Wow, I actually did it! I've been nominated for an Ursa Major Award! Thank you so much to everyone for nominating me. Now comes the part where you've got to mobilize again, yes I know I'm very demanding all of a sudden, but I still need your votes to win this thing! It's not often that I'll underestimate myself, but in the case of my popularity I've apparently been doing that for a long time. I never imagined I'd be able to pull together the kind of support that it would take to secure this nomination! So, all you supporters out there, if you want to give me a little nod, now is your chance!

Go check out my story here on FA or here on the CarryOn forum if you want to view it in-browser. I'm credited as 'Uranium235' because that's my username on there. And do feel free to stick around if you look it up on the forum. The Cross Time Cafe is a fun spot with lots of cool webcomics. CarryOn, the webcomic on which the story is based, is also nominated, so make sure you put in a plug for that too!

Oh, also! The awards are being announced at AnthrOhio, so I will be going to that. I hope to see you there!

Thanks to some key skullduggery on the part of the host comic's author, the arc in CarryOn that I guest-wrote for has made it onto the recommendations list for 2018's Ursa Major Awards! Given how most of my writing is just a fun hobby for me I've never really thought of trying to compete in such things, but I've been at this for a long time now and I think it would be interesting to see if I can hack it out there in the vast pool of furry writing talent. And if I'm going to get that chance I'll need your help! Their nomination AND selection processes are both separate popular votes, so I won't even get my foot in the door without a LOT of recommendations.

Go check out my story here on FA or here on the CarryOn forum if you want to view it in-browser. I'm credited as 'Uranium235' because that's my username on there. And do feel free to stick around if you look it up on the forum. The Cross Time Cafe is a fun spot with lots of cool webcomics. Anyways, if you think my work is worthy, head on over to the UMA's 2018 nomination page and let them know you think it should make the cut, along with anything else from last year that you really enjoyed! I'm sure that KDNightstar would love it if you plugged her comic in the webcomic category as well.

I've never thought of myself as a prolific or popular author, but over the last few years I've been running into more and more people who are familiar with and/or enjoy my work. So if you such people really are out there as some evidence suggests, please do continue existing and/or enjoying my content. And maybe even click the link and do the thing if you really like what I do!

Nominations close Saturday, February 16th, so don't delay!

I really should be sleeping now. I'll be back to the grind tomorrow and I'm badly in need of a sleep schedule un-disrupting, but I ought to mark this occasion in some way, even if it is just a return to my usual thing. Once more I'm two con reports behind, so other things have backed up while I procrastinate very consistently on those. Lots of stuff I didn't talk about because of that queue. I did some more moving out, bought the new car, and of course all the holiday things. It's just another one of those cases where I give myself homework to do and then spend the ensuing weeks hating myself for not doing it. It used to be that if I held off on things that I enjoy to make me do things that really need to get done, that would get those things done. In college that transitioned over to me just spending all my time doing whatever I deemed not fun enough to bother denying myself. I've been that way ever since, and these stalemates with myself only seem to get longer as time goes on.

Hard to believe I spent all of 2018 too scared of my employer's ongoing bankruptcy to actually live my life at all. And 2019 is slated to go exactly the same way. This place I supposedly work at is damn short on answers, and it feels like it'll stay that way for as long as it exists. Whether that's two years or twenty. I feel like that would be their long term future, even if this isn't their death knell. Every couple of years they have another crunch and find a way to narrowly avoid oblivion and keep limping along long after anybody stopped thinking it would be a good idea to continue doing this. It's not like I'm not guaranteed a "yes", I'm not even guaranteed an answer. So many of the futures I envision here don't go well at all. Yet I feel like leaving would suck just as much, and then it would all be MY fault.

To me, it feels like the underlying lesson of all the 'Freaky Friday' type scenarios is that no matter what the circumstances of our life are, we'll find a way to hate them. The biggest insight of this radical, magical change in perspective is "Wow, your life sucks in ways I never would've imagined." There are many possible lives that I could live, and right now it feels like they all suck in ways that I could never have predicted when choosing a path. I'm not doing all that bad. I've afforded myself a comfortable lifestyle, and losing my job wouldn't hurt me all that badly in any practical, tangible ways. I command a serviceable collection of resources that I can ply to my needs. I am in many ways quite free to do whatever I want. I just don't know what that is. What DO I want?

I was doing more cleaning out of the old house over Christmas. I tossed out a bunch of school stuff. Seemed nice to hang onto at one time, but I'm dubious of the usefulness of 15 year old math homework. The college stuff might've actually been useful in some way, but I threw that right in the bin too. I just felt like, fuck this. Fuck both of these two decades that I spent constantly worrying about my performance, spending long hours doing things I didn't want to do working towards a reward that I'm not getting now.

Dad saw me throwing away some of my old essays. "Hm, you always were a wordy one, weren't you?" Yeah, I guess I was. Writing has been my whole deal for a long time. Since before I even understood what that particular art could really do. There are times when I don't appreciate that gift enough. Things that come to me so naturally seem to be mighty struggles for others. I often sit wondering which of my many ideas to realize first, meanwhile there are many people out there struggling to come up with some suitably informative words to name a file they're saving. Writing is a wonderful tool and means of expression, with rewards I never would've expected. And pitfalls I never would've imagined.

Writing is by nature an antisocial endeavor. Pursuing it has always exacerbated my struggles in reaching out to other people. Sure, the finished product is something to share and talk about, but the actual process is such a lonely, tedious slog. More homework for me to sit on. I guess that's the true reality of adulthood. For a lot of tasks outside the scope of your survival, nobody holds you to account if you don't do that work. No punishment. There are plenty of goals and ambitions in life where nothing terrible and heartwrenching happens to you for missing a particular milestone. You were the one who put that milestone there. Who is going to judge when you do not meet it? Nothing changes whether you win or lose this invented solitary game. In fact nothing really changes at all. That's the only consequence. Nothing changes. Ever. And on and on. And then you die having never really grown as a person. And despite that being quite existentially terrifying, it still isn't enough to get me moving.

It feels like all human achievement is motivated simply by the fact that we have a finite amount of time to make our mark on the world before whatever happens to us, happens to us. I once felt that same drive. It doesn't feel like that anymore though. I feel like I've got plenty of time. Far too much in fact. Hours upon empty hours to remind me of all the things that I'm missing, and how helpless I am in my efforts to find them. Or identify them for that matter.

I still don't know what I want. Experience has taught me that I'm pretty bad at identifying what things will make me happy. Feels like a rigged game at this point. I know what I don't want though. I don't want more of this. I don't want to spend more time waiting to start living my life because I feel like I need answers that I've no guarantee of getting. I've been here a year. So it's time to start acting like I actually live here. And time to start living like I'm actually alive.

          Fairly interesting origin story for this one. I'm going through a pretty rigorous training pipeline right now. In one way that's good because the fact that they actually bothered to start up a license class for control room supervisors means that somebody believes that this reactor will actually stay open. That's a certain kind of hope I suppose. In any case, lots of class time means I can't take vacation. That killed plans to attend FAU, DenFur, Eurofurence, or any of the other weirdly abundant furry cons that all happened on that same weekend. One thing I did happen to look up though, was that my recent move brought me within fair reach of Indy Fur Con, to which I'd never been but I'd heard at the very least that it existed. I only had the weekend, but one can still make something out of that with sufficient impetus. Having been there, I can confirm the rumors that IFC does in fact, exist.

It was a bit of an adventurous start on Friday but not for the worst reasons, really. It was just a matter of having undertaken crazy shenanigans of a different kind on Thursday. For a long time after I started this new job and got wind of the company's bankruptcy proceedings (two events that happened distressingly close to one another) I'd been hesitant to form connections here, knowing I might have to move again at any time. Not only is that practice is really lonely and thus of little help in a trying time, recently I've learned that it will at the very least be a year or so before they make the final no-but-actually-for-real call about pulling the plug on this power plant. That means that treating this like a temporary fluke is rather unsustainable, so I've started at the very least hanging out with my coworkers at the bar after work a day or two a week. It's been kind of nice. When we classed up they just threw together 14 people who were interested in licensing, so I'm getting a new crowd now and that time to unwind in the evening has been really nice for getting to know them.

The name of the nearest watering hole that we favor is "Porky's Pizza Trof". It even comes with an unnecessarily attractive waitress pig fursona on all their iconography. I'll have to get a picture of that sometime and put it up. Anyways, one of the things that came up now that I was regularly joining my contemporaries for a few drinks there was the idea that I could just bring my qualification manual along on these excursions. A majority of the class isn't composed of direct-hires like me, it's people moving up to supervisor from other positions in the company. Since those guys have worked there for a long time and qualified in other positions, they're allowed to sign knowledge checkouts in the new-hire familiarization manual that I've been having such trouble getting done all this time. I'm fairly sure that they were joking, but I've no compunction about ironically getting signatures in there. So yeah, I used my best Gru impression to say "Oh yes, haha! Is good joke yes, very funny. But actually though, we should actually do this for real, yes." When I took out the signature manual on Thursday everybody was just like "Oh holy shit you actually brought it?" and I triumphantly declared "Hell yeah! Let's get drunk and talk about condensate pumps!"

So yeah, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff. I got more done that night than I did in some entire weeks of just working on that manual. I think a big part of it was that those guys just respected the balls it took for me to ask under those circumstances, which may be more of what that manual is about rather than the actual systems knowledge. It was a fairly long night as a result of my work-related reasons for wanting that process to continue, but I think everybody had a good time. Nobody got really schwacked, we had work the next day after all, but it was definitely enough to disrupt my sleep appreciably that night. Awesome way to start a work day, and an even more awesome way to start a convention.

Naturally the way that I blearily flopped into bed Thursday night cut out all the prep work that I would ordinarily have done the night before departure. So when I got home Friday still feeling pretty tired and out of it, I rushed through that process. I figured my fursuit tote had everything I needed so I'd just roll with it. Time being fairly short for this excursion, I really didn't want to delay my departure. Turns out that I forgot my undershirts, glove liners, blowers, and a couple non-suiting things I really wish I had. Had to rough it for the weekend I guess!

I wondered a bit if I'd found the right place, but when I was parking and I saw a group of college-aged guys wearing video game and cartoon t-shirts I figured I was at least close. I ran into Kiba Youkai at the front door. She was hanging with Cryo Wolf at the time. Hadn't seen him in awhile. He's a bird now, and changed his name also, but damned if I can't remember the new one. Sorry Cryo! I guess you only get one chance with me. We caught up for awhile before they had to wander off. Unfortunately by then registration had closed, so it looked as though I was going to be in for a pretty quiet start as I wouldn't be allowed to do anything.

Just kidding. I used clever skullduggery and masterful stealth techniques to subterfuge my way into a couple events because coming to a furry con and NOT having fun is a thoroughly unacceptable course of events. The one time I couldn't shadow-jump past the guard I parleyed with "It's a charity event and I brought money." He accepted my terms. Man, if I were rich I'd be a truly unstoppable ninja assassin. Paying people to claim to not have seen you probably isn't as impressive though.

Anyways, the big sneak-in event of the night was the transformation writing panel. Hosts were my long-time favorite Serathin, Joshiah of the eponymous Joshiah's Written Works, and the lovely and charming Lykanos Wulfheart. We had a great time chatting back and forth about our various strange proclivities, as one does at such an event. I seemed to resonate quite a bit with Aaron Blackpaw, so I'll have to be sure to catch up with him again sometime. At one point I was mentioning the example of a wolf character being able to hear machinery noise that humans couldn't, and completely unprompted he asked "Are you talking about Freefall?" So I knew I had a kindred spirit there. Naturally we all got to have a little trip outside because of a fire alarm, the traditional inaugural song of the start of a furry con.

We actually managed to gather in the parking lot and still kinda chat about things a bit out there. Quite orderly, as furry fire fiascos go. They even pushed all the programming back a half-hour so that people would still have time to do their thing. After the panel I stuck around a bit with some interested parties, among them was Kezzism, who despite claiming that she doesn't usually chat people up, was also very fun to talk to. Anyways, there were a few things still going on in the night, but I was starting to feel at least a little bad about all the guards I had to bludgeon unconscious to get into things, so I figured I would stock up on a little more sleep for the journey ahead.

Except it turns out fuuuuuuck that because there was also a fire alarm at 7AM Saturday morning. Be sure to get an early start for your day of fun! You literally don't have a choice. Ah well. I kid, but it actually did make the earlier panels have like, crazy high attendance. The previous night I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the ones that I wanted to, but thanks to the ever-looming threat of a deadly blaze that would consume us all I got to both of them. Bright sides, I guess! I went first to the donut panel by, Six I think? His name was listed as IIIIX, so that's what I'm going with. It was actually listed as a discussion panel and not just like a breakfast meet n greet social thing. I was dubious about us being able to spend an entire hour just talking about donuts, but apparently we can do that thing! Naturally since you can't talk about donuts without donuts around, there were several boxes of them from a local place. Long's Bakery I believe. They were quite good. That place has definitely earned all of the mouth-foaming praise that the locals always heap upon it. I shall have to journey there someday.

The other early-morning staple is the Milfurs panel. They always assume that military types like to get up early in the morning. Kinda off the mark in my case because I'd really much rather give that up. But I guess being forcibly shaken out of bed at an ungodly hour while terribly sleep-deprived put me in the proper military mood. There were just a couple of us there, but our host Furowulf Hagstrom did a good job keeping us all engaged. It's always nice to hear from Commander Kitsune of course, and a few others filtered in and out. I mentioned later on when I saw him that Furo and I happened to both be Kodipup suiters, so he added me to the Telegram chat of that particular demographic. Quite an unexpected and interesting development if I do say so myself!

There was a panel where you eat/discuss Oreos as well, but I'd already gotten to the point where my pancreas would never speak to me again, so I opted out. It was interesting to learn later though, that somehow eating cookies raised a not-insubstantial amount of charity dollars. Perhaps I should've stopped by to do my part then? I'll keep that in mind for next time around. Next up was the fursuit parade. It had been murderously humid that whole time and the air was mostly water, to the point that it just rained most of that day, chasing the parade inside. That was probably for the best, because even indoors with some semblance of climate management it was a sweaty, choking affair. I still really gave it my all though. Honorable mention on my death certificate will go to that cheetah behind me that was playing music on a little boombox the whole time. Because I mean like, if there's music playing and you're in a fursuit, you can't just like... NOT dance. It's impossible! So yeah, I danced all like 800 yards of the parade and caused my fursuit to gain like five pounds. Charming! Anyways, the parade led to my new Kodibrodi introducing me to Bloosh and we carried on for a bit. I was glad for the contact. Suiting really brought home how few people that I knew were there. Anyways, with my last remaining strength I thought I might at least TRY the out of doors, and even got to chat a bit with fellow orange thing Geomutt, so it was a worthy outing.

I managed to recover from my ordeal in time to catch Amateur Hour which played host to a handful of newer comedians on the furry scene. The big standout there was definitely Chris Da Comedy Rabbit. I can't find any links for him but he had a great set about a few subjects very near and dear to my heart, transformation being one of them, and he made fun of them in exactly the right way. It was really something! By that point I realized that the morning donuts had been the only thing I'd eaten all day, so I hit up Kiba for some food. I got to have some sushi with her friend whose name escapes me and also Quotation Marks. I was still really cruising at that point, but that came to a stop. Heh, it's been awhile since I've eaten a meal and then just plowed straight into near-unconsciousness. I guess it was just a few things catching up with me. There was still fun to be had though. I needed to have that fun!

Tough choice between the fursuit dance competition and the Dragget Show up next. I went with the latter because I've seen many dance comps but only like 0.4 Dragget Shows, and they also didn't have an elevated dancefloor in the main hall so if I didn't elbow-drop my way to a good seat at the dance comp I would've been also only seeing half of that performance. I'm happy with my decision to watch the Dragget Show though, as I can't even really describe just what the heck happened in there. Like, if you've ever really looked at the plot of Hamlet, it's hard to really get a grasp on. The best thing to give for context is that at one point the main character is kidnapped by pirates and it's like, not even that major of a plot point. Similarly, the show being attacked by Klingons and the host being presented with a fur-thong-draped disembodied mannequin crotch signed by the hotel staff were in fact, NOT the weirdest things to happen during the show. That's the best I can do. The rest of it really defies all logic or description.

Next up, was of course, the late-night sexy writing panel. It was the same crowd as the TF panel, more or less, but that was a good crowd and we were all elated for the chance to swear and talk about bumping uglies like we always wanted to anyways. I don't know why we bother NOT doing that! This panel was also one that somehow managed to raise charity money. I don't know how these guys do it! At the end of the convention they'd had something like 25 charity events, yet more than twice that many events submitted charity money. Crafty buggers, these ones. Anyways in this case the hook was that we could pay Joshiah or Serathin to tell embarrassing stories about themselves, which was an excellent challenge to be honest. I won't repeat the tales of interest here, not out of respect or anything, but because you guys didn't pay for any adorable rabbit wheelchairs in exchange for the privilege of hearing them, so this would basically be piracy of the worst kind, the kind that targets paralyzed rabbits!

Someone who called himself 'Firefox' recognized my CarryOn badge, which was neat. I chatted with him for awhile after the panel was over. I would've loved to get him to join the forum for the comic, but he said that he'd had enough bad experiences that he didn't want to chance it. Apparently we've got one of the much better-regulated comic boards over at the Cross Time Cafe, judging by the lawless thunderdomes that this guy encountered. I do hope I can find him again. His name was too generic to search and I gave him my handle but never took down any better identifiers for him. Here's hoping!

By then I had successfully done a dead, so I turned in, hoping to finally achieve that sleep thing I'd been hearing so much about. Given that I'd woken up at 6ish for 6ish days in a row though, my brain just went "so we're waking up at 6 right? That's the thing we're doing?" So there I was, shuffled unwittingly out of bed on a Sunday morning without even donuts to keep me company. Truly there is no greater injustice in this world. Since I had a bunch of time with nobody around I decided I'd work on a comedy act for the talent show that evening. Ordinarily there would be more planning that went into such a thing, but I had a couple hours to myself so I put something together. I figured I could take the engineering approach to preps and just drill my set a hundred times so that it's completely routine by the time I'm up there.

A lot of people don't know that's how pilots, astronauts, reactor operators and other high-pressure technical professionals train, because it makes a crisis so un-cinematic. The famously emotionless "Houston... we have a problem." in Apollo 13 was actually fairly true to life. In fact, when the real astronauts watched the footage they heard that pregnant pause in the middle of the phrase and were like "Wow, what a fucking drama queen. Quit chewing the scenery and start relaying some damage reports ya fuckin' prima donna!" So in reality, the mood of the room is even more flat and boring than that. You know how when you're bored you'll like, repeat a single word over and over again a hundred times until it barely even resembles a word anymore and it feels like you're just making funny sounds to amuse yourself? That's kind of what drilling a casualty scenario is like. You just repeat the same sequence over and over so many times that you exhaust all emotion that you could ever possibly feel towards that set of circumstances. That way when the crisis actually happens, your mood more resembles "Well I guess I'd better brush my teeth before bed" than "Oh fuck we're gonna die!" Make it feel routine, and then you won't lose your head when the pressure is on.

That was the theory anyways. We'll come back to this later now that I'm done building dramatic tension for it, because the actual talent show didn't happen until the end of the day. The rehearsal/audition portion was in the morning, so of course I went to that. I was glad that I previously had a chance to practice my guard skullduggery, because that's basically what it took to become a late-game entry. I encountered the host of the show BCBreakaway at the practice run and asked if I could just roll up on the whole thing with no notice. He said I had to register before I could perform. "So, does... right now work?"
"Sure, let me get your information down and we'll see what you've got."
I figured it would be a process like that. There's only so much order that one can impose on furries, so people with strict, constructionist interpretations of the rules are fairly rare. I ran through my bit real quick, and I was in.

I proceeded after that to charity Dungeons and Dragons, which was a delightfully insane romp that represented exactly the sort of nonsense one would expect if they put a bunch of furries in charge of saving the world. I really enjoyed the way that everyone's characters reflected the unique proclivities of their characters. Serathin was of course, always turning into things, extending to changing into his fursuit to "get into character" for the role he was playing. For the good of all that is holy I will not even discuss the unfathomable horrors that they had to perpetrate in order to overcome the truly menacing "Carbohydrake". This year was Canadian-themed, so it was a dragon made of pancakes and maple syrup. In the end they managed to prevail and nobody died (permanently) so we're calling it a win.

I filled in some of the rest of the time with Jackbox party games, wherein I met a Tiger called Funyuns and the enigmatic Victor Dragoat, whose name turns up absolutely no results, even on Google. It was a struggle to dig up his info, I'll tell ya that much. I hope he appreciates the effort that I went through to name-drop him. Hi Victor! Quipfur was a little poorly attended, but it was still a good time. It was mostly everybody making fun of Firr, but that's always a good time so I could hardly object. Serathin had been a host for all three of those events, and was basically dead on his feet by then, but was still a good sport about the whole thing.

By this point I was noticing that I was running out of CarryOn business cards. I'd been conscripted to advertise for the comic and the author had furnished me with a badge of my character in the strip and some cards to hand out to interested folk. Burying con tables in business cards is common practice at cons, but I was thinking that it would work better if I worked my pitch into conversation instead. The reality was rather the inverse of what I expected actually. Not much working it into conversation, really. The people who I talked about it with all already knew about the comic. To my surprise those business cards quite reliably disappeared from the tables I left them at. I had to go back and restock because I hadn't put enough in my wallet a couple times. I've always seen people leaving cards and ads on tables, but I would always see the pile just grow steadily throughout the con, so I never thought much of the effectiveness of the practice. Apparently some people do indeed take notice. I've only got five or so left, so a fair number of people were interested enough at least to take the card with them. So if anybody's considering that as an advertising vector, I can say it'll at least get your name out there. As to the throughput on actual ROI, only time will tell.

At the end of the day, it was finally time for the talent show. Heh, I really wished I could've socialized a bit more with the other performers there, as I had a fair amount of time backstage, but I was still in "drill it a million times" mode, especially with the time limit that had been opposed on me. I do always tend to struggle with shortening things... Anyways, I'd thought to do fursuit comedy, because I've got a much more relaxed stage presence when I've got the protection of a cartoon animal to hide behind, but my suit was still about 20% water and I had no way to dry it, so that wasn't happening. That's what my bit sprang from actually. Talking about why it is that fursuits make it easier to get up in front of people and perform, and what the process of learning about that was like.

Maybe I'll put up the whole set (or what I yet remember of it) later. I'd hoped to find a video of the talent show online somewhere, but even in the cartoonishly long delay that it's taken me to write this journal, none has turned up, so it looks like I'll have to remember it myself. It was a good show, I like to think. I figured that trying out that sort of thing at a small con would be a good stepping stone for me. Then of course I got up there and there were a LOT of people in the crowd. Seeing the room later with the house lights up made me realize there were even more than I thought. So yeah, I guess it was fitting that I came up with a panic-proof drill and a set that was about social anxiety. I feel like that aspect really resonated with the audience. The other host of the show said that she definitely understood where I was coming from. The furries are most certainly a weird and anxious people, and that is why they are my people.

