A nice person named Erin, who heard about us through Seanan's Strange Messenger Story, had some very nice things to say about the album recently.

mood

relaxed

I'm taking a day off and visiting gfish for the weekend , 'cause Sunday is our wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, love! What's the gift for five years, anyway? (That's five years of marriage, but 11 1/2 years of overall togetherness. We celebrate both. English really needs a better term than "dating anniversary.") I drove up last night, so incredibly zippy fast that I got here like an hour before either of us expected it. No traffic and Nexus pass, ftw!

Anyway, he had to be on campus at 10, but I am ON VACATION, so I slept in and am lounging about eating Canadian raisin bran (it has deux pelletées of raisins, which translate.ru reads as "two shovelfuls", and is high in fibre.) Soon I'll go out and enjoy this lovely day borrowed from summer. Fishy asked solicitously if I wouldn't rather hang out in the private comfort of his apartment, rather than in public in a Starbucks or something, but there's just not enough daylight in here. Vixies are solar-powered.

I've been woefully neglecting livejournal lately. I'll probably use some free time this weekend to catch up a little, but I don't have hopes of catching up on everything. Life's just been like that lately. Sometimes it's not even that I am literally too busy, it's just that I haven't got the bandwidth. The spoons. Y'know what I mean.

Anyway, this weekend is my little vacation from life. Next week is my BIG vacation from life, as I'm heading down to the bay area a few days before Baycon to visit with some of my favorite people. And to be stuck in a box and forced to sing. Life's rough, isn't it? ;)

mood

pleased

Okay, this might be sorta redundant to post *here*, but...

Announcing: the Vixy & Tony Mailing List. :)

This came about partly because I've actually had a *lot* of people email me over the last couple years asking me to please *please* PLEASE let them know when "Mal's Song" was being recorded on a CD. (Seriously, I saved 'em all in their own folder. There were a lot.) I thought maybe one big bcc mass-mailing wasn't necessarily the way to do that. This also came about partly because I keep forgetting to tell people about our upcoming gigs, in the various different ways by which I tell things to various different peoples.

Hence, thanks to the magic of the internets and kendaer, a Vixy & Tony mailing list! The news will be mostly be notification of upcoming gigs. Also news on any recording projects (probably including stuff we do backup on for other people, when that stuff becomes available for purchase). Also news on my artwork on Etsy (though these will be less frequent; I'm not going to send mail every time I upload a new piece.)

To subscribe, send an email to announce-request@lists.vixyandtony.com with the single word "subscribe" (no quotation marks) in the subject line.

(If you subscribe and change your mind, do the same, but with "unsubscribe".)

mood

avast!

Have you seen this book?


Don't you wanna be a pirate? Yarr!

mood

excited

Vixy & Tony's Thirteen is officially available on CD Baby!

*happydance*

It's also coming to a filk dealer near you!

I... can't think what else to say. :D

Oh, I know what else to say. Heh. Tony remarked that they seemed perplexed that we had sent them a box of 100 CDs. Why didn't we just send 5 to start with, as their site recommends? Um, because you'd be out in like five minutes, people. :D

Vixy & Tony's Schedule

mood

sleepy

I think it's time for a bookpost! It's actually been a little over two months. Oops.

( What I've read since Valentine's Day: )

Vixy & Tony's schedule

mood

amused

A bunch of only marginally related things:

( Gig! )

( Walking! )

( Makeup! (That's not as exciting.) )

( Weather! )

Vixy & Tony's Schedule

mood

busy

Also, I've realized that I really really REALLY want to get myself a working camera of my very own. This "poking Tony to take a picture or lend me his" thing isn't cutting it for me. Also, the "get Fishy's old camera after he got a new one" plan has failed, as Fishy's old camera is definitely on its last legs.

Aside: what does one *do* with an effectively unusable digital camera? I feel really weird just putting a major piece of technology in the trash. But I also don't really feel comfortable putting an ad on Craigslist or even Freecycle that says "Digital Camera. Battery will only hold a charge of about 1 hour. Puffs of smoke occasionally rise from camera when taking a flash photo."

Anyway, I've realized recently that my tendency to think of big-ticket purchases like this as something I can't afford is more a habit than anything else, because I'll ofte put about the same amount of money on my credit card for books or clothes or a ticket to a filk con. I'm not sure at what point in my personal timeline I started automatically filing technology as "cannot afford", or for that matter deciding what I can & can't afford by category rather than price. But anyway, I've just recently realized I was unconsciously doing that, and that it's rather silly, and that I could probably make my next big purchase a camera rather than another batch of Threadless t-shirts.

