And we're back. If you want to know how I got into this situation, be sure to check out Part I

That got us to Wednesday, which left me with a day to gear up for the con. Or so I naively assumed. As it turned out, that was the day that we left for the con soooo, right back to it then! Really though, when the adventure starts with hauling half a ton of photo gear and a full ton of Archai’s Seussian menagerie of fursuits then just kind of hanging around I can’t say it was too stressful for me. My records are spotty from this early period for reasons that we’ll get into later, but a big part of it was working out rooms, as I’d be finding myself on site for a lot longer than I thought I would. I had worked out Thursday night with Casihe at dinner a few days prior, but Wednesday was yet another surprise, so I had to get on that. Fortunately Archai was in touch with Erbis, whose con arrival choices differed from those of his friends in the other direction, so I spent that night with him.

The next day was pretty quiet again, but just like last year I was among very few who seemed to think that this was a problem. Everyone else thinks it’s a great chance to hang out. Meanwhile for me it’s just a reminder that despite my best efforts I don’t have too many contacts around here. It was kind of a late start as days in California all seem to be. Managed to hit up Archai and his crew for some food and then floundered about for a bit. At any other con time like this isn’t hard to fill, but again, I found myself awash in a vast ocean of people who only seem to know each other. After that it was some more wandering about I had a small victory, someone I (now) knew invited me to a party! It was Stormy saying I was welcome to drop by their spot on the party floor that night if I felt so inclined. I was pretty confident about that, my docket being as empty as it was. It took just about all day for me to pull it off, but I finally managed to do the thing that usually won’t STOP happening at conventions, tripping over a handful people I know all at once. I found ArcRa and a few of his friends in the lobby, and whilst hanging out there, LanHao came to say hey. And as we sat and chatted, various friends of theirs came by and joined in. It was a major relief to finally have that happen. That kind of thing is the real way that hours disappear in a con without you even realizing it. I was so glad to have it happen at least once.

That got me to the ‘Out of Position’ release party, which was literally the only event going on that day. I figured I’d attend because it’s always good to hear from Kyell Gold and Rukis, even if they’re too busy being mobbed by fans to really talk at all. The pleasant surprise there was I got to see Sparf and Serval. They were running the joint. Apparently it just isn’t in them to not work. Naturally once we got to the actual reading that everyone was there for I finally got the call that tonight’s room was open and I could move my stuff there. Casidhe had his roommates bail on him and didn’t want to have a double all by himself. I’d had something similar happen, but I’d booked a king for just three nights in anticipation of it. When you’re dealing with furries you’ve always gotta play the Xanatos gambit and have a failure mode that still benefits you. In any case, he’d been working to fix that for some time. He’d canceled his reservations and found a new room that also had space for me one night, so good for everyone. I felt like an idiot for leaving right when the reading was starting, but I also didn’t like the fact that I’d left my stuff with Erbis so long. So I went and took care of that. Room shuffling was already becoming quite tiresome. Normally I’m all about this kind of thing. It gets me the flexibility I need to handle shenanigans that come up and I can still have my own sanctuary for the middle of the con where I really need it. I’m going to have to start working something else out in the future though, seeing as the people I’m traveling to the con with electing to show up irresponsibly early seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Ah well, lessons for another day.

I got back down to the event and hung around a bit as it wrapped up. Got to chat with my Furthemore bros for a good while there. It went a long way towards making me feel a little more at home here. I actually got down to Stormy’s party a lot later than I’d expected to. The party was not a huge improvement in terms of social atmosphere as it was a small room packed to the ceiling with people I’d never met as opposed to a large lobby sparsely strewn with them, but there was food and booze. I have an easy time calling someplace welcoming if it boasts those two amenities. I had a healthy splash of some crazy jungle juice we came to call P’thahck, which was not only the drink’s Klingon name but also the sound you make when you have a sip. It was one of those wonderful occasions when I drink something and think “oh, this will take a while” and it very much does NOT take a while and WOOOOO IAMHAVINGAGOODTIMEALLOFASUDDEN. So yeah, got to chat up a few folks and have a good experience with that one after all. Exactly who was in the neighborhood didn’t stick too well. Video Wolf maybe? I distinctly recall encountering him in that timeframe and him being a pretty cool dude. Whatevs, it was way too many people for drunk me to keep track of. After that all wound down it was time for some sleep. Or so I thought.

A note on who I was staying with that night. I’m not linking the name of our gracious host because of the amount of shit I’m going to talk about him later. I’m just gonna call him Anakin, because he managed to fuck things up surprisingly hard for someone with essentially good intentions, and also because he’s got one of those garish-looking CPAP breathing machines that he spends the night hooked up to. That comes later though. Tonight, the big problem was that I found myself unable to sleep through the earthquake that was presently occurring in the room. Anakin had said that his iron lung over on the nightstand might buzz or hiss a little bit, and I’ll have to take his word for it as I wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it if it sounded like an air raid siren. It turns out that Casidhe snores like a running diesel truck that’s being cut in half by a chainsaw powered by a much larger truck. Holy shit, man. I kind of wished there had been a dance or something going on because after an hour listening to that I could’ve easily gone out and danced all night. Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. I tried nudging him a few times, which helped for literally a couple seconds each time. He seemed to be sleeping just fine though, despite not so much sawing logs as knocking entire stands of trees over with dynamite. So I figured I could try something a little more daring without disturbing him.

I managed to unobtrusively get the comforter and a pillow off the bed and took them to the bathroom. This allowed me to set up shop in there where I could close the door and dampen the riot that was going on in the bed I was meant to be using. Stretching out on the cold tile floor with my knees resting up against the toilet was a… non-ideal scenario to be sure, but that’s the kind of idea that sounds appealing when it’s 4:30 and you still haven’t slept yet. I actually managed alright in there, given what it was. I’m sure that having someone else pee on you while you’re sleeping is somebody’s fetish out there, but I was kinda not into that. I felt pretty stupid freezing my ass off in there, but I got six different kinds of validation the next morning. Anakin’s roommate mentioned the next morning that he saw me in there and thought “Damn. That’s a good idea.” I thought it was odd that he would’ve come in more than once, as he woke me two times during the course of my sojourn in the tile tundra. Turns out that he was just scoping out the tub to see if he could sleep in there. So yeah, when I saw that the guy on the opposite side of the opposite bed is also blearily stumbling about in desperate search of literally anywhere horizontal to bed down that’s out of range of the rocket engine tests in the other room I figured that I wasn’t being too unreasonable in thinking that this snoring was pretty unholy in its intensity. Anakin managed okay, but I guess you learn to sleep through snoring when you yourself used to sound like a jackhammer jousting match.