Anyways, right after the show ended was closing ceremonies. Numbers all were promising, and it seemed like everybody had a good time. Serathin's endless slaving away netted him a spot as guest of honor next year. Just goes to prove that the only reward for hard work is more hard work! A lengthy charity auction had right-shifted the whole schedule a bit, moving back both the talent show and closing ceremonies. It seemed a shame to just run off, but I had to work on Monday and the current projection had me arriving a fair bit into that day. The complications of cramming a con into a regular weekend made themselves known right then. So I said a few quick goodbyes and I was on my way. Naturally I was totally dead that day at work, but I managed to get it together in time for the first NRC exam, so all was well.

Alright, final thoughts on IFC then. I may have attended this con just because circumstances changed such as to favor my attendance, sure. The qualifications schedule that I'm going to be on for the next year or two is REALLY tight. That means no breaks for fun stuff. Next year I'm going to be booked up for FC, BLFC, DenFur, Furthemore... hell it would be quicker to list the cons that this training plan wouldn't cover up. I may have been shoved into IFC by circumstance, but I'm glad that I went. It's got the small-con atmosphere to it, but it brings enough experience and talent to the table to have a lot of big-con fun. I definitely agree with Draggor, in his assessment that "secondary events is really the place to be". That opinion was borne out by basically every event that I went to there. The second stage really embodied the con's practice of letting events unravel themselves in the best possible way. Not really sticking to the schedule, the hosts not having control of everything, an unruly audience stealing the show, they're all things that can doom a performance, but a lot of the second stage events really made it part of the charm. I love that they don't have that dogmatic adherence to the "things we have to do" and "the way we're supposed to do it" that you see some places. We're not supposed to do any of this any particular way. I think people can get wrapped up in the work (and staffing is a lot of work mind you) and forget that we're here to have fun, and fun often happens in strange and unexpected ways. The easy-going roll-with-it attitude really makes for a fun weekend getaway, and definitely keeps my time from becoming so booked solid that I run myself into the ground in the course of the thing.

The other big thing I noticed was that I knew fucking nobody there. Yes, of course it's not literally zero. I ran into Kiba straight out of the gate after all. It certainly felt like a completely different crowd though. Yeah sure, a lot of the headliners were familiar, but that's because they do all the cons ever. The attendance may have all been from another country for all the connection that I had to them. I'd gotten complacent having built up a good social base over the years, so it was jarring to try and go back to the "crowd-surf a huge wave of strangers" style that I had back in the day. I was a bit out of practice with that sort of thing. I guess it fairly well demonstrates the fact that I've been to a whole bunch of east coast cons and a fair selection of west coast ones, but only a tiny scattering of middle coast ones. Watching footage of the fursuit parade really brought it home for me. I don't think I could've named any of those guys, at least none that I hadn't met for the first time that weekend. Ah well, I've gotta get used to my new digs sometime, and this is as good a way to start as any. With basically anything that I'd have to fly to off the list for 2019, I damn well better get used to hanging out with the local crowd or this will be a really tough year. And really, these guys can cultivate a great vibe and put on a really fun show. I'm sure there are plenty of new friends out there that could contribute to many good times to come.

Well, given that it's been more than a month and IFC is coming up... next weekend, (holy donkeyballs when did THAT happen?) I guess I should finally knuckle down and actually write this thing.

Looking back, I find Kathy Nightstar's summary of my convention reports to be fairly accurate much of the time. "I arrived after a hellacious journey to get there, met some old friends, met some new friends, got hammered, had fun, and helped out with the con staff, not necessarily in that order." I'm actually missing almost everything out of that summary this time around except for the friends and the fun, which really is the core of the con! So I guess this one gets points for efficiency. In any case, my journey there was actually fairly uneventful, my relocation to Ohio having put me actually quite close to the target zone for this particular gathering. Wednesday is a pretty early arrival, but Anthrocon seems to expand temporally every year, so I could be fairly assured of at least some amount of goings-on that would be going on. Plus that day was a holiday so I didn't have to work. I ran out of reasons not to be there pretty quick! Which, if my approach in writing this con report is any indication, running out of reasons not to do it is apparently the only factor that ever leads to me doing anything. I say, shamefully closing 6 other tabs that held things I was using to avoid writing this up even though I do claim to enjoy making these things.

In any case, my preliminary examinations of the hotel lobby were about as one might expect a mid-week survey of a not-yet-a-con to be, but I soon turned up an old acquaintance, Moth Monarch. In the course of things she introduced me to a charming insect compatriot Hakul Bee who was fairly new to the Anthrocon circuit but seemed ready to tackle it with a truly intimidating ravenous enthusiasm, and someone named Erik Sheep who defied expectations beautifully by actually being a snow leopard. MothMonarch seemed bowed by her lot a bit, having suffered appreciably under the yoke of becoming Anthrocon's de-facto promotional art producer. She'd apparently been subject to one of those devastatingly common furry miscommunications and received only days' notice of a big chunk of the required iconography for this year. Somehow she'd nonetheless made the magic happen and her palpable joy at seeing her work literally cover the walls and line the streets of the city cut through all that justly earned exhaustion. Naturally I was loath to speak with her about work, but I was still eagerly anticipating the commission that I'd contracted her for. Here's hoping she recovers soon and I'll have something cool to show off once that happens. Of course she's gotta move to Canada first. Hmm, good thing her art is worth waiting for!

I'd just wanted to stop a bit for a chat, but staff members do seem to aggregate somewhat where a few of them can be found stationary, so a handful did indeed deposit there over the course of my conversation with the exhausted bug that I'd settled there with. AV, events, programming, a few department heads, and in the end a large segment of the Conway family either came by to visit or outright joined us in our pre-con loitering. Watching the dynamics of Uncle Kage's Kagekin is an entertaining and superlatively engaging insight into the kind of crucible that can produce such a unique personality as our indomitable convention chairman. Hearing from his mother of the time she was asked "How are you going to get into the back of the car with a drink in each hand?" and the response that came so easily was "You lack ambition." gives one an excellent window as to the tenor of that environment. I've had multiple people remark on the fact that my personality makes a lot more sense to them after they meet my father, and it seems I'm not alone in taking on such an impression from my forebearers. Seeing a little slice of the day-to-day that he came from makes it much clearer where Kage got his crisis management skills and resilience in the face of insanity.

It was also a fun window into convention operations to see the way people would pop up with reports to deliver to the Big Cheese. Some of which were quite informative as to the state of things, some of which far less so. I won't speak of the specifics of the former category as I gained the impression that many of those delivering such briefings assumed that only staff members were present at our illustrious little corner cluster. At any given time they were between 70 and 90% correct so as such they might be forgiven that mistaken assertion. In any case I'll keep such things close to my chest for the moment as failing to do so might constitute either a significant breach of trust, OR a reason to retroactively correctify that assertion by making me staff as well. Both outcomes that truly chill the soul. I do feel comfortable in addressing the second category though, as that one has far more entertainment potential and a demonstrably lesser operational security risk. Several times, the news of the hour arrived in a way that approximated the format "Hey, remember that thing we talked about? It's fixed now." Even as I moved to compliment them on actually making certain to maintain decorum around unprivileged ears, on the third such occasion the target of these missives admitted "I actually don't remember what they're talking about. I usually just nod and send them on their way assuming everything's fine now." Perhaps not the most engaged command and control one might have, but I suppose such reports are far better than "Hey, that problem we were having is still totally fucked and we don't know what to do." which demonstrably, is also a thing that happens. There was also a brief flash of panic as several lawmen came into the lobby all at once, moving with purpose into the attached restaurant. Fortunately that purpose was to eat lunch and not deal with some awful thing that had happened outside our notice.

In the course of all this someone asked me if they'd moved the zoo to the "prison cafeteria" again this year and I was overcome with righteous indignation that someone had came up with that metaphor to describe the austere, distantly-located basement that had passed for a lounge in previous years, and that someone was not me. It seems my prejudice against that person was such that I've forgotten their name, so that will have to be vengeance enough. Regardless, the zoo was disappointingly still not in the Westin, but was in a somewhat more respectable neighborhood of the convention center this time around, so I suppose that's all well and good. The traffic in and out of our little lobby sewing circle was a little disorienting, but in a way it was part of the charm. It was all so fresh and engaging. The way these people that I'd never met would strike up with me without provocation and share so much about themselves was a perfect distillation of the furry pathos that I've come to enjoy so much over the years. None of the inefficient niceties and banal pageantries that normally accompany human interaction. We're all here to hang out and have fun but there's just too much fun to have and not enough time for it! So let's skip all the fluff and just pretend like we've known each other for years even though we're both completely new to each other and our paths may never cross again, shall we? We shall, furries. We shall.

This is the part of the journal where I mention Kiba Youkai's name really early to confuse her when she's looking for it later. Hi Kiba! Bet you wish you didn't admit the way that you Ctrl-F my journals now! I really should stop doing that. There's precious few eyes on these things as it is I really can't risk alienating more readers with my shenanigans. Then again, if people didn't want shenanigans they wouldn't be here. Anyways, I got a summons to the airport because Archai and his girl Metric Fox had rolled into town and they were in a market to get to where the party was at. They were very grateful for my assistance, until I mentioned the surge pricing to them at least. I bounced around a bit with Exavier Wolfhymn and Vincent Vontrap, two old favorites who were touring the grounds, as the latter was new to Anthrocon. We actually did that cool waterfall walkway thing under the convention center. Something I'd never actually done before despite the numerous notches on my Anthrocon belt. Heh, if that belt gets too many more notches it won't even be able to hold up a tail anymore. That water-causeway is a fun time, really. It's kind of surreal to be surrounded by waterfall. You see water, you hear water, you feel it in the air. Like the whole of your sensory landscape is occupied by the same stimulus. It's a really useful bit of white noise to cleanse one's palate after indulging in the Technicolor whirlwind of intense sensory bombardment that is a furry con.

After Metric and Arc got all situated, I'd mentioned that it was a little quiet and I was up for whatever they were up for, and apparently that was the dialogue option that I needed to pick to go from a support NPC to a full party member. The adventure that we set off upon was going down to the riverfront to watch the fireworks, this being America's annual declaration of war against the sky and all. It was quite a show, and we'd found our way quite close to the launching zone actually. I was chagrined by the fact that I'd not yet started carrying my anti-rave earplugs on my person, as I now always do at furry cons. I really could've used them so close to the action. Ah well, I got to live a little I suppose. Living it up out there with us were a clowder of Califurries, to include Kaysho, Spottacus and Zarafa. The newly-expanded troupe made our way through the rain back towards the venue. I got to talk to Kaysho a fair bit then as he was the only one who well matched the urgency of my walking pace given the steadily climbing saturation of all our exteriors. We settled on a pattern of hopping from save point to save point, waiting wherever structures appeared overhead, such as not to leave behind the other party members entirely.

The Cali-crew had our final powwow back at the venue any broke up for the next thing. There were actually several proposed next things, but I went with Arc and his contingent up to their room for a room-party-ish gathering. Wasn't too high energy this being so early, but that's the kind of gathering I like to be honest. Featured players were Boof Caribou the caribou whom I'd seen fursuiting on uncountable occasions but never truly been acquainted with Teebone from Sydney who had a nice new set of pup gear that I thought actually looked pretty nice, a first for me in appraising such apparel, and Erro who I got to swap stories with, as he was the only other one there that I had gotten particularly far in the initial recruitment dialogue trees with. I guess I'm just doing all ham-fisted video game metaphors now so stand by for more of those! I did a controlled and reasoned amount of drinking, this being so very early on and all, and had a good time interacting with those assembled. Archai drew some fun parallels between the way that I reacted when he told me that he now had a boyfriend (My response was "Wow, that's pretty gay.") and the way I responded when Metric told me that she was transitioning (Which was: "You know if you eat all that estrogen it's just gonna go straight to your hips"). So yeah I guess the lesson there is that if you really need someone to take your major life announcement not seriously in any way at all, let me have a crack at it! I came to learn that such irreverence was actually rather appreciated because both announcees were fairly anxious about how such news would be received, so having it be massively a non thing was most certainly the right response. Damn, I did a dialogue tree joke already. Gonna have to mine a little deeper from here on. Remind me to never choose journal themes ever again.

Anyways, the con was still young, or hadn't started yet, whatever your opinion on the nature of prepatch content releases is, but there was still a bit of a groundswell of furriness overtaking the land. Just a sampling of my travels contained: a bobble-headed Pikachu that was carrying around one of those golden play button Youtube awards, a blue husky that was scooting about on a motorized unicycle (that was Avwuff, he's one of the recurring characters from the Western zone), I also saw what I tentatively believe to be a Stephen Universe gem repairing another critter's space helmet. Yeah, the place was furrying up alright. I also came across Flacier Fox just by chance. I forget what exact set of circumstances led me to interact so much with that particular random encounter, but I had a good time chatting with him. He's got the unfortunate handicap of being a blue and white canine, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just such a popular design choice that being able to pick him out of the dozen or so other blue and white canine fursuits is a challenge at times. (Av is also an aficionado of that apparently not-terribly-exclusive prestige class.) This came up a fair bit because Flacier remarked on how we were all just ships passing in the night and we'd never encounter each other again through all the crowds and whatnot. So of course I was always looking out for him and I went straight up to him and said 'hey' like nine more times over the course of the weekend. Partly just to cheekily prove him wrong because "Fuck you, you don't know the future!" and partly because I'll have none of this depressing existential shit here, Flacier! This is a furry con, it's the one place where I DON'T do that!

There was an apparently-traditional hangout on the street near where they were projecting a game of Asteroids onto the convention center. Big blend of a crowd there, lots of California, but also some locals, and fellow RPI alum Nunavut, too many to name, but all definitely worth hanging out with. There was talk of a trip to Primanti Brothers, but I turned that side quest down. Seeing the critical mass worth of furry that was preparing to explode all over the town, I knew that I'd need my strength for the next day. So I returned to the inn to recover my HP. (Oh dear I don't think I can stop myself from doing this now.) Several repeat-offenders in my encounters Thursday morning, but the one who had the quest I needed (eat breakfast) happened be Kaysho, so we set about doing that. He said that he knew a really great breakfast place, so I took him at his word. I was a little confused when he took me to TenPenny, which is by a fair margin not a breakfast place at all. I assumed he knew something that I didn't and rolled with it. What I did not know that he knew was that they do indeed serve some pretty good breakfast there. What he did not know that he didn't know, was that they only served breakfast on weekends, and despite the party having gotten rolling by then, this was, prescriptively, not yet a weekend. Small letdown there followed by a big letdown in that they were out of the local cider they have that I like. Ah well. If lobster bisque and barbeque pork flatbread isn't considered a breakfast then are we really even in America?

After what was technically a break of my fast so I'm counting it, Kaysho and I met up with Zarafa and Scotty Minotaur to go wait in the registration line. Ordinarily I'd wait for the mid-day dip for that sort of thing. The pattern that I've observed for first-day registration tends to be that a whole bunch of try-hards crash the gate right at the beginning and then a whole bunch of the-opposite-of-try-hards stumble in there in a panic right before it closes. As such this was a sub-optimal time for this particular mission, but having the right characters in the party makes all the difference. Having people to talk to in line turns drudgery into just another great con socializing minigame where you try like hell to maintain a coherent exchange when you're surrounded by, and indeed speaking to a whole bunch of easily-distracted animal folk. Kaysho had downloaded the Sponsor DLC, but he stuck out the base-tier line with us just to be nice. I'm glad they let him cut when he got to the front because it was really sweet of him to not abandon his drooling proletariat friends even when it would've been most advantageous for him to do so. Quite a length to go to for the privilege of listening to us jaw-jack about cheeseburgers for an hour or so. It sounds like I'm exaggerating but that actually was a substantial portion of our conversation.

The open mic was after that. I went again because those tend to be fun. Last time I went I spent a TON of time preparing a set and then didn't get picked because 2 Gryphon didn't follow the signup list and just picked people at random from the audience. Naturally I did the mature thing and resented it for years, then showed up completely unprepared out of spite. I ended up not getting picked again, but it wasn't as offensive this time around as they've just done away with the signup list entirely. Lots of great acts up there, including some pretty crazy like, high-concept performance art pieces that I'm at a loss to properly explain, and that's really saying something! The definite pull quote there is "The good spot. It's where the dick is." I'd explain, but I think it's even better without context. The only way that could be improved would be by putting it on a business card. Next up there was a writers' meet and greet. I was kind of on the fence about it because those tend to be a little unreliable. A lot of the time those common-interest meetups don't have much content or drive besides "Well, we're all here, everybody hang out I guess?" which can work, but certainly doesn't always. It was really the only game in town though, and I do enjoy talking to other writers. So I went for it. I'm certainly glad that I did, as it was a great time! There was a bit of a starting lull as we all wondered just what we were meant to be doing there, but we got it sorted eventually and started being fairly social and such.

I talked a fair bit with the person who sat down next to me, which I really think was Silver Cheetah. I have trouble because I find myself conflating cheetahs now a month later. Suffice it to say that I encountered Silver, Spruce Cheetah, and Seon Cheetah at different times in the con. This was at least one of those cheetahs at one of those times. Speaking of species conflation, I had a big moment of that when I saw a writer that I recognized with an otter tail. I had to flip through "Well, it's not Alfor Alto, it's not Friday Donnely, it's not Summercat... fuck, why are there so many author otters?" The authotter this time wasSignificant Otter, whom I remembered from Furthemore and I had a good time chatting with. It's a clever name. Clever enough that dozens of people are using it and I have no way of telling which one this was, so no link for this one. Man, I'm really slipping on my bibliographies here. Skunkbomb had some interesting things to share, and I was keen to listen in on them as I believe he's appeared in both FANG and CLAW, as well as presumably other very sharp writing anthologies. There were also Laika and Safler who I jawed with a bit. Sorry to say that apart from one sharing the name of a Russian space dog and the other being a tiger I don't remember much. I always hate when I hit that saturation point and lose people. Hopefully my brain will be taking better notes next time, guys! Joe Strike came by and was so flattered to hear that I'm a fan that he gave me a copy of one of his comics! I'd feel guilty if I wasn't also doing the fan-exchange in the other direction. This was my first time seeing Serathin in his human form, as he fursuits near-constantly at conventions. He's a big inspiration to me, to the point that I wrote fanfiction of one of his characters once. When we talked, he happened to mention "Oh yeah, I've read just about all your stories. You've done some really good work." I could've left right then, before the con had even barely started, and it still would've been one of the best cons of all time. Not only does he remember me, he really likes my work! aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAUGHH that so fucking AMAZING! Having gotten my heart started again after that I found McClaw and spent most of the rest of the time catching up with him, after of course dragging him over to another old friend Kamau and hoping they'd get along instead of reacting the way cats typically do when presented with an unfamiliar cat. I think that went pretty well, as they were still talking when I had to duck out for the next event.

The next thing was very much not fun. I knew it wasn't going to be, but it was the most important event of the whole con for me. It was a gathering called 'To Absent Friends', which as far as I know is unique to Anthrocon. As the name implies, it's a chance for us to tell the stories of people who aren't around anymore. I knew that I wanted to be there, because I felt the need to tell the story of my experiences with J Badger, or as I nearly always encountered him, his fursona Nom Crunch. I've spoken here before about my time with him, mostly in my Furthemore journals. The most recent one especially. When his passing really hit me, I was quite struck with regret that I'd never told him what an impact he'd left on me. What our time together had meant to me and how I'd been changed by it. I couldn't abide having never properly told that story. He was a big part of my process of opening up and becoming more social, so much so that now that I've got a huge bank of names to try and recall every convention. Even if it was just in front of a handful of other people who came there to grieve, I feel some sense of peace having acknowledged what his life meant to me in this way. What really brought that event all together, was the fact that Archai came along to support me. I was so glad for his support to lean on, but I also really wanted him there because he deserved to hear the epilogue to that story. The first two people outside my family that I ever really showed any emotional vulnerability towards both died tragically not long after I forged that connection. J Badger was the second. It left me, for a long time, afraid to form such bonds. That's the reason that opening up is scary, because of what you stand to lose. It took a long time, but Archai became the sort of friend that I'd want to be there to listen to me mourn. I am grateful beyond all measure for his phenomenal compassion, and for his tireless efforts to help me open up that door that I'd thought was barred forever.

Heh, so yeah. That gut-wrenching sudden tonal shift that you got just from reading this was hellacious to experience in person. Yet it was cleansing in a way. I got all of that out and could proceed to resume having fun. Of course that transition takes a bit, so I just wandered around some and encountered more wild pokemon as I wandered about. One of the many iterations of Syber was encountered this way, as was the similarly ubiquitous Klovix. I see him a million times all over the place when I'm on the far side of the continent, but this was my first time seeing him come by this way. I chatted him up for a bit because he looked a little out of place with his not knowing quite so many people out here. He's a good dude, I'm sure he'll figure it out. Someone called Spearmintz was also in attendance at some point but I haven't been able to look up their info. I'll have to unlock that mystery another day. I also caught up with Zantal, another west coast people that I've spent a fair amount of time with. He actually grew up right near where I just moved to in Ohio, so that actually left us with quite a bit to talk about in addition to just catching up. I've been short on local contacts, so hopefully he'll come by some time and he can show me around the area. We went to the dance together and Zan introduced me to Loco. When asked if we'd had any prior contact, I came back with the completely normal response of "Oh yeah! One time he taught me how to make spaghetti on Twitter." I really wish I was exaggerating because that would mean I could actually conceive of something stranger than reality but that apparently-nonsensical sentence is exactly what I said and exactly what had happened. Loco is a professional chef and I happened to catch some key bits of advice from his Twitter account once upon a time. Truly these are the final moments of coherence from a man who has utterly lost control of his life. After socializing a bit more, I figured that since I was there, I ought to bust at least one move real quick before turning in. And by that I apparently mean that I tore up the dance floor until just before the place closed down. So a decent start there I guess. I woke up at like 5 AM with debilitating cramps in my calves, so I guess I really gave it my all. A good feeling to be sure. Well, the cramps aren't a good feeling, but knowing that it came from numerous moves well-busted is a good feeling.

