The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy. This weekend I’ll be travelling to California for a wedding. It’s literally in Yosemite… Or Yellowstone. I keep forgetting. Whichever one is in California. Once I get back I’m finally going to get to see Hamilton. I’m pretty stoked to be in the room where it happens.
After that I’ve got a weekend off, then comes my annual Festivus gathering. This will actually been the 10th anniversary of us holding Festivus. It’s kind of crazy to look back and think that a tradition that I came up with on a whim when I was 18 has lasted this long. It’s really great to see everyone, and it’s really become some of my favorite times of the year.
It may be a big drunken party, but it’s MY big drunken party. And honestly we don’t even spend that much time drunk. Really we just spend a lot of time hanging out and enjoying one another’s company.
This year is going to be particularly interesting because of some other things which have gone on over the last year. It’s still really important to me that all of this continue the way it has. I want everyone to feel welcome, and as though they belong.
We typically end up with about 10 people, which is a good amount for 1. People to do their own things, but not too unwieldy to do something together. This year, we discovered how much just about freaking all of us enjoy karaoke.
It makes sense in retrospect. Carl, Jori and I spent an obnoxious amount of time playing Rockband, and we always fought over who would get to sing. So this year, I’ve put together a karaoke setup.
That makes it sound much more complicated than it really is. It’s really just a pair of monoprice microphones paired with a USB mixer. We then wire in a laptop or a Chromecast and we’re good to go. The laptop is simpler since all we need to do is hook up an audio jack. Though my mixer is also USB.
I’ve been relatively happy with the mixer and the microphones. Though one of the microphones showed up broken. Monoprice was quick to get me a replacement, and I was able to repair the broken one, so no harm done I suppose.
From there we just use YouTube videos for karaoke. It sounds lame but there are quite a few YouTube channels that only produce karaoke versions of songs. There are also quite a few that just post videos of existing professionally made ones. Either way, the selection is pretty extensive, and overall fantastic. The only issue is it requires a bit of prep work.
There are also a few services which provide a library of songs for a monthly fee. They’re pretty reasonable for personal use, which is really what this would be. I’m not going to keep paying for this month after month, but for the length of Festivus it should be good.
Either way I’m really looking forward to the next month. Now I’m going to go make a custom flask holster for this dry wedding (IWB of course).