I was very relieved that this would not be my problem the next day, but I underestimated how not my problem it would be. I came to learn in the course of Friday morning that our gracious hosts had asked Casidhe to leave. That was pretty rough. I understood though. He’s a good guy, but there’s no denying that he’s just not sleepable. It’s not his fault and that made everybody involved feel really bad about it. Really though, if he had tuberculosis it wouldn’t be his fault either, but I would feel quite justified in not wanting to share a bed with him. It was unfortunate that these discussions took place without me, as I thought to work out a swap with him. I would’ve been happy to stay in Anakin’s room and have him take my king room by himself. That would’ve taken a lot of the sting out of it. I was too late on getting the intel though. By the time I got in touch with him he’d already recovered his reservations. If he tried to get back out he’d have to pay the cancelation fee again. It was a real shame. So yeah, I guess I’ll add those kinds of shenanigans to the list of reasons I’ll be fixing the way I do rooms in the future.

The first flailing, desperate texts of the morning were Archai freaking out about how he was drowning in familiar faces and couldn’t even handle all the socializing he was doing. Yeah, that was really something that I needed rubbed in my face first thing in the morning after barely sleeping, dickhead. I’m happy for him though. At least I’m no longer baffled as to why this con remains so popular. The bay has truly irresponsible amounts of furries and it’s only that fact that makes them seem insular and disconnected. They don’t have to cast a net the size of Connecticut to reach out to people and that’s wonderful for them. Still didn’t make blearily stumbling through the mostly-abandoned convention hall any more exciting though. I was glad for the arrival of opening ceremonies to break it up a little, even if that was the only event that day which held any substantial amount of interest for me.

With as much of a lurching faceplant as that day started with, my hopes weren’t inordinately high for the festivities. For the most part, I got what I expected. Whatever staff could easily be cobbled together came in to talk about what an exciting time they had planned for us and we got to have a cute little QnA with the GOHs and it was A-OK. It kept me awake. Which, at the time, was quite a high standard to set. The big game-changer though was Pepper Coyote performing. Pep has been around awhile and I’d heard a few generally agreeable things about him, but it was nowhere near enough to pull me away from the tidal wave of other content to be had at AnthroCon. That’s the only other place he’s performed that I’ve been to and that one’s MY home con, wherein I’m the one that gets to spend the whole time tripping over all the people I know and can’t find a chance to take a break, as opposed to having breaks that last entire days. So yeah, hadn’t ever managed to make the time for our friendly neighborhood canine spice. I’m immensely grateful for that odd confluence of circumstances that put me in that seat though, because Pepper is actually a real class act. He has such a beautiful earnestness to his performance and he clearly enjoys what he’s doing very much. It’s always fun to watch someone who’s unmistakably having the time of their lives. As soon as I heard that he had a song called “AA Battery Control Telescopic Knife” I knew he was my kind of musician. The hook that he uses is that he’s got a bunch of fancy tech that lets him do a bunch of cool looping shenanigans. He basically writes a whole score in realtime using just his voice, and I am ALL ABOUT stuff like that. He’s immensely fun and brings a lot of energy to the room. I was so happy that I was there because there’s a fair chance that I might’ve passed him by otherwise.

In any case, the elephant in the room showed up soon enough and I was off on my next adventure. The occasion of note was the arrival of Ace, another holder of the rare distinction of being a person I know in California. He also owed me money, an even more exclusive group to be sure. He’d gotten a new suit recently and we’d batted about the idea of him paying me back in the form of the old Ace suit. That was certainly not ideal as far as a suit for me goes. It’s a little small and there’s a lot attached to that character. Ace has had him for many years and has gained quite a lot of renown during that time. Add to that the fact that he is very much NOT retiring the character, as his new suit was a point-for-point clone of the old one, just given a sexy makeover by the good folks at DTWA. Really though, it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s probably the only financially workable option that’ll get me into a suit before I leave college, and knowing Ace if I demand cash repayment I’ll never see it. And of course, there’s the fact that AceFox 1.0 was the first fursuit I ever wore all those many (only four? Wow.) years ago. So yeah, I guess he’s got some notoriety with me as well. So against my better judgment I went for it! That sentence actually describes a lot of things I’ve done in the furry fandom now that I think about it. And there began the next series of intricately woven dumpster fires that comprised the rest of the day.

The major snag was that Ace 1.0 didn’t come with feet. I knew this in advance, but not advance enough to commission paws for him. Ace (player) suggested Happy Feet. They’re a brand of plush slipper that’s made to look like cleats, tennis shoes or what have you. They work decently well with fursuits, but they kind of look like what they are. A hasty, $40 patch to cover up a lack of paws. Archai had offered to drive me out to a shop and get some earlier in the week as well, but I was still opposed to the idea. I was depending on borrowing some of Arc’s paws for the weekend, something that I thought would work quite well. The thing is, I only thought that because human brains are extremely well equipped for condensing down information and recalling the general way of things, but not so much for key details. The detail in this case was that, despite owning a number of predominantly black suits, Archai’s team has nothing but solid white paws between them. Well, fuck. I had to concede that happy feet would look a lot less dumb than using white ones, and it just so happened that Arc needed to make a run back homewards to pick up cables for the photo shoot. It also so happened that this opportunity occurred right in the middle of the lunch plans I’d just made with LanHao. I felt bad about bailing on them, but being able to suit this con was important to me. Lord knows I needed some way to fill the vast stretches of absolutely fucking nothing that most days were filled with.