I figured I'd head out a little early to get some rest, but there were friend folk in the lobby on my way out so I couldn't just cruise right by them. I hadn't seen nearly enough of Zarafa yet, so it was nice to get a chance to snuggle is purple squishy softness for... okay far longer than I planned, but if I die from getting trapped in a giraffe hug then that must've been in the cards somewhere. Who am I to defy the ordained way of things? Anyways, Zarafa headed off to bed. Naturally he mentioned that if I hadn't yet seen enough of him I was free to accompany him on his way such that I might... see a little more of him. Big furry milestone in that hearing things like that doesn't weird me out anymore. It feels good to be able to handle that calmly and decline in a way that doesn't make people feel like a jerk for bringing it up. Back in the day when I'd get flustered about it I could see the way it made people feel so bad that they'd made me uncomfortable. It was a difficult time. One of many things that fur-immersion therapy has helped me with. Naturally I'd gotten to catching up with Erro and Sparf by then, the latter of which was kind enough to provide even more such furmersion treatments in his deliriously overexerted state. 2AM is about the time that everyone starts asking me if I'm drunk even if I haven't had a lick of alcohol all day, and if I act anything like this when I'm tired I can kind of understand why. We were on the near side of 4:00 by then so I was probably right there along with him. Sparf isn't normally a stone serious sort, but apparently he was letting out all his innermost thoughts this night. Some of which I honestly feel it would be a breach of confidence to print in a public spot.

One graciously shared brain dropping of Sparf's that simply begs to be shared though, was his booming proclamation as he wrapped his arm around me and yanked me tight to him, petting my head affectionately. "Ah, I love this one! I can flirt with him all day long and he never even notices! It's fan-tas-tic." I was, and stoutly remain, profoundly uncertain in regards to how to feel about that assertion. In point of fact, he was quite correct. Thinking back on it, there's nothing in our fairly storied history together that I would unironically describe as "flirting", and I do believe I said something to that effect in the moment. Sparf seemed vindicated, in an odd way. "See, I knew it! I never learned how to flirt, it's such a disaster. I'm truly flirtless!" By then we'd both said "flirt" enough times that it sounded like a silly Dr Seuss nonsense word and we were giggling about it. In the end I thought it was kind of sweet. I can empathize a fair bit with Sparf's position, as I've not really any useful experience in making any kind of subtle overture towards someone, so I'd probably be just as ham-fisted in my attempts were I to even summon the temerity to try. It seems that the strangest and most interesting revelations never appear in the form you'd expect. And as I bid goodnight to those assembled, I felt as though "Having middle-aged men hitting on me to practice their hitting-on-dudes skills isn't so bad." was definitely one such revelation. Though for the record, Zarafa does not need to practice. I actually had to weigh on his offer for a bit, and with me that's really saying something.

That late night freed me from the curse of waking up way early before anybody else was up, so that was kind of nice. As it was I arrived on scene about lunch time and got hooked up with a crew that was in fact, headed to lunch. I found Kirisha in the lobby and he said that he had designs on food, so I sat and chatted with him while we waited for his designs to come to fruition. Conveniently enough, he planned to invite Nimbus Kaden, a mutual acquaintance that I was also hoping to see on this adventure. Naturally Nimbus flaked on it, but we still managed a good group. I thought it was really funny when Kirisha tried to sell me on the outing saying "there will be girls there". I expressed my cynicism about that assertion as only I can, and just as he was making some snappy retort, a group arrived to join us. One consisting of, naturally, three men. I knew he was lying! Hah! The group did grow to eventually include two ladies by the time we headed out, so he was, by the strictest technical definition, not lying. There were, technically, eventually, multiple ladies present. Such a strange inversion this occasion was. Typically the whole herding cats paradigm of coordinating furries makes groups very mercurial and prone to spontaneously fissioning when any concerted attempt to move is made. We finally rolled out for Sushi Kim's and somehow gained people. The final loadout roster included Draco 18s, Restrained Raptor, Shade Raptor, Toozday, Mattias, Campion, and Axel the Cat, the one person I'd had contact with before through the hypnofurs chat, and all the names too generic for me to ever feasibly find links for: Zane, Snow, Matt and Mike. Matt and Mike were father and son, making their environs extremely awkward for them I'm sure, but they were good sports about it. And also we came to find that the group was roughly 33% people named Matt. So yeah, we accidentally like a dozen people for lunch. Sometimes you roll the dice and find that when they finally settle the table is entirely covered with a multitude of dice and you have no idea where they all came from. Yahtzee!

The kimchi, vegetables and little side-dish things came out with the drink that I ordered, so everybody just kind of assumed they were mine. I was pretty sure that they were supposed to be for the table, but I didn't fight them on it. Speaking of my drink, I had gotten a bottle of Soju because I'd never heard of it and cons are a great time for adventures. Turns out it's a leveled-up version of sake that hits a little harder. I found it surprisingly palatable though, despite its increased octane compared to the more traditional rice spirit. Trouble was nobody else really wanted any and they serve it in a 400 mL bottle. I was kind of glad for having the crowd to slow the meal down a little bit so I could make it through that thing. I still ended up being the last one finished by a fair bit. Now of course I drank the whole damn thing because my mom didn't raise no quitter but damn, that was a bit of a journey. It made me feel really bad about all those years that I gave Archai shit for eating so slowly. It actually is a pretty bad feeling knowing that you're the one holding everyone up. I'd say I ought to just drink heavily whenever I'm eating out with him, but that might send the wrong message, and would be terribly expensive besides. In any case, the whole platoon survived the meal. I talked a bit with Toozday on the way back about the lovely suit she was wearing. I believe the account I linked for her above is the maker and not the pilot, because she said that she bought the suit recently, so I'm actually in the dark about who exactly was inside the mask. In any case, I really admired the fur shaping and the paw design of the suit. Her paws were basically a real-life version of the Rick Griffin cankles where the leg just kind of flares out evenly into a paw, like whoever was designing this animal in Unigraphics went a little too crazy with the mesh surface tool. It's a really cool look, very natural and fluid. So I'll definitely be adding Kandori Creations to my research list as I continue tentatively eyeing prospective suitcrafters to select one to make my dreams come true. Hopefully I'll really get on that soon. This has been a much more difficult and complicated process than I expected, but there's no denying that Blackjack is showing his age by now. Ah well, a matter for another day.

After the breakup of the 103rd Sushi Brigade I met up with Nameless Imp and Lord Grey to engage in the venerated tradition of Uncle Kage's story hour. That's an event that holds the unique distinction of being very difficult for me to put into words. That's quite something given that most other occasions I spit out enough words about a given event that someone could do a passable dramatization of it in a courtroom if necessary. If I had to choose though, I'd say the best encapsulation of the tone of the evening was that Kage repeatedly referred to breasts as "Jibbly-Jobblies". Despite all my love of detail, I think that phrase really says it all.

My next encounter was with the indomitable Ace Fox and his new betrothed Kitsune Clover. (Yeah, he's gonna marry a girl. I know, I was shocked too.) We caught up on new developments in each others' lives, and even hatched a plan to help me actually fursuit this con. The Omni is a great hotel, and I do like staying there with Lanhao, as he has a long track record of being an excellent roommate, but this con we were at full "The sun is a deadly lazer" conditions, and the walk all the way down William Penn Place is an impassable deathmarch when you're covered in a cubic yard of adorable cloth dog. I'd yet to unload my fursuit from my car, as I was basically counting on a staging area to open up. Since Ace said that he was interested in the chance to get both gen 1 and gen 2 of his suit out there at the same time, I asked if he could provide such a staging area from his vantage at the Drury. He agreed, and I retrieved the old Ace to deliver it there. Ace fanboyed a bit over Mori as we hung out there in front of the Westin, but eventually everybody had places to be. We came to find that Mori was in a tough spot being unable to locate his place to be, so another plan came together. I had Ace just take the suit to his place. That freed me up to guide Mori to the Omni, a route I knew fairly well for obvious reasons. Apparently he'd been invited to a party there and was guiding an already suitably-partied friend along with him. Playing drunk babysitter for a fursuiter is a formidable task even dressed as a human. I've no idea how he manages. Must be something to do with canine herding instincts. Of course Mori is one of those suiters that's dressed up like 27 hours a day at cons and is probably a highlander or something. He must just have it figured out by now. Anyways, having gotten him into the right building I of course gave him that most uncomfortable Johnny on the Spot experience of asking if he remembered me. Naturally he did not, but I can't take that too hard. He's super popular and kinda all over the place a lot of the time. Plus when he asked me to clarify I said that we'd roomed together at FAU and not Furthemore by mistake so apparently I also suck at this. I guess there's a reason I have to write all this shit down. Better luck next time I guess!

Alright, to explain what happened next I'm going to have to back up a bit to flesh out a thread that wound through this entire day thus far. Yes, I know, these things are plenty complicated enough when they have a straightforward chronology without me having to jump around, but for this one I've gotta go all Chrono Trigger on this to uncover the deep mystical lore of my own goddamn life and by virtue of having not lost interest yet you're along for the ride so let's do this! So this will be another one of those stories where I don't use somebody's name because they were enough of a pain that I'd feel bad connecting him publicly to this story. I'm gonna call him Resasuke for reasons that people who have seen Aggretsuko will understand. And people who haven't watched Aggretsuko can go fucking watch it right now because it will be the greatest goddamn thing that has happened to your eyeballs this entire year. Seriously, it's on Netflix right now. This journal will be here when you get back. Go watch adorable panda office adventures for like a couple hours, you'll thank me for prompting you to do it. Anyways, the Cliff's Notes there is (I know, I'm summarizing? Better strap the fuck in for this one.) that Resasuke in the show is this fairly inoffensive guy who's just like... really spaced out. He operates on a different frequency than everyone else in the world and this often causes friction between him and the other characters, friction that he is unable to even perceive, let alone do anything about.

Resasuke's namesake in the story of my life is a contact that I know through college, and he's fairly new to the IRL participation side of the furry fandom. Given that I was a part of influencing him to put himself out there and really dive into this strange and colorful world, I felt as though it were a bit incumbent upon me to help him navigate the seething hordes of strange creatures that descended upon this locale at about this time every year. I certainly wish I had someone to walk me through things when I stumbled into Anthrocon as my first convention. It was slow going though. I could answer his questions and point out a few things, but this was leading the proverbial horse to water. The rest of the time it was teeth-pulling to get him to do... anything. Like, I understand that the social environment can be pretty intense and not everybody wants to leap straight into that, but you've got options, man! Go to one of the gaming rooms, go to the zoo to hang out, pet fursuiters in the corridors, do literally anything other than run off extremely far down a disused segment of the convention hall and sit there on your phone. Ugh. I felt a little bad giving up on my immovable object after a few hours, but I like to think that it was more a case of admitting that maybe I couldn't be of any help to him. Some things are best experienced at one's own pace, and after a certain point, pushing doesn't really help anymore.

Semi-happy ending, though. He apparently got it figured out in the most inconvenient way possible. So, partial-yay, I guess. What had happened was that he'd messaged me in the morning saying that he'd gotten a new badge and he needed help getting it fitted for a clip so he could wear it. I had a badge puncher so I said that I'd help him out. I brought it with me and I told him to let me know where to meet him. We agreed on that, and what could have been a simple, straightforward interchange that would have taken literally seconds to accomplish turned into an all-day catastrofuck that failed in the most baffling and creative ways possible. Honestly that's a pretty good description of the way logistics work when furries are involved just in general, so I can't say I was terribly surprised. Whenever I went to a spot where we said we could meet I arrived to find that he had fucked as completely off as one is capable of fucking in all directions simultaneously, as though he had broken the normal causality that governs precisely how off one is able to fuck at any given instant in time. So I failed that particular mission, despite numerous attempts and having the required quest item on me for the entire day. A word to people with the social sense of a boiled cabbage, and to all in general: If someone is trying to do a favor for you, make sure that you make it easy for them to do that. Dicking around someone that's trying to do something nice for you is the surest way to trash that goodwill straight off the block and make absolutely certain that they never try to help you again. Resasuke is lucky in that I won't hold it against him because I'm near-certain that none of this was purposeful, and my first Anthrocon journal attests that I was in his shoes not long ago. I guess the silver lining there is that flitting about like a coke-addled hummingbird all day long is exactly how one behaves when they are properly engaged with the goings-on of a furry convention. So it looks like Resasuke might get the hang of this furry thing yet. I mean, if the first thing that came to my mind for something to call him was based on a socially inept red panda from a cartoon designed to sell plush toys then he's probably got a fair shot of fitting in within this fandom. Only time will tell!

Anyways, the relevance of that long diversion was that after I'd seen off Mori at the Omni I was anxious to get back to my room to divest myself of the heavy, clunky-ass metal device that had been weighing me down all day. Unfortunately my eagerness to toss the thing and my frustration with the whole situation made me take a hit on my normally fastidious inventory management and I left the key to the room inside it, then saved my game before I realized that error. That left me stuck outside the room for the foreseeable future. I realized it seconds after shutting the door, but that's a bit like being six inches away from a space station without a tether. The fact that you're so close and you know exactly what is the problem is of no use to you in that scenario. When I texted Lanhao he said that he would let me in if we could meet up sometime, and in true furry con fashion, I fucked off elsewhere for like four hours. At least I let him know that was the plan though. See? A little consideration is all it takes to be a good spastic hummingbird and have everyone leave the interaction happy. Anyways, I just went for it because I was already late for the Hypnofurs party and that particular shindig was on the way back, so repairing the soft-lock I'd accidentally put into my current save file could wait.

I arrived to the party to find that it had been far more of a success than anyone had anticipated, to the point that the room was pretty stuffy and shoulder-to-shoulder packed in many places. It was great to get to meet so many folks that I'd only ever chatted with online, but dumping them into a tightly packed pile is not the ideal way to experience said people in the same way that watching all the Star Wars films simultaneously is not the best way to experience them. That being said, I'm gonna just leave a bigass pile of their names here so you have some idea what kind of octane that mix of people had. Vek Skunk, Crocodoc, Kyred, Aristoth, Devin Neko, Bark Dango, Blyss Otter, and Kiba. That last one isn't even me trying to screw with Kiba Youkai's search algorithm. There just happened to be pink-wolf-husky Kiba-kun there, so the needle-stacking of name results is just an ancillary benefit. So yeah, I talked to all those people for at least some period of time before I got sat down next to the suitably unpronounceable dragon Xaldun Rahk'shzir and I found his big fluffy suit to be a fair bit too cuddleable for me to like... move anywhere else for the next two hours. He was extremely cuddleable is what I'm saying. I may have fallen asleep for a bit. Who's to say? What even is consciousness anyhow?

So yeah, the party broke up and I went to get another room key from Lanhao. In the course of that mission I got to see Dark Nekogami whom I suitably fanboyed over because he's an amazing and prolific artist and all of the usual fanboy things. This confluence of events had me ultimately returning to the convention hall and just going to the dance at bullshit o'clock in the morning again. And so the cycle repeats. This time the snare that had me losing even more hours to the void was the fact that I'd gotten caught up with the AV folk in the interim through mutuals Archai and Metric, they got me back into the company of Erro, Nightclaw, Fizz Otter and their whole contingent. The plan was for that small army to march to Primanti Brothers again, and having refused that call to action once already I figured I would go for it. I had some lovely if-now-hazy conversation with Photonz and Kbooki. Once we'd eaten our fill, the approach of daybreak signaled that we really ought to be getting to bed. I was more motivated than the others to get there as I am unused to their west-coast dance-till-you're-dead lifestyle, and I did not have the benefit of their 3-hour west-coast time-displacement field. They used their Silicon Valley superpowers to Uber me back to the Omni though, so I'll call it a wash.

So yeah, due to my spending the night fighting FAR outside my weight class in the sleep-deprivation elimination gauntlet that is hanging out with people from California, Saturday got a pretty late start and my acutely-suffering hippocampus neglected to record the exact nature of my interactions with Orrery, Aelius, Antifreeze, and Jake Bunny that afternoon. I'm sure you were a great bunch of folks and that I had a good time meeting you all, my brain was just still fumbling blearily for the "record" button at that point. Anyways, I had lunch with Impy and Grey because they are some cool dudes and I need food to live. Tough stumbling block though, Impy said that a few places I'd mentioned were too expensive, and that she didn't want to eat fast food. The ones I'd suggested were about $15 a plate, so these two restrictions jammed my search algorithm right the fuck up. I guess that highlights the divergence in my thought process. I rarely give much thought to what things cost at a furry con because I think about what things cost constantly in every other aspect of my life so that I can go totally nuts at a furry con. As such I don't really have the data collected necessary to find this mythical like $10 a plate actual sit-down restaurant, as that seems to me like an unreasonable thing to expect to find downtown in a major city. Really the only thing that I could come up with which would fit the bill, thanks to the inherently scalable nature of its menu, was Sushi Kim's! So we ate there again. Much faster service when you reduce your party size by a factor of four, I found. Kinda sucked going to the same place twice, but it's not like I had to order the same thing or whatever. I still had a good time eating with them. The budget-conscious Impy naturally took advantage of the fine control over portion sizes in order to order way too much food so I got to split it with her. Not the best penny-pinching strategy but I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. Apparently I was fairly entertaining company, as I was at one point elected "The new Shugwar." And later on, even Shugwar's boyfriend. Shugwar is a mutual friend of theirs whom I hear about constantly but have never encountered in the wild. As such I was dubious about the council appointing me as his boyfriend, but I came to learn that he's straight also. So no pressure I guess? I dunno, it might work out. Apparently when they called ol' Shuggy-wuggy to let him know of the arrangement, his response was "You set me up with another straight guy? Oh cool! That'll be great, we can hang out, drink beer and talk about tits!" Which, for what it's worth is almost exactly what I would respond with were our roles reversed. So maybe we really are perfect for each other, who's to say?

After parting with... my new extended family? Not sure how it works. Anyways, next up I ran into Kiba in the lobby. Yes, this time it's actually you this time, kitty Kiba. Congrats on finding the needle in this needlestack! The two of us caught up for a bit in the lobby. I found that at the time she was playing host to Quotation Marks and the three badgerlings, who happen to be the significant otter and offspring, respectively, of the legendary Boozy Badger. I hung out with them for a fair bit of time in the lobby. A few times Kiba asked if I was bored just kinda babysitting with her, but it was fine by me. Spending time in the common areas is how you happen upon people, and I had my head on a swivel enough to make that happen a few times. I got a chance to chat with those assembled for a bit, and that was a nice change of pace. Not the anarchic thrill-ride that cons usually are, but it was hardly sunk time. It's always very interesting to get the perspectives of human-folk who were semi-unwittingly dragged into this whirlwind of brightly-colored wildlife. I was also on hand to help them puzzle through the conundrum of finding their own food. QM stipulated a menu both vegan AND gluten free. I guess this was just a day for requests that bricked my search algorithms because I didn't have anything nearby that would fit in that razor-thin scope. Eventually I did recall that there was a Jimmy John's right across the street. Being a sandwich place, they'd have all the non-meat-or-grain sandwich accoutrements and could likely be put upon to furnish them upon request. Their website indicated that they did indeed have a lettuce wrap that suited the needed parameters, so all was well.

From there uh, random encounters and stuff probably? I only did one actual convention event all of Saturday, so my memory record from then is sorely lacking in useful navigational waypoints. I did come across Manchas, a college alum who it's always fun to see. And of course Fuego, also an RPI grad. She was with the usual crew Ang, Terry, and Taki. Naturally while I was catching up with them Fuego heard about my current Schrodinger's job situation and said that she'd be happy to hook me up with another engineering gig. Long-time viewers will recall that when I first met Fuego way back at my first furry con ever she wrote me a recommendation letter that helped me get into RPI, the place where I ended up getting by BS in nuclear engineering from. I feel as though I've done nothing to merit this level of generosity, but I can't really afford to turn it down. So I guess my new contingency plan for if the reactor that I'm at closes down is call up that one girl I know who pretends to be a cow on weekends, because she's apparently got all the answers! After... a surprise session of career planning, I headed out to the zoo to see what do. What, at the moment, was doing, was Nimbus hanging out with a few of his friends. At least one of which was Shogun Vex. We had a great time chatting and I simply can't help sharing the fact that Nimbus' last name, "Kaden" is a draconic word that means "cloud". Nimbus, also being a type of cloud, means I got to exclaim "Oh my God your name is Cloud-Cloud!" Adding to the stupendous amazingness of this revelation was the fact that Nimbus had actually never heard of the Moon-Moon meme, so I got to be the one to break the news of the proud legacy that he had inherited with his namesake. That's actually pretty amazing because Moon-Moon is one of the O-est of the OG memes. It was a joy to share his story with someone.

Aaaanyways, that night was the moment we've all been waiting for, Ang and co's late night sexy transformation panel! It was their first time doing this thing, and it came on the heels of literally four other transformation-themed panels that day, so nobody was sure how it was going to turn out. How it ended up turning out was that it was a good thing we got there early because the place was booked solid to the point that the fun-police kicked some people out. Our indomitable hosts stood to speak so that they could give their chairs to audience members because standing crowds weren't allowed. So yeah, clearly the interest is there. And the engagement too! We talked non-stop about everything under the sun until they kicked us out. A lot of my hypnosis furs buddies were there also, and so of course we were all pretty jazzed when someone mentioned hypnosis and more than half the room simultaneously went "Awww yeah, that's my jam!" Naturally there were more fun meetups at the end as we did a bit of farewell handshaking. Big fanboy moment for someone that sheepishly mentioned "I mean, I dunno if you've seen my stuff but my other username is Poweron." And I of course lost my shit because he has a TON of awesome content whose business I am all up in on a fairly frequent basis. It seemed to be a night for fanboying, as the core TF crew all retired to the zoo together to chat some more. I got to see TGwonder and Watsup who are both such huge-goddamn-deal artists that I could barely work up the nerve to actually talk to them. I mean, I still did because I don't think I ever stop talking at this point, but like, there was some resistance there for a bit. We all had a great time and kept the ball rolling late into the morning when several of the assembled content creators all realized that they have a ton of work to do and they need to sleep or they'll completely whiff on all their important art things so most folk ran off. I was in the middle of something with Canis Sapiens and he actually seemed interested in listening to me talk (fancy that!) so we kept chatting away. He'd originally wanted to hear about hypnosis and so of course I talked for like an hour about that and-also-everything-in-addition-to-that because he was too polite to stop me. I guess I was on a roll by then. Being excited about stuff is exciting! But we got kicked out of that place too, so it was off to bed. Great night though, if you couldn't tell.

Sunday started with the dance competition. Which is an unconventional way to start a day, but if I could do it seven days a week I would. Those guys were exactly the bolt of energy I needed to start the day. The first thing I wanted to do with all that energy was find Ace and choke him until he stopped enjoying it, and then a little bit more. You see, the temporal thread running throughout yesterday (yup, it's another one of those. Put on your fourth-dimension seat belt folks! It should be located to your right and 15 minutes behind you.) was that I'd given my suit to Ace so that I could change in his room, and then completely lost contact with him. So my increasingly desperate attempts to contact him had gone unheeded, and at this point he was basically holding my fursuit hostage. I had missed the parade and fursuit games by that point, AND my chance to get both Ace suits out at once. I mean, it's a furry con so I just went and did other amazing fun things, but like... there's the principle though! In any case, it turned out that Ace's phone had just bricked for most of the weekend, so taking the time to reach out in person and squeeze all the air out of him was actually the proper corrective action, as it so often is. He got me a key to his room such that I could finally unlock the fursuit perk and make use of that on the last day.