I'm not really ready to shop just yet (and I'll be poking about Debbie's archives from her recent camera-shopping adventure, too), but if you've found a model of digital camera you've been happy with (bearing in mind I'm talking "take along to cons and parties and also maybe shoot random neato things that I see when I'm out walking, like Brooke does"), feel free to recommend your favorite here. :)

...now I gotta go rehearse. See some of y'all tonight!

mood

happy

As so often happens, I haven't finished my FKO report, and now we're two weeks out! If I don't do this now I never will, so...

( As much as I can remember... )

mood

cold

IT IS SNOWING WTF. Not just like, mushy and melting. It's been snowing HUGE, fat fluffy flakes for an hour now, and it's STICKING. STOPPIT STOPPIT STOPPIT THIS INSTANT.

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK IT IS *APRIL* AUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHH

I love snow. I do. I love it in winter, where it BELONGS.

We have a coffeehouse gig tomorrow! I hope this doesn't cause people to stay away. Um, if you come anyway, at least it's always warm there, and there will be plenty of hot drinks!

And I have to drive my mother home to TACOMA on Sunday in this crap. Assuming my sister actually manages to get her *here* from Tacoma tonight.

SWEET SMOKING JESUS, man. Who do I complain to?

Whuf.

Edit: Plus massive amounts of rolling thunder.

*sigh* It's incredibly beautiful. I can't stop being lured into watching it and looking at it and STOP THAT GODDAMMIT I'M TRYING TO BE GRUMPY.

Edit Edit: This is really messing with my sense of time, though. I mean, lying on the couch gazing out at a snowy snowscape with thickly falling snow... it's beautiful, and if I just glance up, just for a second I'm lulled into enjoying it and just accepting it as normal... and then part of my brain gets this *JOLT* and thinks for a split second that I've dreamed the last few months and they never really happened and oh GOD I've got to live through winter again. Like when you dream that you missed an important test, or that you're back in high school, or something? It's like that.

Yeah. This is really fucking with me.

mood

busy

I keep forgetting to post about this. Tony already has, but just in case you don't read him:

We're playing at Wayward Coffeehouse this Saturday! That's April 19, 8pm - 10pm as usual. Broenwynn's been advertising the heck out of this one, guys, so you wanna get there early to get a good seat; I suspect the place is gonna be pretty packed. :)

We'll have LOTS of our new CD with us, and since CD Baby is still being inexplicably slow making our CD available, this will pretty much be the first chance the Westcoasters have had to get it if you weren't either at FilkONtario or actually on the CD.

If you can't make it, you can still hear six tracks on our MySpace page. (Sorry, that's the most MySpace would let us do!) And a lot of interesting extra info will be up in the "Behind the Music" section of our website, just as soon as I get my ass in gear and, y'know, write it down.

See you at Wayward, I hope!

mood

dorky

vixyish: Y'know, I heard...
tfabris: Yeah?
vixyish: I heard there was a sacred chord.
tfabris: ...wait. Is it sacred, or secret?
vixyish: Sacred.
tfabris: 'Cause what I have here is "secret", but maybe that's a Mondegreen.
vixyish: Well, that's what I heard.
tfabris: Y'know what, with the tradition of changing the lyrics of this song? I'm gonna say sacred. And really that makes more sense.
vixyish: I dunno. I don't really care for music, anyway.
tfabris: Well it's not all that complicated. It's really pretty simple.
vixyish: Yeah?
tfabris: Yeah, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth...
vixyish: Uh huh.
tfabris: The minor fall, and the major lift.
vixyish: I see.
tfabris: I'm a little baffled, though.
vixyish: Well, what do you call it? This thing you're composing, I mean?
tfabris: "Lick My Love Pump."

mood

interested

I had no less than THREE compliments on my Tiffany dragonfly umbrella today. Well, I choose to assume that the guy who said "that is a FAR OUT umbrella!" meant it as a compliment. The other two were obviously so.

I love umbrellas. I often use them even when it's not really raining all that hard. There's something about them that makes me feel like I am inside my own little portable room, and the rain is the walls. So I have more umbrellas than I need, and more on my wish list. I rotate them sometimes. Here in my office is the Tiffany dragonfly one and my Caillebotte "Rainy Day in Paris" one, and my Jack Vettriano "Singing Butler" one at home, and my UCSB one in my car. (The Tiffany one was in the car, but I was afraid of it getting faded in the back window.)