So we piled into the armored personnel carrier that had ferried all these supplies here in the first place and were off on our new quest. As we discussed how the starter’s pistol had been fired directly up by left nostril at the opening of today’s festivities, Archai had the brilliant insight that my input wasn’t really needed for the driving process and I could nap for a bit if I felt so inclined. I liked the idea and inclined my seat for that purpose immediately. That was actually a really great opportunity, one I thought I wouldn’t get until I finally checked into my own room that afternoon. It was actually a pretty good spot for it. The gallery with attached breakfast nook in the back of the Yukon meant that they had enough room to essentially install armchairs and loveseats in it, so it was a comfy spot to rest for a bit. I don’t know if I slept or not, but it was heavenly to lie back and shut my eyes for a bit. After my brief respite it was time to begin the search. Right off the bat we learned that Target’s website is a teetering Jenga tower made of lies, as most retail sites are, so we checked a few other stores but to no avail.

Arc asked if I’d like to keep searching or settle for something even weirder like a regular pair of slippers or shoes. I didn’t care for either of those options, particularly not just wearing shoes. That would look stupid and I’ll be damned if I’m going to dress up as a blaze orange cartoon fox and look foolish doing so, dammit! Also by that point I felt like I’d imposed on Archai enough. He had both work and fun con things to do. He was very gracious to help me out and I was unquestionably holding him up by this point. LanHao also texted a few times during that period to ask if everything was okay, my bailing on lunch had concerned him. So yeah, I came to realize that though I only knew like five people who were around, they were some great folks that really have my best interests at heart. Also, three store visits was about the time it took for the notion to percolate through my abused brain that this sort of obscure ridiculous and outlandishly specific thing might be available for purchase in the dealer’s den, which by then was actually open but I’d yet to visit it. So I bet all my chips on the den and we returned to the con.

Going further in on that particular bet, I went and picked up the suit from Ace because by the time our adventure was over room check-ins were open so I was actually able to obtain a place to put the suit. Steeling myself against the very real possibility of a flame-out, I proceeded into the dealer’s den to find… no happy feet whatsoever. Fate is not without mercy though, or at the very least a sense of humor. What or rather whom I did find there was the master suitcrafter/transforming robot known as Jill0r. She happened to have paws available to be adopted into good homes. I took brief umbrage with the adoption fee, but at this point it was really my last chance. I do hope that if Jill has need in the future of an example of a motivated sale, she uses this one. While I was there looking at the paws and still slightly on the fence I witnessed her selling the second-to-last pair of them, so yeah, that kind of did it for me. If they fit, I was buying them. I profaned upon Jill to hide them for me for a moment and ran back down moments later in a footless Ace to see how they worked with the suit. They matched up very nicely and fit great. It’s a bit obvious that the fur is newer, but there’s nothing for that. Despite the fact that I would’ve paid almost anything, that pricetag still stung. Really though, I think they were worth it. They’re quite sturdy and look pretty sharp, fitting the toony aesthetic nicely. The small but revolutionary innovation that really puts them over the top are the little tags that let me know what side they’re on. When I saw an ‘L’ I thought it was just the size, but when I realized that the tags were actually instructions I was overjoyed. Differentiable paws! What a time to be alive!

So, since I was at long last wearing 100% of a fursuit and also at a furry convention I ran off and did my thing. Roughly what I expected to happen did end up happening, that is to say everyone thought that I was Ace(player) because they hadn’t heard about his new suit yet. Still kinda fun though. I at the very least get a brief flash of what it’s like to actually know people before they wander off all confused and betrayed. I got a pretty spectacular flying tacklehug from someone that I’m like 94% sure was Rahne, whom we both know actually, rare intersection there. I got to do some photos and hugs and some of those at the same time. I also visited the dance and got to shake my tail with Zarafa a bit, the usual stuff. Apparently I was active enough to make the zipper completely eat shit and start ripping out at both ends. Did I mention the suit is a little small on me? Apparently the lazy basting stitch that had served the suit’s previous occupant well enough just couldn’t handle me. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that a fox would be spontaneously developing big holes in the ass, but I decided I’d best retire for the day as that was likely sending the wrong message. So to recap I spent all morning getting everything all together to suit for like two hours and then it all went to shit and I was left wondering what the fuck to do with myself for the rest of the day. Again. So yeah, nailed it.

The end of this lumbering trainwreck was meeting up with Archai after his work at the photo sweatshop was done and heading up to the party floor, a place that I am just SO profoundly indifferent about. Though I knew a statistically insignificant portion of the people at Stormy’s party, at least I had been invited there. At the other party rooms it’s kind of a perfunctory thing. We know you’re just here for free booze so let’s get on with it. And of course EVERYONE and their brother is there for free booze, so it’s a big, crowded, line-waiting experience more than a party experience. The Klingons put on a good production as always, and had suitably dangerous concoctions on hand. Not anything worth waiting in line for 20 minutes though. I had a brief elastic scattering collision with Hixbi, nice to see him again though I doubt he looks fondly back on the few words we managed to incoherently shout at each other in the hallway. The immeasurably pleasant surprise was my finding the Fallout room. Despite being a big suite it was quite reasonable in its reasonable population density. They also had pineapple cider, ON. TAP. I’d been working non-stop to cultivate new contacts in this strange land, but that was by FAR the fastest I’d made a new friend during my stay. So yes, it was truly a magical evening and not just because I got to cap that off with nine hours of mad, passionate sleep. (In California that’s an amount of sleep where people start worriedly checking your pulse.)

Anakin had mentioned that he might be able to help me out with my suit problems, at the very least getting it patched well enough to be in the parade, which at this point in the cavalcade of consecutive disasters I was willing to settle for. I worried initially about waking them too early, but given that I got myself around at the crack of 12:30 that was no longer a concern. Anakin’s force powers proved quite useful and I got enough of a functioning suit to go and star in the big event. Getting Arc to zip for me when the moment came made a big difference in the suit’s survivability, I think. The trouble with equipping Ace 1.0 is it limits pretty much the exact range of motion you need to reach a zipper on your back. So yeah, having a pit crew to help you in makes a world of difference. I got down to the parade staging area with plenty of time to spare. Normally I’d say that’s the way to be, but being wrapped in shag carpet substantially decreases my waiting ability. Still, there were enough cool folks to mill about with that it went okay. There are a lot of mystery suiters that I only see during the parade, so it was a good chance to catch up with those dudes. There was a bit more shuffling that usual at the front end because they’d moved the photo to before the parade. A good idea, certainly. Since fursuiters are more cooperative before they get all tired and burned out. Since it was their first time doing it this way though, it was just a little bit of a mess. They also had a lot more participants than they anticipated, but you can hardly blame them for that success.