And make use of it I did! From that moment until, and slightly beyond, nightfall, I did many amazing fox things, even though the con was winding down. I actually did manage to find lots of people still around, some of whom I hadn't even seen yet. I guess it's more of that "nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask" kind of effect. There were still a few people I know that didn't even realize I had a suit. I guess that means I'm not wearing it enough. Hah! I'll put a stop to that, certainly. I ran into roughly 70% of Clementine at one point and I got to catch up with her. With the substantial change in her physical profile my blurry-ass fursuit vision would've never picked her out of the crowd had someone not mentioned to me that she was there. She had decreased in mass appreciably during the intervening years is what I'm saying. It was great to see her still doing her thing and having fun. She was in kind of a bad way when our paths last crossed, so it was very comforting to see that she was in a good place again. I managed to sneak into a really Cool Photo that GrumpyPuppy had set up for a friend of his. It was for a police officer who had been patrolling and protecting Anthrocon for many years. He wanted a picture with a bunch of fursuiters, and of course a suitable bunch happily obliged.

My adventures also brought me into the company of a charming vixen called Dolby. She didn't talk, so it was a bit tough to ascertain exactly what the dynamic was with her. She seemed fairly interested in me, so of course I stopped to engage for a bit with a cute fellow fox. We danced and hugged and... conversed in a fashion. There always is something surreal about trying to talk with just your big, goofy, furry body. There's so much information that you're missing, but so much understanding to be had if you're really looking for it. The way she acted so familiar with me, I just assumed that she was one of Ace Fox's friends recognizing the old suit. I actually checked with Ace later though, and he said that he didn't know any such person. So... maybe she just like... actually liked me? There's a crazy thought for ya. Hm, whatever the case, gonna have to happen across her again sometime.

The final temporal thread that I have to address that was going through my fursuiting capers is a hilarious and adorable one. In the morning, Lanhao had gotten in late and asked if he'd disturbed my sleep, also mentioning that he had gotten a late checkout if I needed it. Before suiting up, I messaged back that I'd slept just fine, and that I wouldn't need another night because I was leaving Sunday night. Turns out he'd been freaking out and blowing up my phone because he thought that it was good that I'd slept well but didn't read the whole message. So when he looked at it a bit later the exchange read:
"I'm leaving early."
"Good."
So he spent that whole evening thinking that I was super pissed off at him because he'd said that and because I didn't respond all day he thought that now I wasn't talking to him. Fortunately I did see him while suiting at the end of the night and we got that whole adorable mess cleared up.

I ran out of con, and subsequently out of daylight, and the responsible adult that I sometimes act like reminded me that another party-till-near-daybreak rager wasn't a possibility because I had work the next day. After I got changed I got to chat with Ace and Clover for a bit. Nice way to wind down, even if we did mostly talk about cars. Ace even found a way to make some parts of it interesting, so I've gotta give him props on that. The thing I thought stood out among all the typical car-talk noise was the story of Group B and how they basically just created an unlimited division of rally racing with no restrictions on specs or power. That created a huge challenge for engineers designing and building the cars, and the resulting arms race catapulted us a couple decades into the future in terms of automotive performance. I've never been into high-end racing stuff, but as an engineer I still have a bit of reverence for the ways that those advancements filter through to the cars that us regular people drive. Crazy gearheads pushing the limits is quite literally an engine of progress.

Towards the close of our mechanical reverie, Clover had an odd proposal for me.
"Hey, since you're driving, do you want to take all this booze?"
"Uhh, that sounds like kind of a bad idea, actually."
"No I mean, we're flying so we can't take it with us, but you can."
"Oh! Yes. That is a much better thing."

So yeah, I got to clean out the liquor cabinet for my troubles. Pretty good deal all things considered. I had to laugh when I saw the special tag on the bottle of Tito's talking about their support of animal rescue. Naturally it was touted as "The Vodka for Dog People". You have no idea, Titos Handmade Vodka. You have no idea!

So yeah. I got all my shit together and saw everyone off. I stopped by the grand piano upstairs because they were playing Piano Man, which is how any great night of fun ends. Cosmik was doing some great work out there, so I simply had to stay for another song. In the end I said my final farewells and I was on my way whilst it was only slightly tomorrow. The following bleary and exhausted workday wasn't much fun, but I earned every millimeter of those hanging bags under my eyes. Even with all the shit I've had to go through lately, and all the work I had to do to make the trip happen, Anthrocon is still there, and it's still exactly what I need it to be.

Well, this delay for the flight home seems like the perfect time to type up my account of the delays on the flight here. I've gotten a wondrous first impression of Spirit Airlines if you couldn't tell. It all started off innocently enough. I was using my typical protocol of twiddling the dates and airports on a travel metasearch engine to get the best deal to fly to the San Francisco bay. Yes I know that BLFC isn't there, but my friends are! And of course they were willing to take me with them to the con. In my search, I was intrigued by a notably cheap five hour direct flight. Yeah, Detroit to Oakland is a real all-star world-tour, but a direct flight is a big quality-of-life upgrade, and a rare one at that. Perhaps twice in my life I've found myself on a plane actually going to exactly where I want to go on the first try. Sure I'd have to cover bag fees, but the ticket was a little cheaper and the convenience certainly justified an extra $25-35 or whatever, like bag fees usually are. I figured I was in the clear.

Yeah, didn't expect to have to bible-scholar these terms of sale to uncover what was really going on, but I paid for my lack of scrutiny, literally. I saw "starting at $40-50" as a checked bag fee on their site and called it good. That was a little hefty, but the convenience justified it. How much could that really add up to anyways? Well it turns out that it can add up quite a lot! They also charge for carry-on bags, a practice so barbaric that I didn't even think to look for it. So my standard complement of one carry-on bag and one fursuit case set me back over $180. That's not the kind of thing you can bury in the fine print. If you're going to charge so much and also charge basically the same rate even for carry-ons then that should be a little clearer on the front end, not squirreled away in a half-assed fare calculator app somewhere. But they had me. I'm only so mad about their bullshit because it totally worked. So I ponied up and then got on the plane. Then off the plane. Then on the plane again. Then off the plane. Then on a different plane, all without ever leaving the ground. Hey, wasn't this ill-gotten pound of flesh supposed to fucking simplify this process?

Yeah, we had to plane and deplane TWICE while they figured out a mechanical issue. We all boarded and then they closed the door, just in time to say "Oh shit the plane's broken! Everybody off!" throwing us back into the confusion of the terminal. That had been an adventure because of a different problem. There were a couple people in the wrong line that they had to sort through. The attendants gave them such exasperation when explaining the problem, which was a bit rude considering that the airline was the one who swapped the gates 90 minutes before departure. Not only that, they swapped it with an adjacent gate for a flight using the same class of aircraft that was leaving at about the same time. What the hell could've been the necessity of that? Other than, you know, being engineered to be as confusing as possible. After a long wait, we got our second chance at our flight. Round two got us all the way to taxiing away from the gate before they got cold feet and decided that the plane was broken again and sent us all back to terminal purgatory.

If it feels like I'm going into too much detail again, that too, is part of the experience. During the ensuing chaos I was also bombarded with eleven oft-contradictory status update emails, even though I was already standing at the gate, keenly aware of the status of our flight delay. I spent a good chunk of the time walking backwards up the moving walkway. Turns out nobody even yells at you if you do that, which is pretty neat. Though I did sustain potentially lethal doses of side-eye from the gate attendants. I may have started something though. Three different people joined me in experiencing utter futility for a few minutes apiece. I didn't speak to any of them, but I feel like we connected on a spiritual level. Managed to get my lap time on it down to like 4 minutes, which is some kind of progress I guess. I also discovered that if you walk backwards on the people conveyor for like 10 minutes, then turn around and walk the right way on it, the sudden shift in apparent speed feels like you're being rocketed into space. Not a bad entertainment value for something free and handy. I wish I'd been wearing a Fitbit. That routine probably would've confused the hell out of it.

Anyways, they found us another plane, and parked it at the gate that was supposed to be our gate in the first place, after clearing all the confused Dallas-bound folks out of there. We had at least gotten fairly well practiced at the boarding process by then. So that went smoothly enough even though our tickets didn't match the aircraft class anymore. A bunch of us were on the edge of our seats waiting for what would get us kicked off this one. They actually got it together this time though. And as we sailed triumphantly into the air, we learned that the two hours that were just painfully excised from our lives would be compensated with... a free glass of water. Am I being challenged to a freestyle rap battle? Because that's one of the most vindictive and devastatingly insulting things I've ever heard! Free water as recompense was more of a slap in the face than getting nothing at all. I would've preferred a literal slap in the face. At least then I could say they were being up front with how they felt about me. Being offered "free water" is just a backhanded reminder of "oh yeah usually we charge for this unlike basically every other business capable of providing customers a glass of water".

Okay, I get that their model is all about the whole "no-frills consider-the-true-cost-of-free-stuff" optimization... thing, but they stripped out water, carry-ons, having your checked bag stickers applied for you, choosing your seat, in-flight entertainment, and the seat leaning back. I didn't even know that shit was negotiable! I didn't even have to go but I went to the bathroom just to check the toilet for a fucking coin slot. Apparently they read my sarcastic "economy minus" fare class idea from a few years ago and decided "Yes, that's it! I shall build a whole airline this way! This is how I will make my mark on the world." I'm not even exaggerating, really. They are sickeningly proud of every tiny comfort that they've callously and brutally excised from the travel experience. If you print your boarding pass at home, the white space gets helpfully occupied by a message saying "We don't have any in-flight entertainment to keep you busy, so enjoy this Sudoku puzzle!" Some flights have entertainment and some don't. I can accept that, but don't fucking smile while you deny me things, you sadistic freaks! The constant reminders of all the stuff that I wasn't getting were quite grating, particularly when a lot of full-feature alternatives still often out-compete them for price. Because fares are such a crapshoot, those fools that wasted all that money on modern entertainment and free carry-ons still often have a comparable or even cheaper base rate. If the savings were dramatic then all this ascetic torture would perhaps be worth it, but from what I've seen, the best that ol' feckless, gutted Spirit Airlines can offer you is the same $30-ish advantage that you can get just from shopping around all the other main carriers. About the only advantage that they've got is serving almost the exact corridor that I need, and in a testament to the power of the airline industry's potent anti-competitive oligopoly, I still found myself considering flying with them again to take advantage of that. If I ever happen to be traveling without a fursuit that is.

In any case, my triumphant return to the Left Coast kicked off with a weekend of... helping four guys move house? Wait that can't be right. I go to The Bay to do fun things! What happened here? Temporal conspiracy, it seems. I just so happened to pretty much fall out of the sky at exactly the moment that the move was going on, so having come freshly off of moving heavy things at Furthemore I signed right up for a second round of that. Because really I'm happy to help out my hosts in The Bay and my alternative was snubbing them with a quick "you kids have fun" and spending a bunch of time away from the people I was there to see.

That household was in a bit of a bind as well, the move having come as much of a surprise to them as it did to me. The house that their landlady lived in had slid down a mountain, or had a mountain slide into the living room, I forget which. In any case, it suffered terribly from mobile-terrain-related complications common to the greater Los Angeles region and that house wasn't resurrecting any time soon. So she thought to depose a set of her current tenants and live in one of her rental properties. A bit gruff towards the renters, but she is in rather exceptional circumstances. Would've been fairly forgivable if the whole process wasn't something of a ham-fisted mess on her end. I only overheard things casually, but when Archai asked if I knew that the landlady wasn't quite playing with a full deck I could confirm that I had gathered as much by then. Just from what I'd heard over a couple days it seems as if her deck was down to 34 cards even though it was fluffed out with a green Skip-Turn from Uno and a half-dozen duplicates of the seven of diamonds.

All the back-and-forth was a nice chance to check out Damian's Tesla though. Even loaded down with a bunch of stuff that we were moving my pilot occasionally advised "You're gonna want to put your head back." And he meant it! Despite having the footprint of a luxury Armored Personnel Carrier, that thing teleports to highway speed with the kind of baffling instantaneousness I thought only achievable with railguns or GPS glitches. Such a shame that the charging network gets so sparse out in my neck of the woods. I'm tempted more than ever to get one of these things. Of course, high-concept luxury cars tend to be more of a job-secure sort of decision, so I guess that's getting put off again.

We got in a good measure of thing-moving to be sure. Archai is fairly skilled with space-economizing when getting everything into a trailer. You can tell that he's serious about it because he calls it "tessellation" instead of "Tetrising". Of course I'd probably be pretty good at it too if I were quite regularly trying to bring a significant fraction of a collection of six fursuits of varying designs and fluffiness plus a sound system and a couple hundred pounds of support gear to every convention. In any case, a couple days' work got all the stuff to the place and the whole crew stopped at a German sausage place called Wursthall (yeah I know you'd never guess what they served) for dinner. The whole crew, since I've gone this whole time without mentioning it, included Archai and Kyreeth, who were my hosts in the bay, the bridge between the two groups, Archai's boyfriend Metric Foxton, and the other displaced refugees that he lived with, Quinten, Neys, and Kali Wolf.

The restaurant gained points for having more than zero kinds of cider, which made up for the lawless thunderdome that was their serving methodology. Any time you needed something, you just hailed a random server by any means available (though signal flares and airhorns were discouraged) and they just came over and figured it out for you no matter who they were. I guess the human interchangeability is more efficient but socially that's a really awkward interaction. Calls to mind a wealthy manor owner just arbitrarily grabbing the nearest servant and tasking them with things, too much like getting randomly stabbed with extra duty in the navy. I promised myself I wouldn't subject other people to that. Anyways I tried both of their ciders and found the South City to be quite good, a good touch of sweet but remarkably good balance in the flavor, it's definitely one that I'll look for again. The Two Rivers was perhaps the most profoundly average thing that I've had in my mouth to date. It was like I had tried to eat the concept of a control group, or found the factory reset button on my tongue. I tried very hard to hate it, an effort informed by a long life of hating many things in great detail, but I came up with nothing. It was remarkable, at the very least, for being a singularity. A great, yawning void of anti-passion that one could not possibly feel any intense way about. Had it been any further lacking in any observable qualities, considering it at length might've led me to achieve enlightenment or something.

The next night was a furry dinner appropriately enough at the Lazy Dog restaurant, with a pretty good crowd. Arc and Metric in the lead, naturally. Avwuff I knew I'd crossed paths with before, and was flattered to hear that he remembered my fondly. I found Srice there, who I remembered from RMFC and got him to do the same with a little coaxing. We had a French visitor named Nightwolf whose name is too much of a needle-in-a-needlestack for me to pin down but he seemed like a pretty cool dude. And of course there was Kiswara, a guy that I was very happy to make the acquaintance of, learn the actual name of, and have some substantial interaction with other than just getting drunk and mistaking him for Roman Otter, which I've done like a billion times and I feel terrible about it. He's always fairly polite when I do it though, so that's certainly a mark in his favor. We had a lot of good laughs that night. I'd say it was definitely worth the many overpriced drinks that I bought. Goddamn, I got like, the gentlest wispy buzz off of that. Back home $50 worth of alcohol would've killed me twice over. Maybe it's for the best that I couldn't manage living in the bay quite yet.

Another prominent adventure was rock climbing, a completely new one on me, actually. We managed to land a husky as our instructor to show us the ropes, so to speak. Fluke definitely comports more like a spider than a dog when he's on the wall, so I knew that we were in good hands, and impossibly nimble toes as well. There was a bit of a learning curve for me. I was too freaked out to make it all the way up my first time, but like, I've got a rope. I really shouldn't be freaked out. That part passes once you realize what a complete non-thing falling is when you've got maybe a couple inches of slack at any given time, depending on how on the ball your ground crew is. I actually found belaying to be a pretty well-designed support minigame. Simple principles, dynamic interaction and quick feedback, yeah, app developers could learn a thing or two from that interaction.

Similar to the go-karting experience I had several years back, starting out as a first-timer with a crowd of hyperenthusiasts has a way of screwing things up for you. Just as I was on the cusp of moving past "conquering fear" to "having fun", Archai swooped in to bury me in too much advice for me to move another inch. "Oh no you're doing it wrong, you're only supposed to use the green ones!" This is literally my third lifetime attempt at ascending a climbing wall. Of course I'm fucking doing it wrong! Not all of us came out of the womb with a carabiner hooked around our umbilical cord. I was really just trying to get comfortable with the heights involved and the movements to push myself upward with my legs, figuring out the mechanics of grip, you know, all the base level stuff that you really just need to fiddle with for a bit without thinking too hard. Naturally the team of advanced climbers knew exactly what was needed to help with that, shouting the full text of a hundred-page strategy guide at me! They got me actually doing it by the rules next run, which is a lot like stepping up from Connect Four to that microgravity orbital laser arena in Ender's Game in a single transition. Sending Kyreeth up alongside as a tutor was a good thought, but there was WAY too much to think about for me to actually learn anything and it was NOT a good time. Some excerpts:

"Alright, now grab this one here."
"By what fucking demon magic? There are nowhere near enough elbows OR spatial dimensions to achieve such a movement."

"Don't keep your arms bent like that."
"Well I'd LOVE to straighten them out but that would send them into the forbidden zone with all those disgusting NON-GREENS that would apparently sear my flesh on contact."

"You're going to want to push yourself up by that one."
"What? That gum-wad the size of a tic-tac box? Yeah there's a reason I've been avoiding that thing. I'm pretty sure it's just decorative, or some kind of mimic."

"Yes, that one right there, with your right hand."
"You want me to CROSS MY ARMS? Are you trying to get me strung up by this rope? If I'm to die in this undignified fashion I am one HUNDRED percent taking you with me."

"That's a foothold, not a handhold."
"Save it for the semantics wall, E.B. White!"

"Go for that one up and to your right."
"THAT thing? There's enough real-estate between here and there that I could rent the space out for $2600 a month! I'd need to wire up a signal repeater to send that handhold a text message!"
"It's really not that far."
"Oh look I just got a reply 'OMG ur never gonna reach dis XD'."

So yeah, if you couldn't tell it didn't go so well. I gave up about 60% of the way up, partly out of exhaustion and partly because I couldn't take the micromanaging anymore. I guess it was for the best that I called it quits, as I was pretty sick when I got back to the ground. As it happens, I hadn't learned any low-energy holding positions yet. That was fine when I was just scrambling up whatever way worked by rapidly spinning my arms Scooby-Doo style, but when I had to pause to get my roctorate in rockology every couple seconds a high-strain position really cost me. The psychological pressure of 'Okay, now that you've exhausted yourself hanging here, flip upside down and jam your wrist through your sternum' only masked the fact that I really was overexerting my muscles. I had lots of numbness in my limbs, my lips swelling and lots of other troubling circulation artifacts that forced me to sit for the rest of the session.

The last time I felt like that was at work. We had to wing open a couple huge, heavy valves to change our cooling lineup. It was cool to be really doing something in the plant, but somewhere in the requisite 135 turns I overdid it. Got the thing open, but had tunnel vision and ringing in my ears afterwards. I probably would've passed out if someone hadn't startled me at just the right moment with a well-timed congratulatory pat on the back. I had beaten the other guy who was opening the second valve. Anyways, back in the near-past I fought the wall and the wall won. I'd be willing to give it another go, potentially. Now that I've made it clear to Archai that if I ever hear that he's tried to introduce someone to climbing in that fashion again I'll string him up there by his neck and bash him against those rocks until his spine sounds like coffee grinder.

On the eve of our departure, Zed Hyena joined us, as he was going to be along for the ride to Reno. He and his boyfriend Damien subjected us to the surreal comedy that arises when a couple furries buy a shock collar. The guilt about laughing at someone else's suffering goes away when you know that they are also super into that suffering, though the further implications of that second part are perhaps even more troubling than the surface premise. True of many activities, I suppose. So unlike most subjects, I won't dwell on it in detail.

Anyways, the next day Archai stuffed the Yukon with a loadout that he assured me was much smaller than usual because we weren't throwing a suite party this year. The fact that the great behemoth vehicle was filled to capacity didn't seem to contradict this in any way in his mind, though the change in equipment config did seem to slow him down a fair bit in terms of selecting what to bring. Ordinarily I wouldn't think too much of the delay, but there actually were a few Thursday events to speak of. It was perhaps the only time during that sparsely-populated schedule that I felt like I was really missing out on something, so it's great that we got it out of the way early I guess?

Much of the first morning was consumed by the all-encompassing debacle that was the opening of the Dealers' Den. I mean, I had no part in it of course. That thing's gonna be open for like 20 hours total over the weekend, I've never seen the need to stampede in there immediately. Then again I've never been one of those people that felt strongly compelled to divest myself of all my money the moment that I arrive at a con. A strange urge, really. I've found that if I really desperately need to be rid of money that fast I could just throw it off a bridge, or in this case use the far more efficient method, the attached casino at the venue. Anyways, that kind of thing did set the tone a bit. What had happened was they'd increased the super-spacegod-emperor buffer on the opening from 15 minutes to 60 minutes without really telling anybody. Most announcements had been made that morning, leading most people to have already settled upon their money-disposing plans for the day. So yeah, not only were there quite a volume of people, there were many who showed up later on who assumed the line would let up by then, only to find the line hadn't even started to get let IN yet. That was kind of a distressing lack of organization and audience-savvy for supposedly the BEST CON in the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD, or so it had been billed to me. I was trying to nail down exactly what was going on with their schedule, and it turned out that I needn't have bothered fighting my way to the electronic one, as it had exactly the same update mechanism as the paper one. None, or at best some manner of vague shouting at arbitrary times. Kind of a waste of the potential of having an online schedule if you just leave it up as a static document the whole con. Once again that's a pretty average thing for a supposedly exceptional convention to do. In any case, I got away from that madhouse to eat burgers with Lanhao and catch up with him for a bit.

I got to know the other occupants of the suite, who were quite numerous but I'll do my best here. The familiar ones were Archai, Metric, Groggy, Damian, Zed and Brokenwing, with newcomers Strixidos, Tirian Cat, Woofy Bunny and Devoss Wilberg. Yeah, it was a packed house. I was still just getting warmed up, but the suite seemed to really mean it this time. With liquor sloshing around, a few people in various states of undress and Groggy in the big armchair double-fisting a vape and nitrous oxide, I knew that the party had begun. I tried to do a few whip-its with him, but apparently I'm just really bad at doing drugs because even after extensive rounds of advice from the many learned huffers around me I never really got much out of it. Oh well, I suppose there are far worse flaws to have.

I had a chance to meet Nomad, whose commissions I've been a fan of for a long time. He was very flattered that I'd heard of him, which is always a nice feeling to give somebody. I dropped by Stormy and Toby's kink panel, a fun time as always. It was opposite the "fursuit festival", a gathering that BLFC has in place of a parade. I would've been interested to see what kind of thing they cooked up there, but I wasn't really up for fursuiting right then and I wanted to go with the sure thing. The fact that the kink panel has never gotten old for me even having been to quite a few of them speaks for itself. And of course it was a good chance to catch up with them afterwards. With a big con like this you never want to miss a chance to connect with someone. It's way too easy to lose people in the shuffle.