I'm fussy. I don't like the mini-ones. I like the full-size long ones with hook handles. Even better if they're wooden. And not just any pretty thing. They have to have a certain something. I'm not so much for gambolling kittens. (I only have the USCB one as a memento from my undergrad.)

In other news, Fishy sent me this today. I found it REALLY interesting! I'm including his moomail to me, because he put it better than I could:

I think you'll really like this. It's an ASL translation of a Marilyn Manson song. Well done, at least in
terms of production values and high level thematic content. It's really interesting from a translation
level, and the disclaimer at the beginning is also neat cause it makes you realize how hard pop culture and
music would be to understand if you can't hear any of it:

judifilksign

mood

working

So I've decided to join hsifyppah in her walk to all the filk cons. It seems like a good idea, and I often don't exercise much without some sort of motivation. (Most exercise bores me. Even DDR has kinda lost its appeal, mostly for the amount of hassle it requires, and for the fact that I don't like most of the songs on the versions beyond Extreme 2. If this doesn't work I should probably get a treadmill with some kind of rail or table that lets me read while I walk.)

Anyway, despite my suggestion to Brooke that she should do the filk cons chronologically from now, for which she looked at me like I was insane (what? Just because it'll take DECADES to get to the first one?), I am just going to use the map she's already set up geographically (to which she let me add vixy start- and end-points), because I am a lazy lazy creature. It was enough trouble converting her handy spreadsheet from metric.

Shiny awesome Brooke gave me a spare pedometer at FKO (did you know that pharmacists get swag? I didn't!), helped me figure out how to use it, and even helped me measure my stride. (As it happens, we discovered through experimentation that we have about the same stride length, so then all I had to do was another one of those fun conversions from metric again.) This happened just before the Interfilk auction, which meant I was able to determine that I walked the equivalent of about a mile. That's right, I WENCHED A MILE FOR INTERFILK. :D Amusingly I walked somewhat more than a mile in the airport after the con. It's also pretty interesting to see how many steps I take while tidying the house or running around my office.

I have a bit of a headstart on Brooke since I live closer to Conflikt; I'm just under halfway there already! But then I think she gets the jump on me on the way home. :)

mood

public service announcey

Filkers!

First of all, The Pegasus Awards Brainstorming Poll is up and extended through April 20. This is not the official nomination; this is "put down anything you think is a good idea, so that everyone can see what everyone else's ideas are." It's to get you thinking. You don't have to be attending OVFF to brainstorm (nor to nominate, nor to vote) and you don't have to have attended a filk con. There's no "have to" except that you consider yourself someone who likes filk music.

Rules: there aren't any. You can suggest your own songs, you can suggest others' songs, you can suggest songs that have or have not been recorded, printed, performed in concerts, whatever. There are rules about what's eligible for nomination, when that time comes, but if you are not sure, go ahead and put it in the brainstorming poll. The Pegasus committee will make sure that no song or person who is ineligible will actually get nominated (I *think* they weed them off the brainstorming poll results, actually) so you don't have to worry that you'll inadvertently cause some problem. When in doubt, I say err on the side of suggesting.

So please, filkers, go add your thoughts to the poll. They will get compiled into a big list of SUGGESTIONS for people to consider when nominating. (Note that I said SUGGESTIONS. You're not limited to this list when nominating; it's just in case you want to look at what other people think, or be reminded of songs and people you maybe hadn't thought of, or get a bit of a jog when your mind suddenly goes blank when faced with that nominating ballot later in the year.)

Secondly, I want to repost something that peteralway posted in his journal, because I agree wholeheartedly. The following is an unpaid, unsolicited advertisement. :)

