I don’t have the time or the energy to do a long narrative-type recounting of the weekend’s events, so I’m going to try and hit some of the highlights.

• So first and foremost, I finally got to meet famed Ookla drummer Luis Garcia! I’ve been hearing about him for so long that I wondered if he’d live up to the expectations. He did, and then some! Luis used to live in Buffalo, but he moved to the west coast to be with his lovely (now) wife Alisa. (I got to meet her as well. She is equally awesome.)

• Being at the Pegasus Awards banquet to see Michelle Dockrey (aka vixy) win Best Filk Song for the amazing, stupendous “Girl That’s Never Been” was quite a treat. It was a tough competition, but I had a feeling she’d take it away! Congrats, vixy!

• Another Pegasus Awards highlight…Judi Miller winning the best performer award.

• Even though Ookla was up for this award, Judi was a shoo-in. 😉 She’s a sign language interpreter, and her performances are sometimes funny, sometimes incredibly touching, and always beautiful. Her tearful acceptance had the whole room weeping.

• Meeting other west-coasters like Taunya and Beckett!

• Getting to see Paul Kwinn and Puzzlebox perform.

• Witnessing the shearing of Adam’s head.

• Tony’s rousing rendition of Jonathan Coulton’s RE Your Brains (scroll down to Thing A Week III to listen. you won’t be sorry).

• Just hanging out and having fun…and getting to know Seanan better.

(photo by Allison)

• Hearing Seanan’s brand-spankin’ new song performed for the first time.

• Donato’s pizza!

• Graeter’s Ice Cream (their pumpkin ice cream just might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted. seriously.)

• The gorgeous silk kimono I bought from Second-Hand silk for the ridiculously low price of $15. (thanks to Taunya for pointing this out to me!) Debbie has a photo here, but you can’t really appreciate how gorgeous it is from the photo. It has some broken snaps (which is why it’s just kind of hanging open on me in the photo), but those can be easily fixed!

• The fantabulous haircut I got for a $15 donation to Interfilk. I had to avoid doing anything too crazy with it, so as to be able to pull off my Halloween costume, but it feels a million times better. You can kind of see it in this photo:

(Rand took this one…)

• As always, hanging out with Debbie, Jodi and Allison.

I’m sure there’s a lot more that I missed (which I’ll add if I think of it), but suffice it to say that it was a fun-filled weekend. I enjoyed myself immensely. 🙂 Rand says one of these days, I’ll have to sing something…we’ll see about that! (If anyone cares to know, I can tell how my fear of singing came to be.)