After Stormy and her crew had to run off to a rubber party I went down to the ballroom to see "I Comedy Better when I've had a few" with Alkali and his usual basket of deplorables. Nobody was at the appointed time and place though. I figured it was yet another scheduling snag that they'd neglected to say anything about, so I wandered a bit around that spot, checked out the dance and such. I found little of interest, but when I came back Pandez, Alkali and Draggor were there doing the show, so I guess my do-over did the trick. I was glad to see those guys here, because their stories are quite reliably entertaining, and hearing them told in comic fashion is exactly the kind of thing that I come to a furry con to do. They're rather the old guard of this phenomenon, so they've seen the most shit even among those who have really seen some shit. Their compatriot Xander the Blue runs what I believe was the first furry website that I ever visited, back when I was still only just realizing that furry was a thing. So yeah, it's great to hear from our history. Particularly when they're liquored up and exhausted. It's fun to be paying attention to what's coming out of someone's mouth when they very much are not keeping tabs on that.

Saturday I got up a bit late because of similar demotivation reasons that plagued me during Furthemore. And also because my eyes were killing me. I’d thought it had just been a weird sleep pattern thing when they’d started hurting and turning red the previous night, but they were like that the whole con. The only thing I can think to explain it is all the smoking on the casino floor. In the northeast, we banned smoking a LONG time before it was cool to hate on it, so it’s been many years since I’ve been in a building that you could smoke in. It certainly didn't help the difficult bed-breakup that the only event I was particularly compelled by didn't happen until 3:00. I did make it to that though. It was the dance competition, which was a absolute joy as always. I was really hoping that would be the boost that I needed and it most certainly was. When the Weeb Warriors incorporated the Dragon Ball Z fusion dance into their routine it really brought down the house. It was a very pure and bafflingly specific kind of joy. I even got to see Fluke up on stage doing his thing. Apparently he's got other hobbies that make great use of his endurance and flexibility. Kaira Tiger also totally shredded a routine to Fallout Boy's Phoenix, a song that has long been a source of inner-fire for me.

After that Groggy let me take another spin in Tonga the panda as he threw on his native suit Torque. He was on his way to the inflatables meet and I stopped by with him for a bit to play with the giant hamster ball bubbles that they had down there. Those things are incredibly fun in fursuit, even if a finite volume of oxygen is absolutely the LAST thing you need when dressed up like a Carnivale parade float. Even after I debubbled and wandered off Tonga was great fun. He's a real flashy design, and as such a huge attention-getter. Naturally all the identity theft tends to bewilder people that I'm meeting, like Kory Leo, whom I encountered for the first time in like fashion. Hopefully I can catch up with him again some other time dressed as me. I also stopped by Lanhao’s tabletop game to lend them a little color. I had meant to meet Ryoken and his crew out by the pool, but it didn't quite come together. I did take a spin out there, but it was dark by then, and thus a profoundly unpleasant place to fursuit, particularly to guest-fursuit. Tonga’s beautiful tail naturally has to be kept clear of the water and mud, and beyond that concern there’s the fire pits, puddles, poor lighting, and tricky glass walls, all of which make it pretty stressful to move around and basically impossible to find anyone.

That was actually my only occasion to visit the pool other than going out there to get better signal to call my mom on Mother’s day. I didn’t feel much draw towards the nightly pool party because of how cold it was. Granted it was spring-desert-cold, so like mid-fifties usually, but still not a great time to be wet. Metric tried to explain the weird, westcoastian anti-logic of it when I mentioned it. "Oh well you’re not using the pool when you go there. You’re just being at the pool party." Kind of like how ads for alcohol aren’t allowed to show anyone physically putting the drink in their mouth, so they make a big show of ordering it and pouring it, only to just kind of walk around the party with the drink while more interesting things happen around them. Anyways, after expending all the energy I had for panda-ing, I headed back to our room to hang out with the crowd there and have a great time. I also invited Wikiwarrior up to hang out because he's also one of those prolific commissioners whose art wallpapers my FA. It was a little awkward to drag him into a big group of people, half of whom even I didn't know that well, but we got to chat and there was pizza and wings. If we're just golden-ruling this interaction, I'd have a tough time being upset with it! I got to see Clyde Hyena again, who was delighted to hear me tell of my trip to one of his house parties awhile back. There was also an Yonoa, whose unabashed joy and enthusiasm for all he does is always a treat to have around. I’m fairly tempted to commission him for a fursuit, honestly. I feel like he’d get bored with a dog though. He’s always innovating with his designs and looking for new challenges. He’s the last person I’d want to disappoint with a fairly pedestrian canine project.

I wasn’t quite up for the fursuit games the next morning, but Quipfur (furry Quiplash) was opposite that in the schedule, so I made time for it. It was another Dragett crew event, and it was easily one of the most spectacular disasters I’ve ever been a part of. This hotel has not just terrible internet availability, it seems like their network protocols are set up to actively sabotage anybody trying to transmit information, to the point that a few learned users in the crowd were looking up FCC regs to see if the way they were virtually dicking us around was even legal. We spent a good 15 minutes or so just trying to get a local network connected so that we could transmit answers up to the board, resulting in a broad and baffling array of failure modes. We were literally trying to relay a couple words 15 feet and we just got shit all over the entire time. Alkali showed up in the middle of this process and his journey to the panel room is both a wonderfully "typically Alkali" thing and is a decent allegory about how organized the network setup process was. His account follows:

"I went to the wrong panel room. I wouldn’t have known it because they welcomed me in there and invited me to participate, so I did. I have no idea what the hell that event was, but it involved me singing at one point so I knew I had to get out of there."

We ended up just putting up two of the phones that randomly happened to work up front so that everyone could enter in answers on those. I came up with some suggestions that fared pretty well with the audience. One of which was just unabashedly shitting on Draggor for the wifi disastrophe, but it was still funny. One of my answers may also have inadvertently created "The Knotzi Party" and for that crime only the gods can judge me.

After that I did, not much really. It’s hard for me to articulate how unbearably sparse this schedule is, but I’ll give that my best shot in the wrap-up. So stay tuned for that, fans of me complaining! I did finally stop by the art show during that period, once I eventually figured out that the doors to the art show room that were labeled "art show" and had been locked the whole time weren’t the ones one was supposed to use to get to the art show. You actually had to go through registration to get to tabletop gaming and go from there to the art show. You know, sensibly. I actually did see a couple pieces that I really liked. There was this one picture by Bubbles Fennec of an African painted dog painting spots on a hyena (it's in the middle here) that was just AAAGHPFH! I think Kathy would've loved it but I tapped out after getting outbid twice. It seems a bunch of rich silicon valley people also saw all the fun cool art. That's personally disappointing, but putting the art in front of the money in hopes of attracting one to the other is how auctions are supposed to function. I’m glad the artists are getting a good value for their work.

I tried to drag Archai along for the closing ceremonies, but about 20 minutes into the string of delays and even longer string of giant-ass line filling up the ballroom he gave up. Truly amazing lines in there, for realz. The whole second ballroom was basically a main events line-handling region, and we still had a Family Circus chaotic criss-cross going on in there. I gave up on the line as well actually, except un-give-up-ing somehow ended up working out. I had time to wait in line for all of that, give up, wander around, go outside and talk to my mom on the phone for 20 minutes, and come back in, all before they actually started. They were a whole HOUR late in starting the actual thing. I missed a good chunk of the opening number because I was texting Archai "Good call my dude. Didn’t start until literally just now."

It was a decent ceremony. The con theme that year was music, so there was a bit more showmanship on display than was typical, which was kind of nice actually. Apparently the musical earlier went really well. I wish they'd made it clearer what that event was. The way it was listed I just saw another one among a half-dozen musical performances on the schedule, which have always been kind of take-it-or-leave-it for me. I didn't realize that they were doing the first performance of an all-new custom musical that Fox n' Peppers had created just for the con. They really buried the lead on that one and I regret missing it. The ceremony blew a LOT of time reading off every last number on their balance sheet for the charity and hosting another auction piece. I mean I support them and it's really cool how much we raised but going through the whole Excel spreadsheet line by line is as interesting as... well most other Excel spreadsheets. It made the ceremony incredibly long for an event that neither dispensed attendance numbers, nor announced the next year's theme. I’m definitely glad that I stuck it out until the end though. Their closing song was a fucking masterpiece. A tremendously engaging performance, and a message that brought out the kind of biting, achingly beautiful sadness that can only come from having first known great, soaring joy. We have to go, but it’s not really goodbye, because we’ll see each other again. It was a vision of grace like nothing else my eyes have seen, and a resonance of emotion like nothing my heart has ever felt. I would fervently encourage all of you to watch it when it comes up online. I looked online and the only closing video I've seen cuts out a mere 36 minutes in (told ya it ran on a bit) and doesn't cover the second half. I'll update when a video shows up.

The great behemoth of closing ceremonies pushed back the next event a bit, as it tied up many of the hosts. Regardless, Whose Lion is it Anyway fired up and proceeded apace into the night. It was a really great time, and I contributed a few fun ones there too. World’s Worst and Scenes from a Hat have always been my strong spots. That’s how my humor is. I’m always good at quickly coming up with one and only one funny thing in one specific scenario at a time. Keeping that momentum up for a whole scene is something that I’ve gotta work on. My heart goes out to the audience members that had to do a hoedown, as that silly drinking song is actually one of the toughest games. The look of joy on Alkali’s face when one of the people up there completely dunked on a verse was a palpable moment of triumph. It looked like he’d finally found meaning in his life.

I actually hadn’t worn my own suit all con up until that point, so it was quite literally now or never. I was waffling about it for a bit because I wasn't quite feeling it, but fortunately Metric introduced me to shouldIbefursuitingnow.com, a site he operates which handily resolved the conflict. It was actually pretty funny, that outing. When bereft of my phone and ability to see clearly, I actually had much better luck finding some people that I’d been looking for. I managed to find and congratulate a number of dancers on their routines, to include Fluke! I didn’t explain precisely who I was, but hopefully the fact that he taught me rock climbing narrowed the field at least a little. I also found Roman Otter for the first and only time. He’d been working at the con, so he was pretty toast by then, but was still having lots of fun. There were others, but I’ve either mentioned them already in other parts or completely forgotten who they were because I was running out of brain by then. Many thanks to all of you!

Naturally at the deepest, darkest, most dangerous part of the night, the last event of the con was the adult fursuit games, an event that I had never seen the like of before. I mean, I knew of a few "adult fursuit games" *wiggles eyebrows* but not as a panel, so I thought this one would be worth dressing up and turning out for. I was a little dubious as to what we might get up to, but it was actually a TON of fun, and not nearly so depraved as what one might think given the title and audience. I found Axton Collie there, who of course mistook me for Acefox because of my inherited costume. When he gleefully recanted the complications of having sex with Ace in the shower upon my clarifying who I was and then proceeded to massively dunk on the Never-have-I-Ever game, I got a better idea of exactly why he and Ace got along so well in the past.

The games were actually pretty well designed, and never seemed to get old. For that first one, the chairs were in a circle and every time you had done one of the mentioned lasciviousnesses you had to move one chair to the right. The combination of the hads and the had-nots meant that there was some overlap among those assembled, occasionally creating chairs with four or five fursuiters on them, which typically goes about how you’d imagine it would go. I also really liked the game where two suiters had to pop a balloon between the two of them without touching it with their hands or feet. That’s such a cool idea because it seems like a children’s game until you realize that there are very few non-suggestive ways of accomplishing that. Despite the legacy of my fantastic fornicating fox forbearer, this would in fact be the first time I’ve grabbed another fursuiters hips and sharply shoved them against mine. It definitely popped the balloon though! Maybe I’ve got a knack for this. Anyways, all of that furry adulting wore out the last of my energy for the night and I turned in.

Next day was of course the packing. After I’d effectively boxed up all my stuff and moved it out of my adjoining room, I ran off to say hello/goodbye to Ryoken, Reggie, and Reo Grayfox (see Reo? I remembered you!). I’d been trying to find them the whole con, but hadn’t managed it thus far. Certainly didn’t help that Ryo would say that they were "on the casino floor" if I was looking for him. Oh thanks. Not like that’s a noisy, crowded room the size of a football field that’s designed to be intentionally disorienting or anything. I felt a little bad leaving Archai behind to pack up all his troubles, but he dug this hole, and then filled it with pilotable bean-bag-chair animals, so that’s his problem! At least for as long as it takes to see a couple people off. We ended up with plenty of time for loadout anyways. Since everyone else in the hotel was also trying to move fleets of suitcases and squishy animals outside at the same time there was quite a delay in bringing to bear the necessary flotilla of luggage carts. A delay which was technically not our fault and thus we could be insulated from late checkout consequences. Archai went to complete checkout and get cash to tip everybody, and our bellhop seemed pretty new at this, so I got to try my hand at Yukon Tessellating, which is both a skill that I’d honed on this trip and also the new name of my Stonesour coverband.

And that, as they say, was that. We spent the next couple days recovering from all that fun we’d been having and then I was on my way. Though there was a chance for a few interesting interactions squeezed in there. Archai had been surprised and baffled by how archaic my laptop was when he’d tried to hook it up to his speakers via Bluetooth. It didn’t quite predate the technology, but its antenna was only suited to file transfers. It didn’t have the bandwidth for music. I thought that this was just the same ribbing that I get with much of my technology, but it turned out that the nerds upstairs had been sorting through their collective recycle bins and Damien had found me a laptop that was a couple generations newer. Another Lenovo Thinkpad even, such as would smooth the transition. I thanked him profusely for the upgrade, and joked "well, you got any phones up there?" And it would seem karma saw fit to cancel out some of those jokes that got me into such trouble. I now have a fairly good-condition Galaxy S7 Edge to replace the one that had struggled so futilely through my last two cons. Goddamn, I should bring a shopping list when I come here! I also learned that Kyreeth is a pretty big fan of Freefall as it turns out. I really wish we’d had time to nerd out over that, but I learned it literally as I was leaving, so all I had time to do was pimp out my fanfic to him and hope that he follows up on it. I’ll have to bookmark that topic for another visit.

I had remembered what a deathmarch that a morning flight had been on my last visit there, so I opted for an overnight to get back this time. This meant that the trip through security was blindingly fast, with there being next to no lines at any step. For someone traveling with two laptops, three phones and a tablet, I expected there to be a disaster. I did get subjected to extra screening at the gate though. That went fine because I’d just been at a furry con, so I was well prepared for the experience of having strangers rub all over my body. They did forget to give me my nailclippers back though. I just got new ones after my previous set had been eaten by a different airline. Dammit, hangnails really suck! Stop denying me the tools I need to live my life!

Naturally this evening departure plan of mine ran afoul of Spirit Airlines and their ingenious dismissal of the ability of seats to lean back seriously how expensive could that mechanism possibly be you cheap fucks. So not much sleep happened on the trip back wherein I really wished it had. Anyways, if you’d forgotten from up top, that flight was also delayed and that’s what got me started writing. Fortunately it wasn’t a long enough delay for me to get all of this typed up, I’d still be in California if that were the case. It’s nice to have something to get the ball rolling though. During the interminable wait for my $180 worth of bags at the carousel I helped an old man negotiate some terribly impatient sliding doors with his own luggage. He tipped me $4. Wait, did he assume that I work there? Why does that keep happening? Anyways, I got my stuff into the elevator only to find that the button for my floor didn’t work and staggeringly the solution was not to punch it really hard and get a button-cover-shaped abrasion on the side of your hand. Yup, this was Detroit alright. I had to overshoot and go back down one. Naturally in the course of this interaction my MP3 player fell out of my pocket and bounced right into the gap at the door jamb of the elevator, falling six stories to its painful demise. ‘Twas a faithful soldier, one who had served me well for eight years. Since I only used it traveling these days, it ended up being kind of a fun time capsule since I never remembered to update the playlist. Ah well, can’t fight back the march of time and all that. I wonder if Damien has any newer ones. I’ll have to ask next time I’m visiting.

So yeah, closing remarks then. This con definitely didn’t live up to expectations, but it would be irresponsible of me to fail to qualify that with the fact that most everybody I talked to told me that this con was LIFE-CHANGINGLY AMAZING and they would JUST DIE if I didn’t come out there and join them for it. So BLFC was kind of set up to fail in that regard. Honestly I kind of wish I hadn’t heard about it before. Which is a dumb thing to want, because I never would’ve gone if I hadn’t heard about it. Still, I feel like that’s a big chunk of why I came away from it feeling so tepid. I feel like I could’ve done better with this one if I hadn’t come at it with so many preconceptions. It’s kind of like Teen Titans: Go. A fairly competent show, I’m sure, but I can’t help but dislike it because the original Teen Titans was an absolute masterpiece that set the bar cartoonishly high. So high that even a highly cartoonish cartoon couldn’t cartoon that high.

There’s certainly a bit of trouble with my standards, but some things are more objective. There were definitely a lot of venue things that were odd. Not sure how much control the con has have there, but such things are still worth mentioning. They have zoned elevators, which is wonderful for helping to fight elevator congestion, but this year they made the baffling and completely arbitrary decision to make all the stairwell doors lock from the outside. So you could never use the stairs to get from one floor to another, which turned around and fucked the elevators right back up. It’s incredibly frustrating to be on floor eight and realize that if you want to get to floor seven you have to take an elevator down to the lobby and then get on a different elevator to go back up. Madness! I assume it’s so that people wouldn’t fuck or do drugs or whatever in the stairwell but like, is that ever that big of a problem when there’s so many people using the stairs regularly? Would making them even MORE private help or hurt that? And also, we’re having drugs and doing sex in our rooms anyway! What’s it matter?

I’ve mentioned their network weirdness before, but I need to again because it was huge, pervasive and a big drag on the con. This had to be another one of those cases where they’d intentionally sabotaged a certain network path because much of the time web browser traffic would be kinda okay most of the time, but Telegram would be completely unusable almost always. Seems slight, but that’s actually a HUGE deal now that Telegram is the reigning monarch of all furry networking platforms. I know this used to be how I always lived, but these days I can’t go back to the dark ages of having to run back to my room all the time to check my laptop to see what’s up and where people are at. That's how I end up just sitting in my room all the time and not interacting with anybody, as did happen a couple times this con, for that reason. Don’t build me up just to bring me down, technology! Also this probably seems minor, and it is, but their sheets and mattress pads aren’t fitted. Sure it’s hardly a warcrime but it’s fucking weird and it makes it really hard to get in the bed quietly in the dark so you don’t wake your roommates, especially the first time when you don’t yet know of this bizarre, arbitrary bed paradigm. There are certainly things that are nice about this place. It's a casino, so it's definitely a venue that's tuned for entertainment. The bowling, mini golf and go-karting included with registration are certainly something you wouldn't find elsewhere. Shame I couldn't find anybody else interested in them. So yeah, some good, some bad, but altogether a pretty weird vibe from this hotel. Especially for one that's been around the block and should understand the particulars of a furry con a bit better by now.

The feel of this con also reminded very strongly of my first FC. If you'll recall, back then I was thinking that FC wasn't worth the $300 plane tickets after my first experience with it. But Archai kept inviting me back and eventually I got a feel for it. This whole west-coast feel where the schedule is kinda sparse and it's mostly about socializing? Even with my years of getting used to that at FC I was wildly unprepared for the extreme to which that philosophy is taken at this con. There were maybe like five events in the whole thing that I had a real, keen interest in, whereas at most east-coast cons I'll be buried in events and I've gotta pointedly choose the ones I'll miss. It's like someone took a look at how far FC had gone in that direction and decided "Well those bay-armpit wusses didn't go nearly far enough! We're gonna make the emptiest, quietest, kinkiest, west-coastiest, room-partiest, drug-doingest con there is. I see so little con going on during this con. Just people blowing money in the casino while smoking like chimneys, getting shwacked and then sloppily grinding on each other. I mean, don’t get me wrong those are fine things that happen at any con, but the attitude of this one seemed to be "Oh yeah, all the drugs and gambling and elaborate sex parties are the WHOLE CON. Why do you think we hosted it in budget-Vegas? If you don’t want to be a part of the sickest, banginest seven-deadly-sins-fest there is then go back to Pax East and play Mancala or some shit, whatever it is you squares do!" I'm surprised that the signature drink of this con wasn't just an everclear-spiked can of Monster energy drink garnished with some Viagra, a concoction referred to as the "Mount-and-do".

This comparison is far too extreme, but the tone does remind me of the way that RainFurrest felt that all the in-public weird shit that shook up the normies was the one quintessential thing that their con needed to be based on. Now, that's not to say that BLFC has a public image problem, in fact the staff presents as outstandingly professional, it's just a comparison that I think is apt for the way that they've kinda missed me with their apparent mission statement. I found FC to be fairly approachable from such a state, but BLFC is a bit further out into the reeds. I may or may not be able to bridge the gap. I wouldn't say they're doing a bad job, necessarily. Beyond scheduling snags it seems fairly well run, they've got great AV, and have a good track record of commitment to their themes. Obviously they can't be doing too bad if they're shooting up like... um, I can't think of a simile for shooting up that's not heroin-related and I feel like I've talked about drugs enough so we'll just say that their numbers are growing precipitously.

I guess that's the final word then. I didn't have the rending-of-the-cosmos complete blast of a time that I was promised, but I had a good time. I think I'd be willing to give them another chance now that I've got a better idea what their deal is. But yeah, in all I feel like I've been as transparent with what BLFC's MO is as I can. So all I can say is if it sounds like their thing is your thing then I bet you'll have a great time there! And even if it's not quite my thing, I'm glad its out there. There's enough cons now that they should be able to specialize and appeal to more particular tastes. It seems like a lot of people have found that this is the right con for them, and a lot of those people are really cool dudes. So yeah. Enjoy your thing, cool dudes! You've earned it.

Yeah, that's a real statistic. Ten years ago I made this FA account. It's actually ten years plus two days, but I've been busy gearing up for BLFC and I only recently realized the significance of this date. I'd had furry interests a couple years before I signed on here, but that's really when I hit the point of no return. And of course that date is helpfully tracked here on my userpage, so that makes a good, easily observable landmark. Heh, so strange how it's not obvious that something is a landmark experience when we're actually experiencing it. It's been one hell of a ride. You'd think that for somebody who has spent so much time obsessively chronicling my furry experiences here I'd be a little better at taking a retrospective on them. It's not quite so easy as I thought it would be though. If furry stuff were just something that I did then it would be fairly easy to describe, but over the years... it's more like it's become a part of me. BLFC this weekend will be my thirtieth convention. I've thrown a TON of my time and resources at being a part of this weird, crazy community and really, I think it's been worth it. As I've said it before, everybody's gotta have a thing. Nobody's on this earth just to cash paychecks and die, everybody's got something that means something to them. It took me a long time to admit it, but being furry is my thing. I work hard to keep doing it because I find it enjoyable and fulfilling. It's brought me into the company of unique and wonderful people that have enriched my life in ways I never would've thought possible.

