Rob and Margot online

I've had a whirlwind year and haven't been sharing unnecessary or inappropriate information about the minutia of my life with total strangers, so I thought it was time to grant the internets a glimpse at my deepest, most private insights.  Fortunately for you all, I'm not that much of a sadist to inflict that upon you.

Instead I'll give you a short recap of the last year.

• Attended the Dance Flurry in Saratoga last January.  Awesome experience, with bands like Raz de Maree (Tidal Wave) and Nightingale.  The music was great, the contradancing was great, the jam sessions were good too.  This was my first opportunity to try out the new lumber.  Very exciting.
• Another semester of successful, but punishing classes in the Computer Science curriculum.  Got A's in both Neural Computation and Wireless Sensor Networks.  Glee!  Job + Classwork = Grueling.  Grueling + Time = Success.  Success leads to a celebration dinner and a full tummy.  So I guess I'm effectively shutting myself off from the world for four months at a time in order to get a pile of sushi (seriously, folks, try the Tempura battered Sweet Potato sushi rolls at Sakura in Burlington or Williston).  Yum!
• I finished up my first year as Staff Council representative for the School of Business Administration at the University of Vermont.  Because of the massive reorganization of the Staff Council, the Bylaws had to be gutted, and as a Rules and Elections committee member, we had some serious work to do, which was ultimately passed.  Sorry folks, no photos of this grim business.
• Attended the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA) in Mansfield, MA in April.  Again, tons of contradancing and jamming opportunities.  Got to play with the folks from Raz de Maree in a kicking Quebecois jam session.  Seriously cool.
• Started attending a local Irish Session/Seisun about a mile from my house at the Lincoln Inn in Essex.  It's mostly mid-speed stuff with some really great people attending.  The every-other-week schedule conflicted massively with my vacation & business trip schedule for June and July, so I wasn't able to attend a single session those months, but I should return next week.
• First week of June, I went to TechEd (my tenth time there).  Ton's of good info as always.  The jam session was quite good, though not nearly as frequent as I would have liked.  I tried to organize an impromptu Irish session midweek, but there was not sufficient response in time to do so.  The regular session in the area (Orlando) was the following week during the IT-Pro conference.
• Third week of June, I went to Northeast Heritage Music Camp (NHMC) in Johnson, VT.  This was my second time at this camp, as I first attended last year.  This year I brought a real fiddle, and the experience was so much better than the phenomenal experience I had the year before.  Absolutely stunningly talented faculty, each one so generous with their time & experience.  Worth every penny.  The Quebecois instructor, Daniel Lemieux, was sadly unable to attend because of a shoulder injury, but Donna Hebert proved to be a capable replacement that introduced me to the music of Louis Beaudoin, from my hometown.  Who knew?  Dorm living, but you get your own room.  Plenty of food, plenty of class options, plenty of jamming, plenty of sleep deprivation.  Almost overslept & missed my ride home.
• First week of July, my niece and nephew came to town to visit for a week.  We took trips to the library for books and strawberry shortcake, went exploring in the gully beneath the hydro dam, biked along the shores of Lake Champlain, saw fireworks from the top of one of the taller buildings in Burlington, and ended with a trip to see Circus Smirkus, a touring circus whose talent is made up of teenagers.  They were awesome.  The circus performers too.
• After the week was up, Margot, Maggie, Robert and I headed over to New Hampshire to go camping with a large fraction of my family.  We stopped on the way to visit my Grandmother, who at 91 years of age, was missing her 1st year of camp in years due to a bronchial infection.  She was so glad to see us, almost as glad as we were to see her.  At camp, there was much swimming, eating, hiking, and catching up with all the parents/sisters/nieces/nephews.  It's always a good time, except the parts where everyone is cranky.  A good dunk in the lake usually solves that.
• This past week I went to Quebec to take part in Camp Violon Trad Quebec (the home page with links to the French and English versions throws a suspicious popup) in Rawdon, about an hour north of Montreal, PQ.  However incredible NHMC has been (see above) these last two years, this camp was even better.  A little smaller in scope, a little more rustic in accommodations, but even more personal and it would be tough to beat the talent and teaching ability of the faculty.  If you are a Quebecois Trad music junky like me, there is no question.  There is nothing like this available elsewhere in this concentration, aside from moving to Joliette or St.-Côme and getting adopted by one of these fantastic musicians.  At the end of the week, the campers performed the tunes they had learned...
• ...on the main stage of the Festival Memoire & Racines at Joliette, PQ.  The festival was incredible amount of fun.  Wall to wall music, dancing, camaraderie, and all-night-jams.  I got to teach the tricky bits of St.-Côme Reel #4 to Pascal Gemme of Genticorum.  Oh, bliss.  Luckily, I had sufficient practice dealing with sleep deprivation the previous week and at NHMC that I was able to survive on only 5 hours sleep combined on Friday & Saturday nights.  Returned home on Sunday a functional zombie, but infected with surely illegal levels of Canadian Bliss (TM).  If I have to choose only camp/festival to attend next year, it will be this one.  I will of course apply a wedgie to the individual that makes me choose between NHMC and CVTQ, but will have to choose north of the border.

Don't make me use my mad wedgie skillz.