I survived! 😉

Friday morning, I headed off to Pittsburgh with Rand and the rest of Ookla for their Friday evening gig at Confluence. It was a rainy and otherwise uneventful trip down 90 and 79.

I forgot the camera, so I have no photos from this event. Boo.

Programming for the convention started at 4. The band wanted to set up and get a sound check in before this time. By the time all confusion was sorted out, they were coming in under the wire. The people who began filing in for the 4 pm session on writing your first novel were very confused.

I sat in on this session, which featured three SF/Fantasy authors with whom I was unfamiliar: Django Wexler, Stephen C. Fisher and Wen Spencer. It was interesting, but didn’t really provide me with any information I didn’t already have.

Shortly after, we had dinner at the hotel with supercool musician Jonathan Coulton. Jonathan played a concert Saturday night, which we had to miss because of other commitments. 🙁 But I got to have dinner with him! Yay! If you haven’t heard any of his music, I highly recommend taking a moment to check out his website. He encourages the open sharing of his music.
And here’s where I wish I’d had the camera…because while he really looks nothing like Rand, Jonathan and Rand have a shockingly similar hair-beard-glasses configuration. As if one of them is SWF-ing the other. Their hair is even nearly the same color and has the same type of waviness. It’s spooky.

Ummm…after dinner, we caught a bit of the Rob Balder/Sudden Death/Worm Quartet concert. These guys all do funny stuff. Worm Quartet clearly worships at the altar of Weird Al, judging from his vocal style, his use of the number 27, and his mention of a spatula in at least one of his songs. 😉 I greatly enjoyed Rob’s “She’s Always a Goth Chick” (parody of She’s Always a Woman) and “A Stable Connection” (which can be heard here), complete with a really good Kermit impression.

Rand and Adam hosted a talk-show style interview-the-guests session, which was of course very funny. And then the concert…

Especially for the occasion, I bought myself one of these:

Heehee…that’s cartoon-Rand-as-Spiderman on the right.

My brother came out to get his first dose of live Ookla, which I think he enjoyed. The show was great…they played to a full room and really rocked it. And as a special treat, they brought Jonathan up on stage for a rendition of his song Mandelbrot Set, which was fantastic.

I didn’t hang around for the open filk after the show, because I was staying with my brother and he was really ready to leave. We headed out early Saturday morning to attend a wedding, which I will tell you more about soon…