So I guess that's what I'll talk about. The first thing that people ask furries after "what" is "why?" People outside the fandom always want to know what motivates us to do these strange things. It's a tough one to answer, because there are as many answers to that as there are people in the fandom. I've been asked why I'm in the fandom by some close friends over the years and I did my best to give them thoughtful, reasoned responses. I really ought to be able to give my own answer to that question. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to explain my own journey. And what better time to do that than on a big anniversary? So here goes with that. I'll quit stalling now.

The furry fandom is tremendously interesting, and as so many lives have proven, "interesting" is a double-edged sword. Or really more like 13-edged sword where half the edges don't even obey basic Euclidean geometry. I lived a very subdued and dutiful life before I left home. It's where I picked up a lot of that pragmatism that has carried me so well. Going straight from high school into the navy helped too. That's a really strong motivation to figure shit out, and FAST. Back in those days though, I never for a second would've imagined that I'd find myself getting drunk and dancing at a rave all night, or cuddling with a giant badger I just met all throughout the run of Rocky Horror Picture Show, or smoking weed, or flying out to California to spend the night with someone who accosted me in an elevator to tell me how much he liked that story I wrote about a jackal getting some unexpected hypnotherapy at a nightclub one night. I just, never really did anything interesting. To be sure, I also didn't expect to have someone I just met trying to pin a baby on me after a night of admittedly rather subdued passion, or that I'd find myself breaking into someone's house at 2AM to drag a semiconscious girl in the middle of poisoning herself to the hospital. Apparently that's part of the package though. Almost makes me glad the fandom has so few women. Almost.

Hm, so I guess we're starting with the negative. Not structurally sensible, but I'm just kind of going where the wind takes me right now. I've wondered many times, aloud and privately, what exactly it is that attracts broken people to the furry fandom. I've started to think that it's the culture itself, at least partly. The reason that everyone thinks "wow, everyone in the fandom is gay or bi or some weird orientation that I didn't even know existed" isn't because those groups are massively overrepresented as compared to the general population. We've got statistics to back up that those demographics are only moderately overrepresented. Of course those are skewed a lot. The reason that there are so many conflicting numbers around about how many people are gay or trans or polyamorous (terrible word by the way. Greek prefix on a Latin root? Madness, I tell you. Madness!) or whatever other unconventional thing is that it's just plain not a good idea to go around advertising that you are one of those things. There are plenty of places in the world where it's illegal to be gay or transsexual, and plenty more where you'll be literally murdered or beaten bloody in the streets for it. (statistics again, America is still one of the latter places.)

Those peripheries are lit up like a neon sign in the fandom because it's a very accepting culture that I've seen take a rather aggressive hardline against intolerance. That is an objectively wonderful thing, and it's part of what cultivates such an uplifting atmosphere at conventions. I'm forced to admit though, that I think this is what helps to bring out the crazies. We're a friendly and supportive bunch, and that is a siren's song to people whose lives are in shambles. I know that atmosphere must SCREAM "tell me about your problems" because I've had randos who I just met lead off with "Yeah, it's been tough but these days I've gotten my stepdad to stop beating me." What? NO! Just no. That is NOT what you lead with when we've been talking for just minutes and I don't even know your name yet.

I think the furry fandom is supportive to the point of becoming an enabler for these people. When there are lots of helpful hands in the air, some people just see fit to crowd-surf their way across instead of supporting themselves. There are so many people like me who will be willing to stick their neck out pretty damn far for someone they don't know very well, and will only withdraw their aid once they've been quite thoroughly exploited. Honestly you could live pretty well just generosity-hopping from one person to the next, only moving on when your present well dries up. And some people do, I'm sure. I've been hanging out with people before whom I've had friends advise me away from. Things like "You might want to come up with an excuse to leave. Last time I had dinner with this guy he ended up sleeping on my couch for a week and I was very near calling the cops to get him to leave." Marius from AC 2015 was certainly such a person. Keen observers of that incident will notice that even after all I went through at his behest Marius felt not the barest need to compensate me, and was in fact quite assured that I would continue to provide for him in the future.

Honestly I think that the furry cons' welcoming siren song has affected me in certain unusual ways as well. In the arena of science fiction and other flavors of convention, I've been to Dragon Con, RunningGag and Genericon, and honestly I am rather disappoint. I wouldn't go so far as very disappoint, but I am at least moderately disappoint. It felt to me like they took only the barest staple elements of a furry convention and just threw them on the floor, with none of the really fun and exhilarating stuff in between. Because that's the thing, really. A furry convention has tabletop gaming, and artists, and an arcade, and writing, and stand-up comics, and discussions of speculative fiction, and cool nerd swag, and contests and themed games, and concerts and shows, and cosplay, and pretty much everything that any other convention boasts, but also fucking life-sized plushies that want to dance with you! The only thing anything else has over a furry con is that they have "real" celebrities and authors, because everything furry is pretty grass-roots. What am I really missing there though? The chance to pay $60 for fucking Scott Bacula's autograph? Yeah, I'm sure missing that opportunity will be a regret I'll be wheezing about on my deathbed.

Furry creators are great people, and even the most famous ones are really nice, down to earth folks. Rukis has been really great and infinitely forgiving as I fanboy over her from time to time. I had a few glasses of wine with Uncle Kage before, arguably the most famous furry out there. I have a standing invitation from 2 The Ranting Gryphon to come have dinner at his house. These are people with enough notoriety to make a living during furry stuff and they'd still not bat an eye at the idea of hanging out with me. That's WAY cooler than being shooed away by the security detail following Will Wheaton around. It's just so much of a dramatically different crowd, from top to bottom. Archai has been to a few sci-fi conventions and his description says it far better than I can. "I walked through the convention hall at like 10:00PM and it was just dead quiet. It was like there wasn't even an event going on that weekend. You never would've known. And I was just like 'Seriously you guys, what the FUCK? You people have no idea how to party'." That's a great way of saying it. I don't want to step on any toes, but I think that's largely because science fiction is OLD. Really out-there fantasy stuff really started with Tolkein. Nobody was mainstream fantasy before that. But Sci-Fi goes way back. I do like science fiction as a genre, but really the attitude surrounding the fandom is a bunch of stuffy philosophical bullshit, and not my scene at all.

I really like gaming, too, which also has conventions of its own, but they have huge pitfalls as well. Tabletop gaming is a MASSIVELY exclusive culture that prides itself on hating its own members. When I used to go into my local gaming shop, the guys behind the counter wasted no time informing me how incorrect all of my interests were. I'm not talking about friendly jests, either. If you go into a hardcore gaming boutique and ask for the wrong thing, the proprietor will tremulously stroke his Scott Ian wizard beard and tell you in no uncertain terms to never come back ever again as long as you live. You could be a golden avatar of disposable income who sweats cash and farts diamond dust, and it wouldn't matter. They don't want any of your dirty, wrong-game-playing money.

I had friends that I acquired through other vectors that also happened to play DnD, which you can make work. That initial contact is kind of a vetting process for compatible personalities so that you know gaming sessions will go relatively well. At a gaming con though? You're with people you've never met and are just in it for the game. And if you're with a group of people that are just assembling for the purpose of the game and nothing else, odds are you'll be inventing whole new shades of fucked at every turn. Your chances of being invited to join a play group are slim, and even if you get there, your chances of enjoying yourself are even slimmer. You see, every game, even cooperative ones like D&D, becomes a poisonous competition designed to ruin friendships before they even begin. It's the scorched earth method of social interaction, which is what happens when aggressively antisocial people are forced to be around each other for an entire evening. That's especially baffling because tabletop gaming is a community that literally depends on interacting with other people. It's way different from playing games on Xbox Live. Threats and insults take on a psychologically bitter reality when you're actually sitting in the same room with a person calling you a "faggot foot" in a scream-cloud of spittle-flecked fury. It makes no sense for people who hate other human beings so much to join a community that requires you to gather a group of them around a table for several hours a night.

Okay, that got long and needlessly passionate and it wasn't really my point. I was talking about something specific um, oh yeah. Other fandoms suck. I'm SUPER into My Little Pony, but I barely ever even considered going to a Brony convention. Once again there's the angle of "furry conventions have that and ALSO EVERYTHING. Why would I want to go to a furry convention that lacks everything except ponies?", and also I watched Unicon fall on its face and proceed immediately to viciously eat itself, so that was less than encouraging. That really is it though. That's what furry cons bring to the table. They have everything in the world that I love, and also some of the most amazing people I have ever met. People who are always happy to see me and always up for something fun. The ones who bring out the best in me and enrich my life by their presence. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

And you know, I think how goddamned amazing furry cons are could be part of the problem in the end. Now that I look back on it, I realize that the thing that attracts all these broken people might be all the same stuff that I love about it. They're still people after all. Stupid, emotionally crippled, broke-ass people. That's what creates that classic effect of "Oh shit I can't pay my rent! Can't wait to fly to FC and pick up my new fursuit!" that you hear all the time. People are just so desperately, passionately in love with the fandom that they put it before everything else in their life, which if it wasn't shit already, rapidly deteriorates when you spend years and years prioritizing your cartoon animal costume over your career, family and relationships. In my brief brushes with the social sciences in college, one interesting concept that I've come across is that the psychology of addiction is almost exactly the same no matter what the victim is actually addicted to. It's not about the addictive behavior itself. Or rather, it's not about what you're doing, it's about what you're not doing, in order to feed your addiction. If your obsession with tinkering with model trains is making you miss paying your bills, spend time away from your kids and take fake sick days from work then congratulations! You are addicted to it.

That's the only difference between a fun thing that you do in your spare time and a crippling psychological compulsion. It's how much you're willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of that activity. There are plenty of people who do cartoonish amounts of cocaine, meanwhile they are holding down a successful job, taking care of their good, well-adjusted children and saving up money to plan responsibly for their future. Those people may have developed a physical, chemical dependency and need drugs to get through the day, but they're not addicted because they didn't let the drug take over their life. That's why all of these anti-drug campaigns where someone who's got a stable social network and is loving life smokes weed one time and five minutes later he's blowing dudes in a truckstop parking lot for crack don't really reach anyone. People know that's not how it works. It's usually someone whose life is shit that turns to drugs as an escape. They wouldn't be on drugs if they didn't already have lots of other problems. That's why reform is so slow to happen in society. We're always so quick to blame the drugs because they're easy to blame. It's much harder to blame (then try to fix) the school system, or economy, or family structure, or society in general. Even thought it was those things that ultimately failed these addicts.

I think that's what I'm seeing when I find myself staggered by the amount of broken people I come across in the fandom. They're addicted to furry conventions and they've let their lives go to shit because of it. I mentioned how I rebuffed Marius' further requests for assistance and how he went to the Upstate NY furs Facebook page for help. Whereupon he was told what a fucking twit he is for prioritizing going to AC again over getting a job and a car. That conversation was deleted by the group admin because it quickly became obvious that it was about to boil over, but Marius' response on his own Facebook wall is still up. I didn't post it at the time because this was something that actually kind of scared me. I thought that I was helping him out, but I may have actually done irrevocable damage during my tenure with him. Take a look at this and try to tell me it doesn't sound like a raving crack addict furiously detoxing in a mental ward.

"hi all i have an anouncemet to say, ANTHROCON IS MY LIFE OK AND IF U DONT AGREE WITH ME DO AS U PLEASE BUT THAT'S THE ONLY GOOD THING I GOT IN MY I HAVE A FAMILY THAT DONT TALK TO ME AND I HAVE NO MATE SO ALL I HAVE IS ANTHROCON AND ANTROCON IS THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES ME HAPPY"

So, yeah. I know I rambled a lot and I may not have done much to address the spirit of this momentous occasion directly, but that's really the best retrospective I can give. The furry fandom is so great that there are people willing to sacrifice literally anything in their lives to get another taste of it. The reason that I can manage to go completely apeshit over it without bringing myself to ruin has more to do with the number on my bank statement than anything else. Far too many people think "con first and damn the consequences". Meanwhile I flip shit about an extra $220 expense being thrown at me when I could comfortably afford ten times that. I remember the time when the college accidentally drafted my account for $7,200 instead of $2,700 and I was just like "Oh, well that was dumb. Guess I'd better refill my checking account then." Yeah, I've got the money, and it's only through very careful policing of things like this that I continue to have it. I'm spending what I worked so hard to earn on something that I love, and in the right amount there's nothing wrong with that. I really do feel like I could shake the earth with the inhuman fury of my own self-control when I'm at conventions. You'll note that I spend tons of time in the den meeting people and socializing, but I buy next to nothing there. I that a T-shirt I was my biggest den purchase ever. I've never bought art there, even though I know dozens of artists with tables. That's partly because I know that I'm severely sleep-deprived, probably malnourished and high on con-juice all through the experience, so that's not the time to be making potentially expensive decisions.

Then of course there's the fact that I really want a fursuit, like a LOT. I've worn them dozens of times and I'm still discovering new and wonderful ways to enjoy doing it. I've never been able to justify the purchase to myself though. Especially having been without a job for four years, and moreover three summers in college, when I really SHOULD have had a job. Now that I've actually got a job I'm not certian if I can keep it, and then of course there are all those innumerable "what-ifs" that I have to be ready for. Going down for the count with my appendix has disavowed me of the notion of youthful invincibility that colored my decisions up until that point. Bad shit can and absolutely does happen, and I'm going to be goddamned ready for it. As such, the con decision is always "Can I spare the time? Can I spare the money?" and then I look over what cons I can make work. I've sent away three different, very disappointed friends who really wanted me to come to BLFC with them because was during the school year then. As soon as they told me when it was I said "No. Fuck that, it's during classes" and that decision was made. Furthe'More has become very important to me and I'm still on staff, but they moved it to April one year and got a "no, fuck that it's during classes" from me as well. I take a VERY hard line about what the fandom is and is not allowed to take from me. That's why I can be so heavily into it without it taking everything I have. Even though I definitely AM researching into getting a suit now, that's just because I've got money set aside specifically for that, money I know that I can comfortably do without.

I'm sure by now you know that when provoked, I belch dangerous quantities of words to startle attackers. So yeah, it seems I've hit upon a subject about which I'm rather passionate in my choice of thesis for this journal. I may not have meant to hurl a word-brick at this, but that's how it came out when I really looked deep down at why I do what I do. I think that I responded in such volume because a lot of that stuff really needed saying. So yeah, that felt good, and it was as fitting of a display as I could think of to commemorate this auspicious occasion.

I face a great deal of uncertainty in the months ahead, but I have come so much further than I ever thought I would. I'm such a dramatically different person now than I was ten years ago. I have you furries to thank for that. And with any luck, your guidance and companionship will see me through to the happy and stable future that I seek.

Well, given that I'm at the airport to fly out for BLFC this evening, I should probably get this thing up!

It's such a strange, self-sabotage that happened here. When cons actually go well, the tale of working them becomes a lot less interesting. I find myself at that imposition right now, having recently completed a very successful Furthemore. Ah well, I’ve had such doubts before and turned up pretty good journals, so we’ll see. Other aspects of my life are smoking wrecks right now so maybe that’ll balance it out or whatever.

I actually didn't think I'd get to go to this convention thanks to recently starting a job. I didn't think I'd be able to swing all the time off so soon, especially with extra for the drive and to help with setup and loadout. However, the operator of the power plant that hired me filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago, so that's changed the landscape a bit. It's not a certainty that the whole thing will go down in flames, but in many ways that uncertainty is worse, as it apparently plans to persist for some time. In any case, that particular turd in the punchbowl made me feel a lot more comfortable betting against the company. Specifically in the form of blowing all my vacation days because those are forfeit when you get laid off anyways. That's how I ended up suddenly having both Furthemore and BLFC plans appearing just recently. Hey, even if I lose this bet it means that I'm keeping this job that I really want. One of the most tarnished silver linings I've ever seen but I'll take what I can get I suppose. Anyways, I can whine about that later. At this point I could go on for days about that, so for the moment I'd best make sure that I actually mention the convention in this alleged convention journal.

One of the first things I did when communicating with the other staff when this latent revelation came to light was procure for myself an actual, specific role in the structure there. I mentioned last year how they'd nearly streamlined my wander-around-and-do-whatever sort of position out of existence, so I knew I'd have to commit to something if I wanted to have a good chance of actually moving the needle this time. I got along well with Azure Wolf, who thankfully is no longer literally the only person in logistics department, and I had a good time working with all the operations people where logistics is based out of. Given that a huge chunk of the work that I seemed to end up doing was tracking and movement of supplies and materials, logistics seemed a good fit. It was good this year in particular because a big chunk of that work is during setup and loadout at the beginning and end of the con, and I had plenty of time to spare this year for those parts. So I became part of logistics. Our organizational structure is well used to shakeups, so making that declaration in the eleventh hour wasn't such a big deal. There always seem to be a few last-minute substitutions because life is like that. This year there were a fair few more than normal. When we were passing out accolades at the end, many of the descriptions were "Yeah, this guy only found out they would be doing this job like 'n' days before the con started and they still managed to pull it off." Where 'n' was an integer value that varied between three and zero. So the con going pretty smoothly even with a bunch of people having only just stepped up to the plate is quite an achievement.

Anyways, my official induction into the Ops sphere of influence (an interaction consisting of a couple quick Telegram conversations, the most official kind of induction) landed me in the pre-con ops dinner on Wednesday night. Not really a formal dinner or anything, just Mexican food in one of our hotel rooms, so I just texted in a bunch of Spanish words to the person who was ordering and hoped for the best when I got there. That wedged in fairly nicely after the seven-hour drive to get to the place (it snowed most of the way there because I have clearly angered Shiva again, there's just no reasoning with her sometimes). The drive is another big reason why I was thinking I wouldn't manage it this time. A trip of that length basically adds a day at either end at the very least. Could get even worse depending on sleep deprivation conditions at the far end. The first Furthemore burst onto the scene at something of a tumultuous period for me, and as such I've moved further away from it every year since I started working there. In fact the one time that I didn't move, they moved away from me. Hopefully that trend won't continue too much further. I'll end up working at a metal foundry in Singapore and spend more time traveling to the con than working at it.

Pre-con ops tacos (which is an anagram of both "coon spaceports" and "porno scope acts" just in case you have any spare brain cells that desperately need a profoundly useless piece of information to hang onto) had an attendance of Kiba, our stalwart bannerman; Tyecoon, our much smaller but no-less-durable secondary bannerman and publications wizard; Azure, logistics team leader now that the word "team" in that phrase doesn't mandate derisive air quotes around it; Adept Omega, who has done enough things that I forget which one it was this time, charity and volunteer management I think; Fox E Wolf, IT code monkey and my roommate for this adventure; Yuukari, proud gofur rancher; Red, who I also forgot what he does but he must be good about it because I only tend to hear about problems; and Sparf and Hawthorn, two of the illustrious surprise promotion people. Hawthorne was taking on a security role pretty early on in his tenure here, so he's far braver than I. Newly-vice-chair Sparf's temperament was kind of like the dad's reaction in those youtube videos where their girlfriend tells him that they're pregnant. It's like outwardly "Oh that's wonderful!" but in absolutely everything other than the literal words they are using you can just feel their sinking realization of the massive amount of responsibility that is about to crush them into a stringy paste. There's a lot of that going around right before the con. So you know, good time had by all.

Really though, this kind of thing came up in response to the way that we tend to work with people closely at the con, but never really interact meaningfully because of how busy and tired we are, and how most of us go the rest of the intervening year without crossing paths again. So we took a moment while we all still had time and useful consciousness before the con started to just kind of hang out and chat. That was pretty nice, actually. It's a great group and doing the whole "ships passing in the night" bit with them every time really had us missing out. Naturally it wouldn't be an ops meeting without some kind of profound miscommunication or other. Don't worry, it's not like teamwork and coordinating things are our job or something. Would be really embarrassing otherwise. What we'd failed to get across to a big chunk of the audience was that we were planning on going to the pool that evening, but of course nobody brought swimsuits because we didn't scrutinize our invites past the part where they said there would be tacos. We re-scheduled it to the following night and then to the 7th of Nevuary as con setup handily precluded that. So yeah, it's at least an accurate way of setting the stage for what's to come, as conventions are nothing if not a string of things that didn't work out how you thought but nobody ever lets that stop them.

I've no gift for summary as I'm sure you all need no reminder, but a sizable majority of Thursday can be covered by just the description of "get the stuff to the place" with only the stuff and place changing periodically. I often lament my lack of transferable skills when I come to work here, as I've only ever worked one other real job, which was in a field that doesn't have a lot of overlap with putting on a weekend party for animal people, but I'll be damned if all my pallet-jack-driving experience from the navy doesn't really come into its own during these things. Moving through a spacious hotel lobby is comparatively easy compared with trying to get a heavy pump motor across a long expanse of industrial non-skid with planes and equipment lying around all over the place.

The professional movers team picked up a few new recruits that were quite familiar to me, Elbi the Island Bori Neopet (they should really call them Retropets at this point but they're still cute) and her betrothed Butterscotch Bunny. Only the former was officially staffing, but Scotchbun still unofficially moved many heavy things to the places they were needed, so I try not to get hung up on semantics. Lots of people work for us without "working for us", though I have observed that to be a fairly unstable quantum state. About halfway through the con I was just thinking "Oh damn Scotch is working way too hard they're gonna kidnap his ass" and indeed he's been officialized as of closing ceremonies. That's how they get ya. At least they don't use the big butterfly net like back in the old days.

The three of us ended up stuffing swag-bags afterwords, which is rather like if you combined an assembly line with an effort to break some kind of hyper-specific Guinness World Record for juggling hundreds of irregularly shaped fragile objects with a corgi running around between all of your ankles and then crammed all that whole production into an occupied hotel room. The corgi doesn't really have a metaphorical meaning in that description. Chassie was just actually there being a corgi during that process and she was keen on letting us know that she's quite bored with our silly human shenanigans. I was out of objective markers on my minimap by the time we were done with all the bags and I'd gotten them into a fairly organized pile that no longer obstructed the fire exit, so I got to have a few silly corgi shenanigans, as one does when invited to do so. Naturally this was the staff services room, so little sundry tasks seemed to find me just by virtue of shear proximity and timing, which works fine by me. Normally I'm having to chase them. Still, I wore down by the end of the night and things appeared to have gone almost eerily smoothly in the process of unpacking everything. Weird how there's something of a streamlining effect to using seven people instead of like 2.5 the way we have other years.

Friday was a fairly simple day. I know quite a few people who would rather passionately disagree with me about that, but the bulk of those things were the type of work that more hands couldn't accelerate, so that was off my plate. There was the standard suite of startup oh-by-the-ways to chase down, but it felt like a good start. I talked with a few of the people in con row as I helped them get situated. Tyr Perhaps and Dragoneer were there advertising for Fursonacon and FA:U respectively, so that was a good chance to catch up with those guys. And of course we got to talk shop, since we were all up to a similar kind of thing at the time. Reaching across the aisle a bit really gives you a sense of scale for how much cross-talk there is between people who staff these things. Everybody knows everybody. I don't think of myself as too deep in the scene, but I knew everybody that was at con row that morning. Maybe that's how it starts? Only time will tell what kind of regret my future self will look back on this with.