But I do want to talk up one suggestion I made for best performer just a little. You see, there is one filker who I think is worthy of serious consideration for a best performer Pegasus. She's given exactly one filk concert, at a smaller, non-filk convention. She doesn't often take a turn in filk circles. So you might not think of her immediately when thinking Pegasus. But I've seen her on stage and joining in with songs in circle as often as anyone, and invariably adds something to every performance. For the five years I've been attending filk conventions, I see more and more filkers asking her to join them with her fiddle. And when she joins a performance spontaneously, she invariably turns ordinary performances into magical moments. And while I often wish she'd play more, it's also true that she never jumps in when her contribution wouldn't improve the music--knowing when to refrain is a valuable talent that makes her contributions all the more precious. I've finally learned to prod her into taking a turn in circle--she graciously assents to requests, and I have never regretted asking her for a tune. I'm one of the lucky ones who has been joined by her fiddle on many occasions, and it is always a joy from my perspective and from that of the listeners. She's enhanced the performances of big-name filkers like Wild Mercy, Seanan McGuire, Urban Tapestry, Tom Smith, Lady Mondegreen, and many others. When you think of who deserves a Pegasus for best performer, don't just ask "who gave a kick-ass concert?" but also ask "whose kick-ass performances have added the most to my filk experiences, both in concerts and in circle?" If you have had one of your performances transformed by "Amy McFiddler" or have heard her magic in action as a guest in a concert, don't forget Amy McNally when the nomination poll comes up.

mood

maline

( The lyrics to my version of 'Re: Vos Cerveaux' (with patter!) )

( What I said to the crowd while Tony tuned his guitar )

Mission accomplished. :)

mood

working

Okay, I'll never do this if I don't do it soon. I've still got a lot to get done at work here, but for now, here is as much as I wrote in the airport and on the plane before my battery died. :) With the help of a schedule I'd made for myself beforehand in wordpad, I got as far as the CD release party on Friday night...

--------

So... I've been remiss in writing con reports for the last five or so cons that I've been to. Stuff just... happens. I wish I had the brain to go back and complete them all, but for now I have just enough brain to try and break the trend by starting THIS one. :)

So... ( take me home to FilkONtario! )

mood

content

I'm in jammies, stretched out on the couch, eating Chinese food and watching Top Gear. Oops, and I need to reset my laptop's time zone.

More later!

	mood		relieved
	music		French gate announcements. "Chicago O'Hare" with a French accent is really cute.

So, for those of you who were not in the hotel lobby with us this afternoon: we were running late.

It's pretty much my fault, for taking longer than I planned to get up, longer than I planned to eat, and much, much longer than I planned to pack. Tired vixy is sloooowwwwww.

It's only slightly the hotel's fault for saying "the shuttle will be here in five minutes" and then proceeding to take twenty or thirty to get there. But mostly it's mine.

So at 1:15, as I stood there jittering with worry over our 2:15 flight but not being coherent enough to do anything about it, Jane Garthson took us in hand, lit a fire under the hotel staff, and got us the hell out of there (with the help of David, who grabbed my suitcase and dragged it out the door so that I was bound to follow it going HEY THAT'S MY SUITCASE. Our friends, they are clever.)

Then there was a small comedy of errors getting IN the shuttle with a large family and Marilyn Miller, wherein they pulled up one shuttle, moved the other shuttle, moved the first shuttle again, moved the second shuttle to where the first one was, and failed repeatedly at communicating to us which one we were supposed to be getting in. Then I jittered at the shuttle driver, who to his credit did all he could to get us there. I tipped him well; he did his best, after all (and put up with an obnoxiously jittery passenger to boot).

So I just have to tell you all-- especially those that were in the lobby with us-- that with less than an hour to go, we RAN into the airport and RAN to a counter and were told to go to that other counter and RAN to that counter and apologized to the woman for being late but would we still make it for our flight to Calgary? And the nice lady at the counter went tappytappy and said she was sorry, but it looked like the gate agent was saying our flight was overbooked--

*gulp*

--and would we mind very much if we switched to a different flight. That is nonstop to Seattle instead of changing planes. And leaves in a few hours. And arrives in Seattle at 7-something pm.

*blink*

We were all OH HELL YES. Wait, can you get us seats together? You can? okay OH HELL YES.

The nice lady did all her tappytappyness, had us fill out the little customs form, walked us to customs (can't walk through the airport unescorted with tagged baggage, she said) and was generally INCREDIBLY nice and helpful and wonderful and we thanked her profusely.

So instead of frantically running through the airport, looking terrified and nervous in customs and security which is never good, and stressing that our luggage won't make a plane change, we had a leisurely stroll through the airport, through customs, through security, and on to our gate, which was very nearby, and are relaxing for the next couple of hours with sodas and internets.

Some of you may remember my having mentioned before that I'm unreasonably, bizarrely lucky? Like, Disney-princess lucky? Flowers-bloom-in-my-path-and-birds-sing-when-I-walk-by-and-parking-spaces-open-up-before-me lucky? Yeah... this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Thanks, Toronto! Thanks, YYZ! :D

(Con report to come...)