Last November, I was chatting with one of the organizers and mentioned my intention to attend this year, and mentioned that I'd like to do something - ConComs are almost always looking for panelists.

It turns out that GaFilk doesn't do programming, except for guest concerts.

So they made me a Special Surprise Guest.

The drive to Atlanta was mostly uneventful.

Kentucky still has it in for me. Last year, when I drove to Florida to watch Carol's rocket go up, the road opened and ate my tire.

This time, I got pulled over by a Kentucky trooper.

I was doing a bit over 80 in the left lane, so I had a pretty good idea why I saw the blue-blinkies in the rear-view mirror. It's my turn to contribute to Kentucky's General Fund.

We pulled onto the shoulder, the cop came to my window and pointed at the sign on the shoulder.

"Can you read that sign," he asked.

I looked at the sign, expecting it to read "70 MpH". This sign read "Left lane for passing only."

I got a brief lecture about not driving in the left lane unless I was actively passing someone (well, the rest of the traffic was doing about 80 also, so I was just barely passing other cars).

And with that, we were back on the road.

We eventually got to Bucee's country. The person with me had never seen a Bucee's, so we stopped even though we didn't really need gas or food just then.

For those not familiar with Bucees, it's a gas-station/truck stop/tourist trap about the size of two large grocery stores. They sell dozens of flavors of jerky, anything you could want with a Buccees logo on it (including dog toys), various travel foods, sandwiches, bakery items (there is an on-site bakery), the usual things your car or truck might need, and the bathroom area is as large as a 7-11. Not a 7-11 restroom, and entire 7-11.

The convention was fun. This was another music oriented con.

There's a very high percentage of songwriter/performers at this convention, so the round-robin filks were as good as going to a coffee house.

A half dozen folks do a pick-up jazz band to play during the banquet and for folks who want to ball-room dance. They were very good - better with a day of practice than my college jazz band was after a semester.

As a guest, I had an hour to "do stuff". "What kind of stuff?" I asked. "Anything you want. It's your hour."

I'm pretty so-so as a singer, but IMHO, I'm a decent lyricist, so I decided to do a talk on constructing lyrics. After I listened to the other guests I realized that I wasn't just being pretentious, I was being very pretentious thinking I had something useful to say to these folks, so I just sang a bunch of my old songs.

Later I heard someone commenting to a friend about my concert being nothing but songs she'd never heard, but people said they were old classics.

Several folks laughed at the right places, so I guess it came off OK.