Allison's been having major computer woes lately, so rather than have no report at all, I volunteered to give it a shot (Allison: My life's been really hectic these last few weeks. I appreciate Deb doing this report this time out!). Unfortunately I don't remember all the details anymore, so this report is going to be much shorter (and probably less entertaining) than the one my esteemed music partner was going to write (Al: Well, shorter, but not less entertaining... :)) But I'll stop apologizing now and get on with the job at hand.

Our adventure began at the airport, where our flight was delayed about an hour. This was a bit of a bummer since we were already going to be arriving at the con pretty late, and didn't want to miss any of Scott Snyder's album launch party (his tape is called Bardic Lug and is great! buy it!). Turns out the delay was caused by a computer glitch (darn them computers, anyway) and other passengers had been waiting for hours.

I was getting pretty bored when I noticed a young child sitting in a stroller across from us. The kid looked pretty bored, too. Then I remembered that I had my Magic Bag O' Percussion in my carry-on luggage, and I pulled out the train whistle and tooted it a bit. The kid was fascinated. Allison and Jodi were horrified. (Al: It was pure Debbie. We were more amused than horrified.) Encouraged, I pulled out the rest of my instruments and began going through them, one at a time. Later on, Allison told me that everyone else in the airport waiting area was watching...I'm sure that by that time they were all so tired of waiting for their flights they would have been engrossed by the sight of a bowl of pudding congealing in the corner.

After waiting a while longer, Allison, Jodi and I started practising some of our songs a capella. When our flight finally got called, the boarding attendant complimented us on our performance and told us we should record an album :-). No excitement on the flight there, as far as I can remember. When we got to the hotel, we dumped our stuff in our room and immediately headed off to Scott's party in the con suite at around 11:45 pm. When we arrived, however, we discovered we were too late...we had missed Scott's party :-( ! While searching for Scott, we ran into the legendary Cat Faber, an incredibly sweet and friendly sort (Al: she was so warm and nice that I was taken with her on the spot... and I hadn't heard her sing yet, so the best was still to come). I chatted a bit with Talis (Persis and Spencer's daughter) and Liam (Mike and Rennie's son). (Al: Jodi and I tried yummy homemade beer by Andy and Jinny)

We never did get down to the open filk on Friday, I'm afraid. The three of us were tired from the flight, and we were having way too much fun catching up with friends we hadn't seen in a very long time (Al: We got lured in by Amanda Snyder's hospitality- the woman channels Martha Stewart, we swear. She had Halloween decorations all over hers and Scott's hotel room, she had a vat of gently simmering rum and cider in the bathroom {which I sampled gererously}, a cauldron of Halloween treats in the corner and a pile of baked goods on the table- the woman knows how to party!) Plus making new ones...we got to meet Taunya Shiffer, for example, one of Paul Kwinn's music partners (Al: Taunya is so cool. She lives way too far away in California :( ). Heard Paul Kwinn and Scott Snyder do a parody of "Like The Dorsai" called "I Want To Be A Canadian" which was truly...inspirational. :-) (Al: I loved it :). Yet two more Canuck converts...) (Al: Beckett Gladney, who painted the covers of both UT's and Scott's new recordings, gave us a wonderful gift Friday night. She had made the three of us shirts with a Debbie cartoon patch on the front pocket and and computer graphic of the "Myths and Urban Legends" cover on the back. They were so cool!! :) We wore them all day Saturday. Beckett, you're the best!) Got to hang out a bit with the Suttons later on, and Brenda showed me her new rhythm bones (she had given one of her old sets to me several years ago at FilkOntario...I wrote a song about this, I was so tickled).

The next day seemed to go by very quickly. We didn't attend a lot of scheduled programming at this convention; OVFF was a much-needed break for the three of us, and we spent most of it wandering about renewing old acquaintances and just hanging out. Allison and Jodi had had a especially horrible week or two prior to the con, so the downtime was very good for them. (Al: I was walking a picket line for one week before OVFF and two weeks afterwards... as Luis might say, "I'll never do that again...")

I did catch Cat Faber's and Callie's (Arlene Hill) concert, though, and was really impressed. These are two super-talented women. Great harmonies and counterpoint, beautiful voices. (Al: I really enjoyed their concert, too, and had the greatest time singing with them at the open filk near the pool Saturday night. Thank you, Interfilk, for bringing them to OVFF!) And I lusted after Callie's bass flute! We were really happy to get a chance to chat a bit with both Cat and Callie during the weekend. Callie gave me some flute tips and also let me try out her bass flute (!!). It took me a couple of tries and a lot of coaching from Callie, but I did manage to get some half-decent sounds out of it. Very cool-sounding. I want one. It's way out of my price range, though...I'll have to wait until I win the lottery.