Future adventures led me to my old college friend Nunavut and his crew. One among their number was Sturmovik, who apparently had quite a keen interest in nuclear power. So of course we went back and forth about that subject for quite some time. Heh, I came here to NOT think about work, but going over the technical stuff and interesting trivia is still kind of nice, especially with someone who's really enthusiastic about it. Sometimes you need that reminder about why you got into a particular thing. I saw the Radfox brigade a few times, but didn't get a chance to talk shop there because they often move and scatter like neutrons when they're at a busy con.

The big mission that night was picking up a print order that had just gotten filled. Quite a singular experience, truly. Strolling into Staples late at night wearing my Utilikilt and all my con badges, going up to the counter to ask "Hey I'm here to pick up a bunch of 24x36 posters of like a purple dragon telling people to remember to shower and stuff." Yup, that's just a thing I did. It's a part of my life now. That paradoxical normalization was quite proficiently demonstrated by the guy at the counter, whom to my nonsensical request responded "Oh yeah, those are right here." Naturally I made the small but critical mistake of driving out of there at a spot without an intersection. Thanks to the median, that meant pulling out in the wrong direction and on that road you practically get to Alexandria before they'll let you turn around. Though on that loop I did go by a bank to see chasing strobe lights tearing all across the windows of its front facade. It was actually quite refreshing to see a fire alarm the first night of the con that wasn't US. Things that aren't your problem are great! Although I suppose I couldn't say with certainty that's what was going on. There's a chance that they were actually just throwing a sick rave in there. Maybe PNC Bank is a lot cooler than I thought they were.

I got the posters delivered and then un-delivered them because it had just became my job to hang them up. While I was putting one on the wall a little Dutch Angel Dragon walked by and peeped "Not so high some of us are small!" I can work with that. That's actionable feedback! The most frustrating thing to hear from attendees is vague stoner language like "Ah, the vibe just really seems to be low this year." It takes a fair amount of willpower to just smile and thank them for letting me know whilst credibly pretending that any of the words they said mean anything. Anyways, after equipping a few walls with suitably pygmy-accessible PSA posters, my night was my own. That's another one of those paradoxical moments. I was out of stuff to take care of. A strange feeling because that meant that things were going well and nobody needed help right then, which is good, but it also meant that I couldn't do the thing that I was nominally there to do, which at the time was just to serve as just a general fixer/runner kind of thing. Ah well, I accepted it as the good omen that it was and just tanked up on sleep that night. I figured that I would be needing it.

Naturally I paid for my hubris in thinking I didn't have to set an alarm just because I got to bed at a semi-normal time that first night. I got around the next day too late to be in the fursuit parade. Disappointing start, but I still got to watch a good chunk of it. Dance comp was next. Had a lot of good showings there. I had no idea Elbi was planning to throw down there, she is just full of surprises! She had a lot of variety in her tracks, and played to that well. I saw that with quite a few people this time. Lots of people mixing together a wide variety of short clips and then really working the transitions. I guess that's a great way of capitalizing on a shorter segment. Whatever the theory is there, it was great fun to watch.

Throughout all of this, my epic phone saga waged on. It felt like my phone was having a more interesting con than I was, honestly. Recently I was thinking of finally really joining the present and getting a smartphone. It's getting egregious at this point. I'm starting to feel like not having a smartphone is becoming like a counter-culture statement at this point, it really stands out! A few weeks ago 58 year old woman saw my flip phone and said "Oh please tell me they issued you that at work or something. There's no way that's your actual phone!" It kinda stings to get laughed at for being behind the times by someone twice your age. So stepping my tech all the way up to... well not really today but like 2012ish seemed like a reasonable course of action now that I've got a dependable revenue stream. Then of course my revenue stream un-dependabled itself, prompting me to stick with the recycled one that I got for free awhile back. The screen is cracked and the data uplink doesn't work, but really I only needed it to get to Telegram and Twitter during furry conventions, so it worked great for me actually. Well it worked great in the past. This time it had quite an adventure that I really can only do justice to by listing the whole thing off.

That first night I had it connected to the hotel wifi the whole time, so it started a firmware update in the middle of the night. I know this because the bright blue updating screen woke me up at like 2:30AM. Problem was, it seemed to jam up while doing that because it was still updating that morning. I was at a shortage of ideas for what to do because I'm new to the whole smartphone business. I asked around a bit, but of course everybody was too busy with their own things to fiddle with my old klunker right then. Fortunately my phone was working on a plan of its own. The update screen made the backlight stay on constantly, which made short work of the battery and forced it to shut down. So it hit the big red button and did all the doomsday panic protocols that it needed to terminate the update install. Naturally the panic button (or should I say "Kernel Panic Button"? No. No I really shouldn't say that.) nuclear option fricasseed the operating system so it started factory resetting as soon as I plugged the phone in again. I lost everything on there and had to reconnect to the wifi, re-update all my software and reinstall telegram, but we got there. It was working again! I'd had it going for a solid hour or two before I got drunk, lost it, went to bed, tore the place apart to find it again the next day, and then by the time I got it back the battery had died again. So when I got it back to the room I plugged it in again, prompting it to... re-sync to the wifi and start trying that firmware update again. Man, I can't believe I was missing out on ALL THIS by not having one of these devices for so many years. What was I thinking?

Anyways, there were a bunch more meetups to be had on Saturday. We did operations department family dinner with everybody together eating Thai food. I know that team-building sort of things have a really bad rap, but these things are actually really fun when composed of furries. Honestly adding furries to most things makes them more fun! Teambuilding really works like this. We're all there because we want to be, so getting along with people should be something good that we all genuinely want. I'd definitely be up for more of that "let's not talk about the con for just a minute" kind of interaction in the future. I'll mention that the event was Kiba and Trashpanda's great idea since I know that the former of the two will be Ctrl+F-ing her name on this later. (Hi Kiba!)

Speaking of socializing, I got to have a chat with Ambient Dreamer at lunch that day. It's been awhile since I've seen him and it was a real treat that he was staffing as well. I saw Raltz Klamar who somehow gained a positive impression of me from Furry Con. We caught up for awhile and had a quick drink together. He's still mostly a tabletop guy, so it was a shame that I never really got to that room to hang out with him a little more. I also found Zantal in the lobby. Or rather he found me since he was wearing a new disguise that I wasn't familiar with so I wouldn't have picked him out of the crowd. Zan's new otter suit attracted the attention of fellow-otter Summercat, whom I also did some catching up with. I really wish that like, any of my plans with any of those three people had worked out how I thought they would, but such is the nature of life. I did make it down to the sexy late night writing panel though, per tradition. So I got to see Summercat there. I think it might've been an all-otter panel actually. I know that Significant Otter (which is WAY to common of a pun for me to find a link anytime in the next couple decades) was there, and Friday Donnely is also on the circuit. Dunno what the sex panel being all one species says about otters necessarily. Well, nothing that most folk don't already know. ^_^

Last that night was Boozy Badger's panel, which was quite a treat. It's pretty reliably entertaining to hear his take on things, especially given that this is his one year anniversary with the fandom. Crazy how fast all that happened. Now he's been to several cons, he's got multiple panels at each, he's up on stage drinking scotch and talking to a goat puppet, and all his kids have fursonas now. I love how that's a thing that can happen this easily. So many shared-interest fandoms are very insular, and even hostile towards potential new members. With lots of other fandoms you've always gotta go through the hipster challenge to make sure you've done your homework and that you're a "real fan". Nobody gets into the Marvel comic fandom without passing Otis Backbeard's Grueling Trivia Challenge of Pwning the Casuals. Whereas there are plenty of people at furry events that don't even self-identify as one of us but we're still happy to have them. Granted, some of those oh-I'm-definitely-not-a-furry people have staffed a furry con for several years and have multiple artworks of their fursona and are named TrashPandaTye, but we love them all the same.

Sunday you could definitely feel that the con was winding down, in terms of attendee activity anyways. On our end this is where things start to ramp up. With the almighty struggle of loadout on the horizon, I found that I faced some logistical challenges of my own. Fox E's reservation ended that day, so I had to clear out. I had a spot with Milt that night, but his room was quite crowded. I remembered how last Furthemore I never managed to fursuit, and it killed me to see that happening again, but even after throwing a substantial portion of the morning at making that work I couldn't come up with a way to pull it off. Turns out giant fluffy animal costumes are pretty impractical. Who would've guessed? By the time I'd loaded up my suit into my car, loadout was gearing up anyways. We got a pretty early start on it, getting together all of the "Well crap we really didn't need this stuff" category that we always seem to end up with. I was struck again by the novelty of actually having manpower to bring to bear on the thing, and we got that cleared out without much of a struggle.

I was on a Wal-Mart run in the course of that with my staff shirt on. Someone asked me where to find something. Figured it would be quicker to just tell them rather than explain the situation. Someone else heard me answering a question so they came up to ask me something also. I started to think of how awkward it would be to tell everybody I couldn't come back because I'd been accidentally hired by Wal Mart in the interim. Oh well, at least I know that I'm pretty marketable in the case that this reactor plant goes south.

After that it was closing ceremonies, which of course unlocked the next tier of heavy things to move. Fortunately for you, dear reader, that process is one thing that I display pretty consistent skill at fast-forwarding past. Staff dinner came after that, or rather during that I suppose. Right at the end of Sunday is a decent time for most people, but it's right in the middle of most of Logistics department's heavy lifting, so to speak. A little disruptive, but I still ducked out for it. It sounded like it would be a good time and I hadn't eaten an actual meal yet that day. It was a good time. More staff teambuilding stuff and a whole bunch of really good food. We booked up like a third of the restaurant so we got to have a good amount of leeway for the event. I got to talk to the guys from our charity quite a bit because they were seated right across from me. Theirs is another really fun "got swept up by the furries a few years ago and there's no turning back now" kind of story. In the best possible way of course.

Anyways, being a fair bit heavier myself by then, it was time to get back to my fellow heavy things. By then we'd pulled the truck up to the loading dock so you know shit was for real. So a bunch more of the usual things. "Put that here, put that there, oh fuck why do we even still own this stupid thing?" et al. Speaking of that last category, you'll never guess what we ended up with at the end of the night. Two giant-ass CRT TVs that we didn't need and had to find a way to get rid of. And by we, I mean literally anyone else because FUUUUCK that noise. Fuck those giant poison cubes with all the untold legions fetid zombie dicks of every man to die on this planet in all recorded history. I ain't lettin' them put that evil on me again. I fucking disappeared from that loading dock leaving a me-shaped cloud of smoke in my place and didn't even bother finding out what ended up happening in my absence. I took that bullet once last year and I'm not about to jump on any more lead for these cursed appliances. May they burn in hell no matter what happened to them out there.

It was just as well. We were mostly done with what we could do that night by then anyways. There was still a big pile of things, but gaming was its own truck now and that truck didn't arrive until the following morning. So, miracle of miracles, we were done for the day, while it was still today. I don't wanna lean too hard on the "back in my day" and "you millennials have it so easy" sort of rhetoric, but part of the reason why I scheduled my departure like I did was that usually loadout persists until everybody passes out at like 3 or 4 in the morning and then eats a big chunk of the following day as well. Hearing "No actually we're pretty much done for now" after just a couple hours of work was the kind of moment that made me worry that I was in some kind of ill-programmed simulation. Then our totally-not-a-furry raccoon friendo told me to go raid the lounge for mixers because we were about to get so turnt you could use us to drive a generator. That made me sure it was reality.

So yeah. We all cast off our responsibilities and had some fun while tired staffers wandered in to get drunk throughout the night. It's a great way to spend that extra time. There's such a quiet satisfaction to savoring one's victory in like fashion. It was kind of a fun game when lingerers would wander in still needing questions answered. There was always a bit of a quiet scramble because so many of us were drunk and or moving about and unavailable that the answer to "who's in charge?" fluctuated on a minute-to-minute basis. I remember that Koss Kelir got into such a cute huff when I just aimed Fox E at him when he came in. It wasn't any kind of personal jab, I promise. I just knew that those two knew each other so that was the most efficient way to handle this latest priority interrupt request whilst all our brains were busy performing emergency landings. It was pretty nice having CJ Fox stop by though. He had a place of honor as one of the last fursuiters standing in the wee hours of the morning. He was energetically friendly, squishably soft and smelled like a fresh mountain rain. So pretty much everything I'd ask of a fursuiter!

I ended up bailing on Milt in the eleventh hour (metaphorically, it was actually much later than that) because Bryus Biyzko (who seems to have some kind of magic rune in his name that did an SQL injection on my brain to make it impossible for me to remember it) offered me an actual bed to use, which sounded far superior to flopping on the floor for a bit with like five other guys in there. I felt kind of bad because later I found out that Milt had other people bail on him, ones that in fact actually did sleep there and then didn't pay for the opportunity. That's pretty lame. Then again, trying to coordinate a mechanism made of furries is always a gamble, as anybody who staffs a con well knows. Azure claimed that we'd be working on the gaming loadout at 9AM Monday. Apparently 3AM drunk Azure has a lot more impetus than 3AM drunk Beau because the former was totally ON that shit before the latter even managed to get up and clear out of the room. There were just little wrap-up things left by the time I made myself useful. We were all out of there early in the afternoon. I could've crammed my drive back in there that day if I wanted. Just as well that I didn't, but I can't stress enough to you what a dramatic improvement that was over previous years. It was a dramatic, nearly PCD-inducing strike of "Oh we're actually done already." Damn, at this rate I might even dare to hope that next year might also go smoothly and make... optimistic plans? Wow that felt weird to say. Did the pod people get to ME too?

---

Well that's about it for the con postgame recap. Careful observers will note that this time around my schedule contained a whole lot of not much, and several instances of oversleeping and other varied ways of missing out on things. There's a reason for that, several in fact. I'm resolved to talk about those, really more for my health than the edification of anybody else. That's why I've segregated out this part so that people who just want to hear about the con and live vicariously through my grand adventures without having to slog through my baggage. So if you wanted just the first part then congratulations, you've done the thing! If for some reason you're on board with slogging through my baggage, that's all below. This will be a lot more messy stream-of-conscious style information-dump than a cohesive narrative. It's just things that need to be said. Ordinarily I'd say "enjoy!" or something, but it would feel really weird if you enjoyed hearing about all the stuff that's been bothering me so much this whole time. So yeah, that stuff is coming up next. Experience it, or don't. You know, however you do.

I mentioned up top that I'm looking at losing the job that I just got a couple months ago. That's pretty upsetting for a number of reasons and I probably won't get to all of them no matter how long I ramble. I really was hoping to get away from all that when I went to the con. At the very least I'd have good things to fill that time and I could put something on the vacation form other than "Blow all my PTO before it's voided when I get laid off." Or when I quit, honestly.

Now that the refueling outage is over I'm back on nightshifts. So here I am about to power through another 12 hours of dead silence mostly by myself. Really great atmosphere to be in when you're constantly stewing in doubt about your future. I try to get it together, I try to psych myself up for this before work, but I can never get that to stick for very long. I really wish that I actually worked here instead of just being in the qualification pipeline. That would make it a lot easier for me to understand what I'm really looking at with this decision, and it would give me a way to get through the day to day stuff. If I had a single job to do I could keep pumping out electrons and feel good about that. As it stands I'm just qualifying and I've got another 18 months or so of that ahead of me. Turns out that "unstructured studying in service of a future than may never come" is a REAL easy thing to slack off on. It's really quiet at work. Quiet at home, too. I moved away from the life and people that I knew to chase this job. I don't have much going on here, and as with everything, I'm not sure it's worth getting into anything, because there's every chance this place won't stick. I've got nothing in the present, and also maybe-nothing in the future.

There's a general tone that they'll make it worth my while if I stay, and that's been confirmed more officially in recent weeks. Of course money and employee benefits don't really help what's actually bothering me. The thing that I actually want is the thing nobody can give me, but it was really nice to have that validation. They were acknowledging that they were putting me through purgatory, and that me sticking it out would be worth something to them.

I came here prepared to work, but for someone who's just climbed aboard, asking me to suffer for them like this feels like a bit much. I guess I really just have to keep my cards close to my chest for the moment and give myself a chance to introspect a little more during my time off. This has been brewing for a long time, but it still feels like I'm rushing into this decision. Then again, as bad as quitting at this point looks, I'm sure that stringing them along a whole bunch before doing so would be worse, as would having my performance stagnate to the point that I got fired. Astonishingly nobody seems to have taken notice of that yet, but I know that I've been slipping dramatically of late. That WILL happen if I don't act one way or the other. If only I... actually had some information to base this decision on.

Twelve hours is a very long time to be doing just nebulous, self-directed study. I knew people in college who would just marathon-jam crazy amounts of information into their brain at a huge stretch. I don't have clinical authority to say whether or not that really works, but they seemed to believe in it. That's never worked for me. With just a huge solid brick of studying I start seeing diminishing returns around the three or four hour range, and I'm totally useless by eight or so. It takes a lot of willpower to stay focused and productive for that long. I know that some people would welcome that autonomy, and in some ways I'm one of them. This aspect isn't a killer, but it feeds into the next important point behind all this.

It just makes me feel lonely and powerless. I have no ties here, and I can't see the point in making any when that might all be rendered pointless. It affects every decision that I make. Do I want to buy furnishings for my new apartment? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to get to know people in the area? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to commission a fursuit? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to replace my 14 year old car? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to reregister my car in Ohio? Change my driver's license, make travel plans, actually live my life at all? Not if I'm going to lose my job. That possibility hangs over me all the time.

The actual process of being laid off isn't what bothers me. It's what leads up to that. It's a lot of work to push through all this do-it-yourself training. I could do that if I knew that there was something worth working for at the end of the process. As it stands though, there's no such certainty, and there won't be any for a long time. What it comes down to is that the licensing process takes two years. If I'm laid off at any time during that period, all the work I did will have been for nothing. Yeah, I'll have been paid for all that time, but I'm not one of those people that dreams of being paid to accomplish nothing. Sure, this could very easily all turn out fine and have a happy ending, but it'll be more than a year before we know for certain what will happen.

A lot of this is because I'm so new here. If I'd had a chance to become invested in this company then I might be willing to stick it out, but as it stands, my first impression of this place was them declaring bankruptcy. It would be like if someone shit on the dinner table during a first date. This combines all the stress of getting a new job with all the stress of losing one. Plus, I'm not even doing any actual work. Everyone keeps saying to just stay focused on day-to-day operations. Keep turning out power and the big stuff will happen however it happens. I'm sure that's good advice, but I don't contribute in any way to making power. And I won't for another 18 months or so, if there's even still a job to be had at that point. I don't like being here "just in case the plant doesn't close". That's not a satisfying raison d'être. I'm not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I'm training to one day rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I do try to acknowledge the good stuff. People always try to remind me of that. My situation is actually really great compared to a lot of other potential situations. There's a tremendous amount of fortune that has to happen before "Do I find this job enjoyable and fulfilling?" even enters the decision-making process. But you know what? That's how the human mind works. I really wish it didn't work that way. I really wish that the "Starving children in Africa" line actually worked on me. It would be WAY easier to be happy if I could swallow that crap but you know what? It doesn't work like that! And maybe it's for the best that it doesn't. What kind of person feels better when you call attention to the suffering of other people? That's kind of sadistic, really.

"It could be worse" doesn't help. If I were in a crowded room pounding a nail through somebody's wrist, is everybody else in there going to think "Oh well I've got it pretty good. At least nobody's pounding a nail through my wrist."? No! The fact that a particular bad thing is not happening to you is not a source of comfort. I'm so happy for you if listing off a list of misfortunes that you haven't suffered is enough for you to feel satisfied with life, but I need more than that. That's like the "nice guys" who can't seem to get a date and can't figure out why. "I mean, I'm not a total douche like all those other guys!" Really? That's your virtue? "Not completely sucking" is gonna be your big selling point? Yeah, I hate to break it to you but there are people out there who don't suck and are ALSO interesting, or also caring and thoughtful, or also passionate and skilled lovers. You need something more than "not suck" to attract women and I need something more than "not suck" to be happy with my career.

That's the thing that's different about high-level skilled work. You need different things to let you do it effectively. If somebody's out there making hubcaps for money, then sure, more money could make him work harder or longer at making more hubcaps. But you can't say "Hey, here's money, be a better leader." Here's money, inspire people. Here's money, work tirelessly for years towards an end that may never come. I didn't come here for the money. I don't have any huge money sinks like drugs or boats or gambling or sportscars or children. When I suffered in the navy and cried out that the conditions were inhumane, as in literally barred by the Geneva Conventions, they said to me "Hey, they're paying you." That's bullshit. I decided then that I wasn't going to allow anybody else to pay me to suffer. I went and got a civilian job because I thought I'd enjoy it and find it fulfilling. That's the dream isn't it? To be paid for doing something you believe in? And maybe I would have liked this thing. Had the place not gone to shit as soon as I walked in the door. So now I'll never know.

I don't know what will make me happy. Like Edison, I can only tell you what hasn't worked.

HR has expressed some concerns about how some of us might be considering leaving the company. They were right to worry. I'm starting to feel like I can't stick it out anymore. It's not like this struggle is new. Literally the first time I asked for a qualification signature the person that I was talking to said "Why bother? The place is closing anyways." So there was basically never a time when this bankruptcy wasn't coloring my experience here.

I had a big low point in dealing with this in February. It was bad company news every day at work and I'd just gotten some bad medical news in my off time. My performance slipped quite a bit. For a solid week I got almost nothing done. I talked it over with my supervisor and he understood. He gave me some advice that helped me push past that. Naturally the refueling outage came right after that and everybody was too busy to talk to me for a whole month, but that's nobody's fault. So I managed to push through that too.

That's the thing though. I've just been pushing past every day, and every day that pushing gets a little harder. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to grind through something when you're not sure the reason that you got into it is valid anymore. It's worn me down. The reason that I made it through all that stuff was because I kept thinking "I've just gotta make it to April. After the bankruptcy announcement we'll finally get some answers." Well, that announcement came, and there weren't any answers. In fact I came to find out that it'll be at least a year before we get a concrete answer. Having gone through five months of "Well, we'll see. You could be laid off at any time." I don't think I can go through a year of that.

The other new guys, they seem to be fine sticking it out. But they've got wives, children, houses and other commitments. Not only did they bring the most important parts of their lives with them when they came here, they need that money, and it's very difficult for them to move. If their expenses are taken care of and there's some chance they might get to stay here, it's worth waiting it out for them. I don't have any of that. It's really easy for me to move. I just got here and I've got no ties to this place. I didn't come here because I really wanted to live in Ohio, or because I wanted to make a ton of money. I came here because I really wanted to do this job. So when it looks like I might not even get that, I'm out of reasons to stick around.