The parade went much the way parades usually go, a little less orderly than most but I think that relates once again to the turnout. They might not have gotten enough herders to the scene in time to make everything work as smoothly as it could have. Still, good time though. I got to stick close to Ace 2.0 during the run of the parade, and that was really all I hoped to get out of it. The one big bright side to having an old version is that I think twin suits are fucking adorable. So that was a great chance to have a little fun with that dynamic. I thought at the beginning it was actually pretty nice that I went go kart racing earlier because they give you a balaclava for your helmet. So inside a week of owning a fursuit I conveniently started owning a balaclava. Naturally I lost it in the course of the parade because fate simply cannot allow an unqualified actually good thing to happen without restitution. I was stunned by the “chat with friends in the lobby” thing actually working after I got out of suit. LanHao was around and I got caught up with him, and as I was hanging out like such a pro, Soron, champion of the indomitable FurryCon came by to say hey. He noted with obvious excitement that I was still wearing the lanyard from his con.

I did want to eat with Lan since I ran off on him earlier, so I endeavored to lead both he and Arc to food simultaneously. I was expecting this to be one of those fun, simple little ideas that explodes horribly right out of the gate for no apparent reason. The fact that it actually worked baffled me. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop when I realized that this arrangement made me miss the dance competition. Should’ve known that I’d have to sacrifice roughly 25% of the day’s worthwhile events to make such an impossible dream happen. The dinner went quite well actually, so apparently sacrifice begets success. It was odd though. I couldn’t really eat much, despite my last real meal being lunch the previous day. Normally I’d chalk that up to my internal clock still blinking 12:00, but I’d been in California for some time by then. I really ought to have been on track by that point. Oh well. In biological terms, conventions are just as much of a great, lumbering disaster as they are by most other metrics. I suppose a few snags in circadian-related functions are to be expected. Though I will say that my pants were pretty much falling off by the end of this one, and not in a sexy way either. I really should track how much weight I lose during a con, as this is not a new occurrence. For what it’s worth, LanHao looked to enjoy the dinner very much. He’s often the only sane man in the crowd he runs with and that clearly wears on him. So I think the chance to hang out with us was very relaxing for him. It probably helps a lot that Arc and I are both ex-military and he’s ex-defense contractor, so we’ve got a lot in common.

After breaking company I made it back to the convention hall in time for Yuuki’s Hypnosis Discussion Panel. I guess telling you the host and content is a bit unnecessary at this point. In any case, I was happy to have a chance to check this one out. Hypnosis has been a recent fascination of mine and I’ve written about it on a few occasions, so having a chance to discuss it clinically in reality was very interesting. Yuuki had some interesting things to say after he finished telling us that he wasn’t a licensed hypnotist 47 times. I like the way he approached that though. “I know it sounds like a stupid ‘State of California’ thing but I actually have to say that no matter where we are.” Productivity was kind of spotty, but it was fun. I don’t feel like I really came away with a lot of new insight since it went over mostly the basics. Still, there were some cool things touched on that I’d never thought of before and it was nice to get some perspective on something I don’t understand nearly well enough. It was also a great atmosphere. Yuuki was very accommodating and so we talked about everything under the sun and pretty much ran out the clock on our discussion time. Really glad that I came to that one.

Next up was the “Foxes and Peppers” after dark show. I was definitely set on coming to this one because I really liked Pepper Coyote earlier and this time he was alongside the indomitable Foxamoore. Fox has a fantastic stage presence and is very versatile. He’s a great foil for other performers and it seems like he can work great with just about anyone. So I knew that these two together would be a winning combo. The fact that it was AD so they were allowed to drink and swear and make crude jokes and whatnot was unquestionably a bonus. As I expected, the show was a ton of fun. It was such a beautifully honest show. At one point during a transition, Pep just shouted “G MAJOR” before jumping back into it. High scores for segues.

Confidence has its place, but in little shows like this for an intimate sort of crowd it pays to have a bit of self-awareness. Small town club staff will always talk about these weekend bands that show up to play there. It’ll be all these accountants and dentists and whatever that will blow crazy amounts of money on great equipment to come out and live the dream. They’ll clearly have barely practiced and yet think they’re the hottest shit since an hour after they ate a huge handful of ghost peppers. The tiniest amount of recognition and they already have heads that belong in the Rose Bowl parade. That’s part of what I love about furry celebrities so much. Being big within a niche crowd keeps them grounded and sane, so they stay the humble, relatable people that you love no matter how big they get.

I was hanging out with Pepper and his crew after the show because I had stuck around to let him know what a great job he was doing and a few people remarked on how amazing that was and asked how I pulled it off. “Umm… I asked if he wanted to hang out and he was like ‘Yeah totally. We’re gonna get drinks in a few.’ It’s not rocket surgery or anything.” So yeah, still pretty down to earth. That hanging out didn’t go quite perfectly, though. I got to talk to some cool guys and run around the convention hall like idiots at an irresponsible hour of the morning, but it wasn’t a terribly organized endeavor. Pepper is one of those super-energetic drunks that will NEVER listen if you tell him that he shouldn’t do something. So yeah, shenanigans of various sorts were afoot very quickly and the bouncing around got so intense that I actually lost track of him at one point. An odd moment, that. I never got anybody’s phone number, so losing a visual trace meant that adventure was over whether I liked it or not. Oh well. They can’t all be winners. Part of taking a risk is the chance that shit might just flame out and accidentally obliterate a small Nigerian village. It’s all good.