The Pegasus Awards banquet was a bit of a surprise for us when we found out we won an award for Best Performer (Al: "a bit of a surprise" might be the understatement of this report :)). We were very honoured to be nominated in the same category as such excellent performers as Dandelion Wine, Talis Kimberly, Mary Ellen Wessels, and Ookla The Mok (Al: We have learned -so- much about performance from all of these talented musicians and friends). Many congrats to the other winners: fellow Torontonians Karen Linsley and Lloyd Landa for Best Filk Song (Al: The beautiful song, "The Road To Roswell". First time I heard Karen and Lloyd perform it at Toronto Trek it made me cry.), Rand Bellavia and Adam English for Best Songwriter, Steve Savitsky for Best Science Song, and Julia Ecklar/Susan Cooper for Best Sorcery Song.

Sat in on part of the Interfilk Auction....thanks to Diana Huey for buying our Anti-Stress Package! :-) Before that was the "original music/lyric" song writing contest...lots of excellent songs; we were especially tickled by Beckett Gladney's harmonica performance debut. :-) Congratulations to Randy Hoffman, Scott Snyder, Steve MacDonald and Susan Urban for placing in this contest.

After that, of course, was open filking.

Lots of great musicstuff until the wee hours...we had great fun. Jodi, Rand, Tanya, Taunya and I performed our secretly-written and barely practised "Rumours About Redheads" for Allison. (Al: Uh huh. Discovered why Paul, Scott and Amanda lured me away to MediaPlay across the road from the hotel about mid-day - my cohorts needed time to practise!) Had a blast doing "Danger Man" with Paul Kwinn, who recruited a number of Dangerettes to help him with this dangerous song. (Al: Loved doing this!! Paulie, you're so bad it's a crime!) And we also got to do "Kid Fears" (from the Indigo Girls) with Tanya Bellavia...the three voices sounded GREAT together (Allison, Jodi, Tanya), in my completely unbiased opinion. (Al- We're adopting Tanya- a group can never have too many redheads.) We've definitely got to work on Tanya to move to Toronto (she can even bring Rand, if she wants :-)).

We got to hear lots of wonderful stuff, including music from Callie and Cat, and Brandywine Bay (including Brian Rogers, who has an amaaazing voice). A woman named Karen Bertke crocheted some cool squiggly things for people, which we all swung about and tied to our guitars (Al: Mine's still on my guitar behind me here along with the little pipe cleaner guy with the googily eyes.) and so on. Mike Browne came by to share some of his heavenly truffles. (Al: Another favorite moment was when Alan Thiessen sang Jodi and me the birthday conspiracy song he wrote for us :). Also loved Paul and Taunya's version of "My Jalapeno Man".) We ended up leaving the filk at around 5ish, I think, but some of you blatherchatters can confirm this. Howard? Gary? You were both there at the end, as I recall. :-)

Had breakfast at Bob Evans the next day. While waiting in line, we were entertained by Bob Kanefsky, who produced impressively huge soap bubbles with only the aid of his fingers and a cup of dish soap. Later on, one of the waitresses asked Bob if he did parties. :-) I tried sausage gravy for the first time...YUM. I love this stuff, haven't seen it in Canada anywhere. Rand bought me a box of the mix, the kind soul.

Since we didn't fly out until 6ish on Sunday, we got to do some more filking in the afternoon. On very little notice, Mark Osier performed Joel Polowin's parody of "The Lady" for Jodi. :-) We finally got to perform "Shake Them Bones" for Brenda Sutton (I wrote the song for Brenda several years ago, as I mentioned earlier, but she's never heard it live) and she accompanied us on her new bones (Al: Yay! I was also touched when Diana Huey joined us to sing the pretty song -she- sang on our birthday conspiracy tape, "Never Too Old". We've asked Diana if we can work up an arrangement of that song to sing with her at Confusion or FKO and she's said yes!). A brief but violent rainstorm added some excitement later in the filk, with people rushing outside to rescue Joe Ellis's equipment from the downpour.

It was tough saying our good-byes when we finally had to leave the con...Allison, Jodi and I all had a really wonderful time. It's a pity we can't make it to next year's OVFF because of Canadian Thanksgiving weekend :-( :-(. Ah well. Many congrats to the OVFF concom for putting on such a great show! (Al: My congrats, too, I had a fabulous time!)

(Al: For the record, UT will next be at Confusion, where we're presently booked to help with the children's concert as well as doing a joint concert with Ookla The Mok. We've also been offered the chance to do a library concert in Toronto in February. We also have definite plans to be at both FilKONtario and Contata. Can't wait to see a lot of you there!)