Focus and lack thereof

Some days I completely lack focus at work, today seems to be one of them.  I was asked to do a project at work that focused on 4 things.  I figure for 4, I can do a 5 page deck on each and it won't be so bad.  But every week there are 2-3 more of these things to do.  If I knew I'd end up doing 32 of them, I wouldn't have structured these presentations this way.  I am just bored of doing it.  There are only so many ways to write essentially the same thing. 
I started a wrap up post on Thanksgiving, but it's waiting on pictures off of the other camera.  Mr. Lina used a fancy shmancy camera to film the Post Lifers and when it went on sale I wasn't surprised when he wanted to buy it.  I can barely figure out how to take a picture, never mind take pictures off of the camera.  But when he does, we'll have some picture filled Thanksgiving post.  Possibly before the American Thanksgiving.  Possibly.

Net-net, turkey took forever to cook but tasted good.  Annabelle was FANTASTIC, I've never seen someone suck so much sound from a tambourine.  Most songs she played with her acoustic guitar, a couple on the mandolin and one on the fiddle.  However, it is the tambourine song that stands out and yet I couldn't tell you the words I was so fascinated by how she played the tambourine.

Sunday and Monday were lazy days.  We went for a hike, ate so much leftover turkey I'm about to start gobbling, and rested.  I made up a few dishes with the leftover turkey so there are some easy future meals in the freezer now and I still have two pots of bones to make soup (also in the freezer).  That's going to have to wait, I'm turkey-d out.  Next week I'll make soup.

There isn't a whole lot of sewing going on in there.  We're going to the conference for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals starting tomorrow.  It's like drinking folk music from a fire hose.  We went last year, one of the artists we hosted suggested we go, he had one an award there and thought it was fantastic.  Programming quite literally starts at 9:30am and ends officially at 2am but some rooms are designated as all night jamming sessions and others just kinda happen.  The OCFF conference started as a few people who put on folk festivals saying, hey, we all struggle with the same issues, lets get together and talk about it at the pub.  This year, there are over 600 attendees.  Most are musicians trying to get the attention of folk festivals for booking gigs next year.  Workshops fall into three groups, aimed at performers (ie. "Stagecraft"), aimed at presenters ("Audience Development") and general topics ("Emergency Planning").  In between are official showcases where 4 rooms will have music running concurrently.  11-2am, they took 2 floors of a hotel and every single room had music changing every 30 minutes.  It's insanity.  We will be seeing a lot of music for the first time there and some of it is likely what will show up in the Home Routes and Summerfolk bookings for 2012. 

Last year we met Samantha Martin.  We had seen her at Summerfolk and were totally blown away by her voice, but OCFF gave us a chance to talk to her and exchange information.  We ended up hosting her for her first house concert gig in May.  I did not have a clue of how important house concerts were becoming until we went to OCFF.  It always felt like they were doing me a bit of a favour coming to perform in my little basement with 18 of my friends.  But I swear every time someone saw house concerts on my name tag, it was like dollar signs went off and I suddenly had a new friend. 

So with lack of Thanksgiving pictures, I'll add some music.  Last year we saw Annie Lou and it turns out they got booked for Home Routes.  We will be hosting them (well, as a duo, all 4 won't fit in my basement) in April.  I was sitting in the audience for this specific performance at OCFF 2010.