I wound down the night by meeting up with Archai and whoever he had accrued in his travels. A notable addition this time around was Roman Otter, who I had one hell of a time remembering. Thankfully my meticulously maintained journal archive let me know that I’d seen him at AC, once again, as a part of Arc’s crew. On this occasion he was wearing Kayze and was absolutely killing it out there. He was super engaging and was just bouncing off the ceiling with energy. I came to learn later that it was his first time suiting, which made it all the more impressive. He must be a lot like me, just getting his throttle stuck all the way open as soon as he suits up. It was a great way to end a night.

Sunday continued the emerging trend by being filled with the most nothing out of any day so far. There may have been a shenanigan or two in there in the early afternoon that I’ve forgotten about, but the fact that I’ve forgotten it attests to its level of excitement. At one point a handful of us got together and tried some of the oft-recommended Indigeny Cider. I was all about trying a new kind of cider, but despite practically yelling at everyone about it the entire conversation I never got a straight answer as to why we couldn’t go up to someone’s room before drinking it. During our attempt we got caught by security literally before we even finished pouring because of fucking course we did. The convention hall is operated by the City of San Jose, so drinking in there is technically public intoxication. How do I understand that and these chucklefucks that are actually from here don’t? Security guards running through the Marriot lobby were a common sight during the convention, so it wasn’t like anyone would’ve been given the impression that it would be easy to pull some shit. It may have been the thrill of lawbreaking, but that cider was pretty good. We dispersed quickly out of necessity after that.

A lull like this would’ve been a great time to suit were my new suit not literally hanging on by a thread. Arc needed a babysitter for Sesame, so that filled the spot rather well. Sesame is a dangerously adorable plush sparkledragon suit, but a bit lacking in visibility, practicality, range of motion and… fingers, so I could see the problem with him going it alone. Brokenwing was also on hand for the occasion and formed the second half of the reason that having a seeing-eyed human was a prudent measure. Arc was introducing him to the wild world of suiting. Lucky bastard. Arc is a far superior fursuit senpai than the one I had my first time. Unfortunately, there was a notable enough weight-class difference between the two competitors that B-Dubs had to do a partial. Not a bad place to start though. Good outing all around. Sesame is a real attention-getter and it’s great to watch him in action.

Later on I mentioned my conclusion that I ought not tempt fate with Ace 1.0 any further and Archai would have none of it. He was adamant that this was not an occasion for caution. I was at a furry con. If there was a time to take chances, make mistakes, get messy and risk tearing myself a new one then this was it! A fairly compelling point, I had to admit. Being that I was looking at just going back to being bored to tears as an alternative I eventually ended up going for it. It helped that Arc was planning to get into a more agile suit to ambush Roman and I very much wanted the chance to see him again and let him know how stellar of a suiter he is. So yeah, we both dressed to the nines and crashed the charity auction to do that. It was kind of nice. A little more of a low-key suiting event than I’m used to, but that’s a new territory for me to explore. I got to have a nice chat with someone who was at her first con and had a million questions for someone who was in one of these crazy costumes and willing to be grilled about it. That was pretty cool actually. I like it when I get the chance to represent. After we got dressed down I got a ray of refreshing directness amid all the flaky furry social awkwardness. The conversation with Brokenwing went:

“You have dinner plans?”
“No.”
“Well let’s have dinner plans.”
“Ok.”

So then dinner, apparently. That was actually pretty nice. I never got a lot of one-on-one with any locals who weren’t Arc, so this was a cool change of pace. A lot of these guys are great folks, it’s just that only getting groups of six or seven thrown at you gets tough to handle after a while. So yeah, getting a chance to hang with Brokenwing was pretty nice. I almost forgive him for subjecting me to that British deathtrap he drove us to Frolic in. If I failed to mention that, BW drives a Mini Cooper, wherein the lock stem on the door does NOTHING. It cannot be operated by means of human hands and serves only to indicate how fucked you are by the stupid-ass design of this Orwellian bullshit machine. There is, in fact, no independent mechanism of any kind to unlock that door. Rather, in order to get it open you “Just pull the handle twice.” You JUST do something idiotic and completely counterintuitive and take a shit on the face of logic every time you want to escape from this esoteric torture chamber. “Oh what? That thing didn’t work? Just keep doing that exact same thing over and over again and I’m sure everything will be fine”, the clearly sociopathic designers whisper, drawing strength from your frustration and final submission to their twisted worldview. Fuck those degenerate swamp monsters! I climbed out of the window like a sensible person. What was I talking about? Ah, probably wasn’t important.

Changing after fursuiting managed to get my glasses left in Archai’s room, so the “FC Unleashed Furry Bandstand” ended up being rather blurry, but nonetheless quite entertaining. Pepper was out in force again, filling a break in the action with “Hey guys I’m turning down the gain just so you know!” Classy. Vox was up again with his band putting in another star performance. It was a lovely variety of personalities and artforms that I find almost exclusively in the furry fandom. I was really disappointed that they didn’t have an album minted yet that had Fox and Pep together, I would’ve totally bought that, and that’s saying something. I’m an entitled Millennial fuckwad, so I haven’t bought music in like five years. I was actually wracking my brain to come up with some kind of use for a CD when all my music players use flash memory. Really I kinda just wanted to give Pepper some money because of how great he is and just handing it to him felt kind of skeezy. After the show I managed to just barely snag Archai to get my glasses back before he left to head out to his fancy dinner plans. It was one of the handful of occasions that I might’ve ended up going to, but Archai raised the point that everyone else in attendance was having sex with at least one other person in attendance and that might make things a little awkward. A fair point, actually. My presence at many of the events of the various social bubbles Arc flits between were often plenty tenuous enough without having to worry about the love-dodecahedrons that were involved.

I went and stopped by the open mic night after that. I never seem to find out about those events early enough to prepare something to perform, but that also seemed to be true of a majority of the performers that night. I’d had good experiences with them before, but this one kinda stumbled a bit. I mean, it stumbled earnestly and in a way that maintained forward motion, but it was pretty sad. I think having a GOH or other performer-type as a host might’ve carried it a little better, but they gave it the ol’ college try. Not much for them to work with there, honestly. There were maybe three people other than myself there that were there to watch but not perform. Eight acts or something like that. Somewhat competent singing, but mostly comedy acts or stories from people that were reading from a script and still managing to forget details, or forget to be entertaining. I marvel sometimes at the way people respond to my storytelling. For a long time I didn’t think much of it, but when I take samplings of how entertaining the general populous is it’s a nice reminder of just how entertaining I actually am. There was someone who totally fucking nailed an opera, and a great reading by Mary Lowd. Those, and the fact that fuck all else was happening made the “show” worth my time I guess. After that I checked out the mostly run-down party floor. I found the Fallout guys again and came to learn that they were having some trouble moving the last of their pineapple cider before they closed up shop. At long last, I thought, my time has come. So yeah, I woke up extra late the next day for… entirely unrelated reasons.

