy tone…)

As most of you know, I moved to Buffalo five years ago from a small town in Pennsylvania. For any newcomers, yes, you read that right. I moved to Buffalo. I can�t begin to tell you how many times I�ve had to explain to people from my hometown why I would move to Buffalo, and how many times I�ve had to explain to Buffalonians why I would want to stay here. I think, in any place, it�s easy to take for granted the good things you have. Yes, it snows here. Yes, the government is in disarray. Even so, there are plenty of good things that should be noted.

Whilel I was home over the holidays, I started thinking about all of the things I like about living in New York in general, and Buffalo in particular. Here are just a few of them.

First off, there�s No smoking in bars and restaurants. Each and every time I go back to Pennsylvania to visit, I find myself thankful that I live in a place where I can enjoy a meal, a drink, or a concert in a smoke-free environment. At Thanksgiving, my cousin wanted me to come out to one of the local watering holes. I politely declined, citing my advanced age of 31 as the reason, but truthfully, I�ve lost my patience for dealing with the smoky clothes, smoky hair, red, itchy eyes and inevitable asthma attack that would come from spending an evening in a bar. And that leads me to�

The ability to buy beer at the local grocery/corner store. My brother was trying to figure out where to buy a six-pack of beer, because in St. Marys, there are two places you can buy beer. You can go to the distributor and buy a case, or you can go into a bar and buy a six pack. (Or two, but no more than two. In some areas, there are designated �beer stores,� but in our little town, you�ve just got the state liquor stores and beer distributors.) Life is just so much easier when you can pick it up at the grocery store. And speaking of the grocery store�

Wegmans. Rand and I went out on Christmas Eve-Eve to pick up some things at the grocery store. St. Marys has two major grocery stores: BiLo (a Penn Traffic company), and the Wal-Mart Supercenter. We went to BiLo. I had been charged with the task of picking up several deli meats and cheeses for an appetizer my aunt wanted to make. To make a long story short, the person waiting on me didn�t know what a third of a pound was, the deli was out of sandwich pepperoni, and the whole experience was so painfully S-L-O-W that I wanted to scream. I had to buy potatoes in bags, because only �baking� potatoes can be purchased in bulk. We had thought about making an appetizer that would have required a French baguette, but there were none to be found. I thought about buying some brie. Again, none to be found. �I miss Wegmans,� I whined. I didn�t think it was possible to become so attached to a grocery store. And as long as we�re talking food�

Mighty Taco. Some people in this town don�t know how good they have it! Before I discovered the wonder that is the Mighty, I wouldn�t have dreamed of eating fast food Mexican. I don�t understand how that other place even stays open in WNY.

Small things? Maybe. But these small things go a long way toward making me feel at home here. 🙂

A poll, of sorts.

It’s been my experience that men are much more likely to be huge Seinfeld fans than women.

I didn’t watch Seinfeld at all when it was on, apart from catching the final episode. I had a grudge against it that I can’t really explain. I started to catch it a bit in syndication and admit that it was funny.

I will, however, still argue with anyone who tries to tell me that it’s better than Cheers. I *heart* Cheers.

Now, Rand has been buying Seinfeld on DVD, and I’ve been watching it a bit more. Again, I admit that it’s funny. It makes me laugh. But it’s still probably not something I would want to watch over and over and over again.

I’ve known plenty of women who feel the same way I do. But I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a man who doesn’t *love* Seinfeld.

So basically, there are three questions:

1. Where do you stand on Seinfeld?
2. Do you think there is a gender distinction, and if so, what do you think it’s about?
3. What’s your favorite sitcom? (current or past)

Well, apparently I’ve taken a vacation from everything this week… 🙂 Here’s a very, very quick catch-up post.

This Christmas was very good for my media collection. I got some great books that I wanted that will be a big help to me in the classroom. I also got some of my favorite TV shows on DVD (Lost, The West Wing, Scrubs…) and a few movies.

Oooh…and a big bag of chocolate covered ginger! Mmmm…

Tall Mocha was rejected by Woman’s World. So there’s something about it they just don’t like. Which is a bummer, because there really isn’t another market for it, and I really, really like it. Maybe there’s an online market somewhere… I’ve got another idea in the works, that I just scribbled down on a piece of paper, but I’m optimistic about it.

Last night, Jen and I went to the last (for a while, anyway) Lowest of the Low concert. In a bizarre twist of fate, we ended up standing right next to our friends from Thursday at the Square. I mean, what are the odds?

There is an acoustic revue show in Toronto soon, but I read in the Buffalo Current that the revue will also be in Buffalo in February (at the Karpeles Document Museum. No date or ticket info yet).

And that’s me. Rand and I are going to a party at his friend’s house tonight. Hope you all have a happy, happy New Year. See you in 2006!