So Monday had officially nothing happening, as opposed to most other days wherein nothing happened quite organically. This day presented me with the familiar problem of not having reservations when I found that my ride may or may not have intended on staying at the con for a further interminable period. I had to impose upon Anakin again for at the very least a place to store my stuff while I waited for Archai to figure out what he was doing with his life. I’ve never really much cared for FC’s method of fighting Post-Con Depression. That is to say, spending a whole day stringing the con up by its ankles and violently exsanguinating it in front of you until you can bear it no longer and view the end of the con as a welcome relief from its suffering. To each his own though, I suppose. Given that I didn’t really have a choice in the matter I made the most of it, mostly by saying goodbye to everyone that I knew, meaning of course that they were no longer around to spend time with. Did I mention that Mondays at FC are depressing as fuck? A wizened and world-weary gentleman in the mostly-desolate zoo/hangout spot noticed me somberly tossing the last of my Furthemore fliers onto the tables and inquired after the con. He seemed interested in staffing, which was a great thing to hear. We actually chatted for quite some time about all manner of things. Apparently he’d worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab and he countered my recommendation that he work at FTM with a recommendation that I work at LLNL. Not what I was expecting, but still a fascinating find. Penname was ‘Mercia’ or something, haven’t been able to nail that one down anywhere. Shame, too. I would’ve liked to follow up with him. That was just the sort of out-of-the-blue thing that makes the fandom such a fun thing to be a part of.

By some vector I ended up in Rioku’s room with his roomies hanging out for a bit. Again, an entirely new crowd to me, but when I saw some of the stuff they were drinking I figured that these were my people. I was lured in by a chance at relaxing in a hot tub, which was getting serviced at the time so sadface. Stunningly enough, our plan of just waiting until it was done being fixed actually worked, so we loaded up on some “Gatorade” and headed down there. I drank our (about 75% vodka) mix pretty fast to avoid being caught drinking in the hot tub. That speed made me glad I didn’t have to stand up for a while. So yeah, very relaxing, good times. I met up with Archai again, who was, for once, doing nothing. We had some good lobby hangout times as the crowd thinned. We were all kind of giggly from exertion, so it was a fun occasion. Some of my wisdom made it into a very quotable tweet as Brokenwing was trying to explain what it meant to be pansexual. My response was, quite succinctly: “What? So you stepped onto the Kinsey Scale one day and it was like ‘You’re too fat, fuck off!’ so you were like ‘Fuck it’?” Good stuff. Truly I am the voice of this generation.

Arc had another sex polyhedron dinner to run off to, so he dumped me on this complete ass, this complete ass, and this complete ass. For those not following, they were three fursuiters who were all donkeys. It was pretty swag. They were actually pretty nice asses, and I don’t say that about many people. We had dinner and did at least one shenanigan, and I had some good talk with Reveille. He seemed really interested in what I’m about and the stuff I’ve been up to. After that the plan was to spend some time at the dead dog dance that I wasn’t super psyched up for. They let me smoke some weed though and that patched that up nice. I got a dance and a vector to make the dance more interesting, so I was all for it. I didn’t really feel much from the little hit that I took, but that’s a failure mode that I’m totally okay with. I’ve taken a good solid full hit before and had trouble walking afterwards, so I called it well with a light one in order to try and get out there and do more things. Even that eventually wore on me and I found myself pretty much giving up on that day.

By then it was plenty late enough that I was convinced of Archai’s desire to remain here yet another night. Fat lot of good that did me. I checked in at Anakin’s place around midnight. He was busy with his harem of young Asian boys, so I doubted I’d be able to bed down in there anytime soon. What was actually going on was he was trying to coordinate the homeward flights of a group of his friends, but that’s the only way I could describe the scene of the five or six Asian kids all staging for departure. A noble enough cause, but it didn’t improve my situation any. I poked about a bit more, as always discovering entirely new levels of having fucking nothing to do. This time it was even worse with the added frosting on the depression cake consisting of my not even having the desire to do anything anymore. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt impotent, stupid listlessness like that. I was very tired and very sick of not knowing what the fuck to do with myself.

My next “progress” update from Anakin when I went up to get my laptop to kill time in the lobby was certainly not encouraging. He had shuttled off all but one of his sweatshop crew up there, but had hooked up with another friend and they were going to use their remaining manpower to host an impromptu photoshoot. Obviously I’m not going to obstruct them on this, everybody should get the chance to have fun here, but FUUUUUCK was I ever done with this shit. It’s so hard to convey such a simple desire “OKAY. Done! You understand that, furries? Done playing dress-up now. Want SLEEP. Go to bed and stop being stupid for a while. Make yourself not feel like a rusty trainwreck in the morning. Understand?” So yeah, that was another big wait. I got what I thought was my deliverance at about 2:30 when Anakin said they were done. I took that as my signal to head to bed, naïve twit that I was. The remaining migrant laborer was there reading, but I felt like I could deal with that. I got to bed and tried not to let my frustration keep me awake. I was unsuccessful.

The real problem came when it turned out that Anakin’s signal actually means “Hey in about an hour we’re going to come crashing in there and stumble into bed and then drunkenly grind on each other in full fursuit until we exhaust ourselves and fall asleep. Even THAT I could’ve potentially dealt with but they left the fucking LIGHTS ON. I took care of that and asked the astute reader in the corner if his tablet worked in the dark. When he confirmed this, I asked that he demonstrate it for me in a rather curt and forceful manner. I got dangerously close to sleeping after that. Naturally, Anakin pulled me back from that precipice at the last second via the fact that he was wearing a wad of foam and shag carpet on his head instead of his anti-snoring cyclotron. Hence, the triumphant return of nighttime log dynamiting. After some time of that, he saw fit to turn it up to eleven by waking just long enough to blearily tear the fursuit head off, removing the convenient sonic dampener he’d accidentally installed previously. Once again, thoughts that occur to one when he has not slept yet and it’s 4:30 in the morning. I lacked the wherewithal to get out of bed this time, plus my new bed-neighbor was quite a fair bit more attached to the comforter than Casidhe had been. No, this time the thought was a simple, occasional, very nihilist “Oh, Anakin stopped breathing. Good.”

The momentary breaks that Anakin’s sleep apnea provided were hardly enough to get anything approximating useful sleep. But I perhaps did achieve unconsciousness a few times in the 6:00 range. Oh joy. Around 8:00 I was once again awake enough to give up entirely on rest. I went back to the lobby and dicked around on my computer while I awaited deliverance from this purgatory. I wasn’t yet to the point where I’d be bull-headed enough to wake Archai and demand an immediate evac, but that was definitely the first thing I did as soon as I heard from him. Kyreeth and asked “Did you ever leave the lobby all night?” Though I rather wished I hadn’t, the reality was only slightly better than he assumed. Regardless, we were on our way soon enough. Trying to get all the people and photo gear and suits into the Yukon all at once was quite the adventure, especially given that the number of suits had increased by one in the course of the con. We did managed to Tetris three vaguely person-shaped holes into the thoroughly crammed space in there and made our way homeward at long last. So for the record, if you’re wondering how to overstay your welcome at a con, SIX FUCKING DAYS is a good way to pull it off. Arc had some shit to take care of by then since his job’s mercy is vast but not infinite. Where I once would’ve hated missing out, I was at the time merely grateful for the respite. I doubt I even said much about it. Just bid him well and slinked off to the blissful oblivion that had called to me for so long.

A final word on my ill-fated sleeping arrangements. If you know or can figure out who Anakin is, I’d ask that you don’t call him out here or hold this against him. He and his cadre are a good sort for the most part, I believe. Sure I had a pretty bad time, but I think I’ll just put them in the same category as Casidhe. Good guys that I will absolutely not sleep with under any circumstances. I actually do feel quite guilty now that I neglected to pay him on my way out. I say neglected as though I forgot and in the moment yes, I probably used my crippling fatigue as an excuse. In reality it occurred to me to settle up whilst I still had plenty of time to make that particular transaction happen. I was just in such a bad way at the time though that I didn’t think I could suffer the sight of him without cursing a blue streak at the very least and perhaps even taking that that rattling turbine engine that kept me up all night and bashing it right out of his insufferable face. Properly-rested me made a much more mature assessment of the situation and I’m very grateful for that. With a little luck perhaps there remains a happy ending to be found here, and I would be quite remiss if I didn’t put my best foot forward to find it.

I managed to get back to life in time for some dinner Tuesday night. We gathered up an entirely new set of Arc’s friends and went to a lovely little Irish pub, the sort of place I’d been wanting to go for some time but couldn’t seem to find near the convention hall. Very nice place, great atmosphere too. They even brought out the fife and fiddle and the whole deal for some great live music. That night Archai had a look at the zipper in Ace 1.0, and by “had a look” I mean “completely tear it out and re-sew it” because there was absolutely nothing salvageable about the way it was in there. He got halfway through the job before knocking off for the night, resolving to throw the rest of it together before my flight the next day. I would’ve been insulted by his work ethic were I not paying him in gregariousness. Despite having spent much of the day sleeping, sleep seemed a very attractive option to me as well. After all, I had a flight to catch the following morn- oh. Turns out I had a flight the following evening. Really glad I checked that one before going to bed. I couldn’t fathom what could’ve possessed me to book a 7:30 PM flight. I may have done it accidentally, to be honest. AM and PM being one of those clunky, inefficient crusty relics of the past that America sticks with out of habit because change is HARD. You know, things like daylight savings time, pennies, imperial measurements, the QWERTY keyboard, or most of Congress.

I was actually rather grateful for the reprieve on my flight time, though, because as discussed previously I had only just recovered useful consciousness for the first time that morning. The visit’s end was more dictated by the start of classes than anything else, but I did still want something of a buffer against stumbling out of a convention directly into an airplane. That’s usually a bummer. This bonus day was one to be spent with Zantal, it seemed. Or rather that was the plan. In keeping with his usual patterns he arrived at Zantal O’clock, which I had come to learn was usually “sometime this afternoon” regardless of what actual numbers he specified. He actually did have a rough time of it though. On top of usual Zantanigans, there was a snag with the flight of the person he was driving to the airport, so he had to go grab him again and ferry him to an airport that wasn’t defective. Or as he phrased it “Goin to Oakland because SFO was \o/” True to his (suitably translated) word he did arrive close to Zantal:00. It was like Zantal:35 at the latest. We loaded up all my stuff and headed out to meet Arc for lunch.

Lunch happened, and was quite fun. I’d been getting along with Zan pretty well in the course of all this, so it was good to have a more quiet space to interact with him. I was very flattered when I heard that he was going to throw on Fyre, his sergal, just so that I could spend some time with him, because I’d missed my narrow window to do so at the con. I’d mentioned a week earlier that I was a big fan of the character. As I recall I was eating my own kneecaps at the time because we had to make room for Zan in the back of Arc’s BRZ. I was filled with immeasurable rage and bafflement, not unlike people trying to pay their taxes ‘round this time, as to how in the hell someone would ever think that anything even vaguely humanoid would fit in those decorative cubbyholes behind the front seats. Why the fuck did they even bother? To my astonishment, there actually was an answer to this.

Two-seaters are often much more expensive to insure because they tend to be fancy, high-performance sportscars that young people with more dollars than brain cells (or more cents than sense, HAH! Now you can’t unread that!) use to do irresponsible things. Since they’re expensive as fuck to repair and spend a fair amount of time going sideways and doing sick kick-flips off of cloverleaf ramps or whatever it is fancy cars do, they’re considered high-risk, and thus cost more to insure than the hands of a professional chainsaw juggler. Stamping two useless, seat-shaped divots into the interior of the car behind the actual, person-accommodating seats can be done without massively impacting the performance of the vehicle and thus advertised size of the owners genitals, but you can still write “4 seats” on your insurance policy without it technically being fraud. To me that smacks of a layer cake auspiciously filled with bullshit and foam packing peanuts. So far as I’m aware, the risk tables that insurance companies use today are specified down to model, year and sometimes even trim. Maybe that’s an ulterior motive behind all fancy sports cars having unintelligible ciphers scrawled across their quarter-panels in the raving chickenscratch of a madman instead of model names. They’ve just gotta throw enough confusing junk codes at their insurance company to bamboozle them into thinking they’re doing something other than rushing headlong into the wild world of competitive spinal compression.

“What? Oh that can’t be right. I have a ZGX1337 TkzXx 2048, not a CLS5500 TzzxB 420. That bill should totally be like $430 less.”
“… Sir, you also wrote a random alphanumeric string as your occupation.”
“Well, I’m SORRY we can’t all be insurance adjusters and SOME of us have to work as lowly MKXCTS370Zs.”

I dunno, I think it just pissed me off because it made me resent having company. It turned my favorable reaction to Zan into “What? We’re bringing Zan along? My fucking femurs don’t fold in half, Archai!”
Seriously. All you’re saying to anyone who you’re putting into a coupe with more than two people is “Fuck you AND your ostentatious desire to have bones!”

Oh yeah, that’s what I was talking about. The previous week when we origamied Zan into an inverse water lotus so that we could stuff him into a space that was verifiably never designed with accommodating full-size a human body in mind it came up in conversation that I’d seen his suit before I’d ever met him or so much as learned his name. Fyre was one of those characters that I’d never properly had a chance to properly meet or engage with, but were always a joy to see just because they had a really pleasing aesthetic and great stage presence. Kinda like slightly-more-desirable-collection-of-random-letters Klovix. I’ve never met the guy, but I smile every time I see him in suit. So yeah, I had told Zan a week prior that Fyre was one of those suits that I just loved to see all the time and he adorably exploded into a cascade of bashful giggling, as he does from time to time. I never really expected much to come of it beyond that, but I came to find that prior to the interference of aeromobile shenanigans and the correction for converting to Pacific Zantard Time he had intended to throw on Fyre just for me because he’s always there for his fans. That was a really lovely thought and I was disappointed that we didn’t have time for it.

As it was, we barely had a moment to spare to drive to the server farm where Archai spends his days industriously working the land and praying for a fertile data harvest so that we could meet up and get some illicit back-alley needlework done. And by that I mean we met up in the parking lot so that I could spread Ace 1.0 out in the back of the Yukon so Arc could finish sewing the zipper. Zantal took what looked to be a much-needed nap as his better half did more textile magic. It was kind of funny how he woke up to observe “Are you playing that song just because Archai is sewing?” For the record, yes. Yes I was. We were starting to feel like we were cutting it close, but Archai got me a functional zipper in good time. I was immensely grateful for that, as I was looking forward to wearing Ace 1.0 in some environs where nobody is familiar with his pedigree.

With a few quick parting words, we were off. I joked on the way that I hoped it went better than Zan’s last airport trip. I got through security quite smoothly, actually. It was pretty quick given that I had to check my Ace Case and then process my other bag through the checkpoint, as I was going to run the free ride luggage gambit again. You know, because I like to live dangerously. I’d heard a few strange things coming out of the flight notification systems, so I went to ask a gate agent if everything was going okay. As I walked away after hearing her reassurance, her answer went from “Yes” to “Oh, well hold on a second.” The incoming flight’s arrival had been delayed slightly, which wasn’t an issue, mostly. In my case in particular the 50 minute delay and 35 minute layover left me with -15 minutes to change planes. Negotiations followed.

“Hm, that’s not going to work. Further flights to Boston are probably going to be canceled because of the snow.”
“Well, you literally just mentioned how I’m going to miss a connection in Boston. Implying that I do not actually intend to go there, yes?”
“Oh. Oh! Yes that makes this much easier. I can do SFO-PHL-ROC. You’ve got about 90 minutes to make that departure.”

That was very good news. Usually “you’re going to miss a connection” means that your life is about to become suddenly very difficult. So a short delay was about the best-case scenario for that one. 2-for-2 on Zan taking people to defective airports though. Way to drop the ball, Zan! Anyways, I went back down and un-checked my bag, hopped on a shuttle and was on my way. SFO actually had a plane at the gate, a notable improvement in my mind. Not having a plane there is a significant disadvantage. They also announced free gate check as soon as I got there, so I won that game before I was even ready to play. Naturally what followed was a brutal and unforgettable reminder as to why I never intentionally book redeye flights. Sleeping on a plane for an hour or two in a daytime flight is a nice way to make the flight go a little bit faster, but that hour or two is really all I’m capable of. The rest of the flight is just more exhausted torture. Being kept up all night by a cruel confluence of circumstance was something that I’d had plenty enough of already, so this was not quite a tiptoe through the tulips. I managed to drag myself into the ruined wasteland that was Philadelphia airport right in the middle of clock-butthole. At least ruins were what I expected to find. I skipped the shuttle this time because I had a long connecting time and I could take this terminal. My momma didn’t raise no quitter! I came to find that some large portions of the airport were actually pretty competently maintained. It was only at the concourse that served the Northeast that you drifted off the edge of the map into an area that the game developers never intended for players to wander into. Ah well. They took me home, can’t fault them there.

What followed was another pretty much solid day of sleep. Like, dangerously so. I slept from 10:30 AM to 2 PM, and then from 11 PM to 2 PM. Kind of impressive, actually. Of course that meant that I got there just in time to leave once again. I was nudged out the door early by the weather, which appeared to be quite paradoxically pouring snow all over the damn place all along the eastern seaboard pretty much everywhere except Buffalo. I should’ve known it would be my luck to return on opposite day. So yeah, I’m back at college now and I’ve spent much of this week writing a con report instead of doing work. Oh dear, I should probably get on that.