I know that they still need me here to make the plant look saveable and sustainable in order to have their best chance at getting to that next refuel, and I DO want to do that. When I got to this impasse I had to say to myself "Well, when I came here I said that I really want this job because I really believe in this industry. I guess it's time to demonstrate that." I feel like I still want that, but I don't know if I can actually follow through on it. I don't know if I am psychologically able to continue doing this under these conditions.

These days it feels like I'm exhausted as soon as I walk in the door. There are times when I'll just sit at my desk with my head in my hands for 20 minutes thinking "Oh my God what am I going to do?" I'm just... out of it. I know that won't work. I hear it all the time "You've gotta be focused and alert. You've gotta be completely on your game 100% of the time." And really, I don't think I can promise that. I don't think that I can be the kind of worker that they need me to be under these conditions.

Could I keep showing up and painfully dragging myself along for another couple months before I completely give out? Yeah, probably. I've done worse than this. I can't deny that the extra time would give me a better shot at getting the answers that I need. Hanging on when I know what I know now would be disingenuous of me though. Every check that I get from this company is just me furthering a promise that I don't think I can keep. If I were actually making power that would be different, but I'm not. I'm not contributing any value to the company right now and if I don't think I'll be able to contribute that value in the future then I can't keep taking their money.

There are lots of ways in which this isn't a disaster, mind. I'll have a fair few safety nets to rely on no matter how this turns out in the end. That really is the thing, though. Pointing out reasons that I should be happy is pretty counter-productive. Knowing that I should be happy and I'm not just makes me feel sad and like a failure for BEING sad. That was the big lesson of this convention. I tried to escape all this, even just temporarily, and I failed. I slept away huge chunks of it, and I was too lethargic and unmotivated to do a great many of the things I planned to. I took some time off to do one of the things I love doing most in my life, something that I thought wasn't ruinable... it suffered terribly from this fog that's taken over me since the bankruptcy announcement. There are plenty of times when I feel like I have it together, and then I just don't.

I was in a have-it-together moment in the middle of the con, really hitting my stride. Then I saw JBadger's fursuit up on the block at the charity auction. That sight stabbed into my chest and right out the other side. When I learned that he died two years ago it was something that I acknowledged, and I conveyed my sympathies to those who knew him better than I. Really though, it wasn't tangible to me until I saw that empty suit up there. I'd gotten to know Nom Crunch a lot better than I ever did his pilot. Having that suit get sold off brought that home. Nom Crunch was gone too.

I met him at Furthemore number 1 all those years ago. I was just attending that year. The staff hadn't come after me with the big butterfly net yet. I ended up watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time then. It was practically coincidental, really. I didn't plan to go with it, but I was still in the room from a previous panel and the show came to me. It was a packed house, so Nom Crunch asked if he could sit next to me. I couldn't very well turn him away, that being one of the last remaining seats in the house right in the front row. He was quite stout of build, at least in comparison to the 180-odd pounds of stringy nerd that was seated to his left, so physical contact of a sort was unavoidable. I knew it was incidental contact and didn't mean anything, so I tried to be okay with that, to be polite. Even though that sort of thing was on the periphery of my comfort zone at the time.

At the time I just wasn’t a physically affectionate person. I figured that was just how I was. People have pointed out to me recently that it’s odd how I always go for the handshake first. That’s still my instinct and it takes time for me to parse out that hugging is an option now because it's a thing I enjoy these days. I feel like I still owe Protocollie a hug. First year that I staffed I saved his bacon on setting up main events and he tried to hug me as thanks. I felt pretty bad asking him not to.

There were some delays in setting up the movie, so we talked a bit since we had the chance. I think he could tell that this was a little weird for me and he was trying to dissipate the tension a little. For his part, Nom Crunch was as accommodating as he could be given the situation. He kept his tail out of my way, did his best to give me room and make me as comfortable as he could. Of course, even sitting in a fursuit is demanding. He couldn't hold out forever. He asked if he could put his arm on my chair to support his weight a little more evenly. I couldn't deny him that mercy. As he did any time he made a move that might cause me discomfort, he asked if it was okay after he repositioned himself. He was a fair bit closer to me, having basically wrapped his arm around my back, but I found... it actually was okay. Maybe even better than okay. He was so understanding and empathetic, it was incredibly disarming. I ran out of room for my own arm between us, and eventually I wrapped it around his back in kind.

It was very out-of-character for me. I really have no explanation for it. It was just one of a string of those tiny "is this okay" steps, every one of which felt right to me, presented in that innocuous and comforting way of his. It's hard to pinpoint the transition between just playing along and genuinely enjoying myself, but those are certainly the start and end points of this little cinematic experience. While they were setting the projector up I was just barely accepting the idea of sitting so close to a stranger, and by the time the credits rolled that silly purple-striped badger was sitting on my lap and we were squeezing the stuffing out of each other. And I couldn't have been happier about that.

He touched me. Quite literally so. That opened me up a little bit to a new world that I've had the time of my life exploring. That was a big part of why I had such a good time at the con that year, and why I fell in love with Furthemore so quickly. I really missed out by never telling him that. It's so... complicated, to lose someone that you only knew through fursuiting or online or through some other semi-isolating medium. You feel like the loss isn't as great and you shouldn't feel all that sad, and then you're disappointed in yourself when you definitely DO feel all that sad. Like the only thing to be sad about is sadness itself...

Ah. Wow. I really hope that wasn't as difficult to read as it was to write. I feel like all this has been quite a heavy burden to push on you, my loyal reading public. I hesitate to put all this out there, but just as these feelings won't get un-felt, I feel like it would be wrong if all that I've said were un-said. My profound thanks if you've stuck it out this long. I wish I had some kind of wrap-up or conclusive takeaway for you, but life doesn't always have a satisfying narrative arc such as that one. Sometimes life just is, and all you can do is live it.

I'll be working at one and going to the other one, in that order, just a quick heads up. I'd fill out all the meme details but I'm literally heading out on the drive to Virginia within the hour. You guys know what my deal is by now anyways. Hit me up on Telegram if you wanna meet or do stuff!

MFF 2017: Oh Fuck I Really Hope This Works

As I mentioned in my Canadian adventure journal, I’ve recently stumbled haphazardly into a new occupation and residence. It was quite jarring to go from a year-long wall of crushing indifference to a company that wanted me to start working there right now. So it was a bit of a whirlwind coming back from the aforementioned continent-spanning relocation bonanza to find that I had about three weeks to find, tour, rent and move into a new apartment. Certainly didn’t help that the transition team from Firstenergy took forEVER to get back to me about that kind of stuff. We certainly got an early start on the bafflingly inefficient corporate bullshit with those first few trips. My flights to Toledo for background check, drug tests, physical exams and other new employee stuff, had to happen very close to my househunting trip just by virtue of there being very limited time left. It would’ve been really easy to combine the two trips, but human resources wouldn’t cover my expenses if I was doing anything other than their stuff, and the transition team wouldn’t cover my expenses unless THEY flew me there. So I flew home for a night, booked $770 next-day airfare back and then poked around to look for a place to live. The inefficiency of it all really bothered me, but whatever I guess. It’s not my money! Hey, maybe I’m learning how corporate infrastructure works after all.

Anyways, these events were temporally and physically quite close to MFF. So I thought, what better way to further complicate an already-critically-hastened major life change by jamming a furry convention in there? I know, right? I’m responsible and exercise judicious forethought at all times. Wohoo. It was destined to be a short trip, because although I had that weekend off, that was all I could get. When I asked about taking some time off they were just like “bitch, you ain’t even got any time ON yet.” Which I'd credibly call "tough but fair". Taking a vacation literally the week that you start working there is a bit much to ask. So yeah, short high-compression con, then!

I got there pretty late Friday night because I had to fit in a full day of work and then a five-hour drive, so there wasn’t a lot of energy left in me or the con by the time I came around. Still, I got to meet up with my homies this time around, Nimbus and Vene. Good guys all around. Heh, one of the things that’s so striking about the furry fandom is how well it illustrates your mind’s capacity to normalize things just because they happen a lot. Why do I know these guys? Oh because we’re into the same particular niche fetishes and we commiserated about that online for a while, exchanging various porn content and just generally being the weird wonderful freaks that we are. You know, as one does.

However such things present themselves, it’s really a relief to be able to find some guys that you actually know decently well to split a room with, rather than having to spin the roulette wheel. That’s definitely where this con would’ve been headed had I not managed to finagle something by sitting on the reservation sites and checking in twice weekly for over a month. MFF has grown precipitously since I last attended, and even outpaced Anthrocon this year. Even this single room at a comically large distance from the actual site I had to really fight for. The brilliant innovation that I’ll have to remember for next year is that there are plenty of area hotels that aren't associated with the con, so I’ll just have to widen my search pattern a little bit. Might not get as good of a deal, but it’s better than the stress of wondering if I’ll end up sleeping in a parking garage. Seeing as I actually did manage to fight my way to a bed though, and I’d had quite a long day by then, I had a quick meal with Ronan Otter (long enough to differentiate him in my mind from Roman Otter) and then I availed myself of my hard-won accommodations fairly early that night.

The next day I got to make the acquaintance of Liam Einar, a charming young wolf that I’d spoken with extensively online, even to the point of voice-chatting and other such futuristic things on occasion. He was really excited to meet me. A number of people have been excited to meet me in person, actually. I really can’t explain it. There's no accounting for taste I suppose. Anyways, we got along great. It’s always a surreal experience to first meet someone that you’ve been talking to frequently for over a year, but that is the strange new quagmire that our insane web-connected future hath wrought. Anyways, I came across Liam through the Hypnofurs groupchat, and it turned out they were having a big meetup, so I went along for that. We went to this German place called Hofbrauhaus. If you’re wondering how German it was, whatever you’re thinking is probably not German enough. Like, not only lederhosen and tankards of beer, but soccer games on the TV, alphorn players and the whole shebang. Absolutely everything that America thinks Germany is.

So yeah, it was an afternoon of great food and weird first-time speed-dating-but-with-friends kinds of interactions. It’s hard to describe the experience of thinking of someone as this neon-blue hulking stormdragon for like three years and then meeting this trucker from Minnesota and having him be like “Yeah, that’s me.” Ah well, I’m sure I underwhelmed several people similarly. Really it just highlights the magic of this… whatever it is we’re doing here. People can be so creative and so committed to their beautiful fantasy, that it actually starts to feel more natural than the people behind the masks. Really cool stuff. I got a ‘Moscow Mule’ there just because it was on special and it sounded interesting. If I recall correctly it was vodka, lime juice, ginger beer and Hefeweizen. The fact that it included a beer made me wary, but let’s face it, beer was kinda hard to avoid in this place. I went for it because conventions are a time for adventure! And it’s not adventure with a little risk. I was richly rewarded for my daring, as that Moscow Mule actually tasted totally fucking amazeballs and I immediately ordered a second one. Like I’ve always said, I’m definitely open to enjoying lots of drinks, but they’d better impress me quick. I’ve never been one for that “It’s an acquired taste” Stockholm Syndrome bullshit. Why would I want to acquire a taste for something that my body is clearly trying to reject when there are all these things out there in the world that taste delicious the first time?

An interesting conundrum faced me upon my return to the venue. Very soon after we’d all walked back and gone our separate ways, I heard from my perennial favorite avian Archai that he and a group of nearly 20 folks were getting together, and they asked if I’d like to come along. The whole caravan was headed to, you’ll never guess, Hofbrauhaus. Now this was quite a pickle, really. Not wholly unprecedented, to be sure. Eating is a pretty common social event at cons, so the “Oh well I just ate” dilemma is familiar to many congoers. This one had me in a bind though. Hof2brau2hauser had a good half-dozen people going to it that I was really looking forward to seeing, and to hell with food! Those people are what I was here to see! Shallow as it sounds, the presence of additional Moscow Mules was, in all likelihood, the straw that prompted me to turn my mule around and ride straight back to Little Germany as fast as its dusty hooves could carry me.

Now of course, I wasn't going to be eating very much. In fact I didn't order anything and fell back on what I knew would be dependable from my previous experience, browsing at the indescribably giant soft pretzels that everybody wanted but severely underestimated. Since I was there mostly to socialize and get another couple mules, I set to work quickly on both of those things. I sat with Archai's better half Metric Fox, perennial favorite Loomy the bunny, and quite a few others within easy shouting distance. I tried to get them to bring out a liter of Moscow Mule instead of a traditional size because I knew that I'd be there awhile, only to find that such a size was not an option. I could only get a single drink or a pitcher. Naturally I did the sensible thing and ordered the single ENTIRE PITCHER and drank the whole thing myself! You know, sensible-like.

If you think that's a bad idea then you seem to be in agreement with the numerous people who observed this behavior and told me this was probably a bad idea. And also, likely, the people whom I exchanged text messages during that time, all of whom remarked on how I'm probably drunk enough by now and could probably ease up a bit. Fortunately for my dubious foresight in how I began the evening, time was on my side. With such a large group, there was much socializing and shenanigans that tempered the rate at which the meal progressed. The shots where they'd spank you afterwards were certainly a big hit. (Do you get it? We're not moving on unless you get it.) That's another thing that might've been seen as kinda weird if it weren't occurring on the backdrop of a furry con. Naturally I didn't go for the shots. Not because of the spanking thing, but because, ill-advised as embarking on it may have been, I was well aware of the scope of the mission that faced me.

For my part, I did in fact methodically and consistently wear down my charge over the course of the night. The restaurant was quite busy by then and they were getting pretty swamped. I think by the end of the process I was the only one not upset about the delay in getting our checks taken care of, as it provided me the vital convalescent time required for me to get into a walking/respectful public appearance sort of state, which required a great deal of determination and collecting my focus beforehand. In all, we spent a little on the south side of five hours there, which is about the right amount of time to spend drinking like 56 ounces of heavy mixed drink without killing yourself. I'd say that doing such things in bulk is a bargain, but I never did the math on it, and paying a $50 tab just for one drink certainly didn't feel good. Wooooooh holy shit I'm glad I have a job now! And with that, I was off into the night once more.

From there I finally managed to catch up with Stormy Kittyhawk. She was a tough one to pin down this time around because she staffs this con. When I hear that I still can't help the feeling of "Dear God why would anyone do that?" even though I've staffed several times myself now. Regardless, I came across her in service of donating one of my treasures to the charity auction, which I figured I might as well attend since I had a slot open and that's not usually the type of thing I have a slot open for. The auctions can vary quite broadly as an experience, largely because they vary so dramatically based on the stage presence of the host, and the inherent entertainingness of what happens when you ask a bunch of furries to toss in the spoils of their adventures for a good cause. I was tempted by the Zootopia banner, until the bidding on that thing long ago left me in the dust. I did like the stack of nature books that's been sold 13 times because people keep donating it back every year. Generating a couple thousand bucks for charity is a pretty darn good use of a white elephant gift. A few things had trouble finding takers too. It was a small crowd, and that's the risk you take with niche-of-a-niche items like these. The pattern seemed to hold throughout the auction, so I never really got close to buying anything. It was always either something that seems pretty cool going for 4x the max you'd ever consider bidding, or something that's not really worth the $10 opening bid so somebody just grabs it to be nice. Still, we get a whirlwind tour of the museum of furry curios (furrios?) and get to save some homeless doggos. It's a good time in the end!

"Fuck, I have to leave" is a lame way to start a day, but it was the reality of Sunday morning. With another workday starting at 6AM on Monday and the onus to make a good impression at my workplace still upon me, I knew that I'd really have to get going pretty soon. So naturally I dicked around and talked to a bunch of my friends first. I had a late brunch-kinda-thing? I dunno it was like 1:30 and it was the first time any of us had eaten that day, whatever you call that. That let me see off Arc and Metric. I also got to stop by for a last-chance dealers' den run and chill with Liam's crew for a bit. The big highlight there was getting to meet Hajinn, as he's a very interesting sort. Not only do his tastes align with mine, but he does a lot of fascinating and innovative stuff with his writing that's always very interesting to check out. Challenging himself to write a story with no direct dialogue quotations and innovative suchlike. I was right about to take off when I heard that Stormy and Toby really wanted to see me off first. I was really pressed for time by then, but I couldn't turn down something like that. With all the crazed bouncing around that I do at events like this, streaking in and out of different circles at a frenetic pace, sometimes I lose track of the fact that there are people who really do genuinely enjoy my company, and that's certainly something worth paying due reverence. So I did manage to at least show up to their place and give them a hug before I was off to see the wizard once again.

It's really tough to do a convention on a really strict time budget. You show up having already missed so many things and leave knowing that the party will long outlast you. I didn't even manage any time to fursuit! Well, that was more a function of travel logistics than temporal ones. The shuttle that serviced the hotel I was in was quite overwhelmed, and wait times were often long and fluctuated dramatically. I saw a fursuiter get left behind on one run because the van was full and my only two thoughts were 1: Oh holy mother of Jesus that is the saddest thing I have ever fucking seen if my car were here I'd totally give him a ride and 2: No way in hell am I letting that happen to me. When I need to bail out of my fursuit I need to bail NOW. Ah well, the regrets from having done something sting far less than the regrets of having not. I really enjoyed MFF, and apparently it's the place to be. Hopefully it'll become a regular feature for me now that I live in this area.

Further Confusion 2018: Apparently I just came here to hang out and chat

My annual tradition of swinging by the bay area went a bit more smoothly in terms of coordinating it with work. I get my entire year's vacation allowance on January 1st, so they were perfectly happy to have me run off for a furry adventure this time. This being something like the seventh furry con to slip off the edge into oblivion the way that so many before it had, my attention to detail had degraded quite a bit by then. I think I'd accepted the inevitability of my simply giving up on my age-old practice of high-fidelity furry con reports. Well, it turns out I was wrong about giving up. Maybe I'll be wrong about having forgotten a good chunk of this stuff. Only time will tell. Fortunately time keeps moving and against all odds you guys keep reading, so let's find out the thrilling conclusion together, shall we?

The time off that I managed to bargain for didn't start until Friday, but I got a whole week off by taking the late start. Archai said that I'd miss a good chunk of the con by arriving Friday night. That assertion is a bit debatable. A chunk, sure, but whether it's good or not is pretty easy to contest. I've really enjoyed my time at Further Confusion, but the con itself, events and programming-wise, is resolutely a bit of a snooze. I didn't see as I lost a lot by letting it warm up for a bit before bursting onto the scene partway through like a coked-out popstar, as one does. It really didn't feel like I'd missed much upon arrival, so I'm gonna call my vacation negotiations (vacotiations?) a successful endeavor.

The room-scramble for FC was a lot less contentious, and I managed to stumble into one without even trying. Stormy mentioned she'd had a friend whose roommate canceled on them, so I ended up at the abode of Kyoo Coyote. He was a good guy, more subdued than I'd come to expect from the furry crowd, but that works great as a roommate. Not being able to turn off the manic blitzkrieg of emotions that makes up a typical furry's temperament is a common problem one faces when trying to get some rest in proximity to them. His set of My Little Pony tableware also attested to his being a good dude. He agreed that food was a priority, so he joined Archai and I on the hunt for some. When nobody could come up with any particular selection of food that they felt particularly passionate about, I suggested Pita Pit. It was a simple enough option, and I had fond memories of the place. After much criss-crossing about looking for a place we were all somewhat sure we remembered being here, we finally gave up and Googled it to find that it had closed forever. An auspicious start to be sure. But alternative sandwiches are easily uncovered, and we did so, moving on with our adventure afterwards.

Flying to San Jose and getting settled had burned up most of the day, but I still had time for the crowning achievement of this convention, #Turntscience! It's a panel where they have furries with jobs in science and other technical disciplines give a presentation about their field whilst fueled by a roughly 40% ethanol solution. Refueling operations increase in frequency the longer they talk, so the topics presented are quite engaging! You know you're in for a good time when the first presentation opens with "Alright, quiet down you guys! Now I'm gonna *whisky burp* tellya about fuckin' rockets and stuff, here we go!" Our four presenters gave very dramatic and entertaining accounts of their experience with: NASA spaceflight engineering, tracking extrasolar objects, graph theory, and 3D animation. It's all the fun of drunken story time mixed with all the fun of hearing people talk about something fascinating that they're really passionate about. And of course, the generous application of organic solvents during the presentation kept them from getting too technical, so it never got too dry, so to speak. I'm definitely gonna look up these guys and see if I can hop on for the next time they're doing this. I would LOVE to have an audience while I drunkenly ramble about nuclear power. Make sure to look for that next time around!

I got to chat and catch and drink up with Stormy and Toby for a bit in their room. A simple thing, but given how abbreviated our interactions at MFF were it was great to have the chance. We went fairly long into the night catching up, but it was well worth the trip. They were doing a whole lot of events and panels, so seizing my chance to get a quiet moment they could spare was definitely the right call. A late first night had me getting up on Saturday and pretty much heading straight to the fursuit parade. I got there with a good amount of time to spare, so I could schmooze with the crowd a bit. I got to chat and fursuit-snug the indomitable Scotty Minotaur there and got to know him a bit more. I've crossed paths a few times with his well-known Raptor Jesus cosplay, but it was nice to get a bit of back and forth there. He's a charming and disarming sort, a wonderful compliment to his beasty bestie Zarafa. They both exude tremendous gregarious energy towards everyone within reach, so a visit is always worth fighting past the crowd for. The parade was long, but still fun. Having a route that goes outside is always a treat, especially on a sunny California day. I tried out a few novel ways of strutting my stuff. Not many that I felt really worked, but it's worth experimenting once in awhile.

After that I caught up with Lunarkeys and Catmonkshiro who were going to see Mothmonarch in the dealers' den and run a few other missions. I tagged along on those. Got some food with them and I got to hang out for a bit with Digi, she was fun to have around, and I was glad for the opportunity as it's quite rare to have the chance to observe a specimen of a Digi in the wild. I dropped in on Toby and Stormy's sexy late-night panel and had a good time talking about all manner of delightful debauchery, as one does.

From there, Scotty had invited me to come dance with him that night. He'd meant for both of us to be suiting, but I had actually torn mine during the parade. So I went with just my human costume. I still had a lovely time though. I quite frequently seem to need to be invited to the dance to really have a good time. It just really helps to have somebody you can kinda connect with out there while you're doing your thing. Scotty is well-known for dancing the night away, suited up the whole time. It makes a little more sense that he's able to manage that now that I've seen his dancing style is more cuddle-hug-slowdance than really tearing up the dancefloor. That suited me just fine. I would've thought that a pretty weird place for just holding onto someone for awhile, but I found it to be really easy to lose myself in a weird, wonderful moment like that. The night really flew by, wrapped up in a gryphon's wings. At the end I came across the stringy pulp that remained of Roman Otter. He'd been dance fursuiting at a much higher intensity, and it showed. I was wearing down by then myself, so I was happy to aid in psyching him up enough to stumble out of there and then helping him get back to his room.

The next day I got to hook up with another handful of Hypnofurs to go out for a bite to eat. Archai also needed food to live so I brought him along. Such events are always an interesting game where you're kind of rolling the dice on whether these friends will get along with these other friends. This was a particularly risky gamble as most of these guys I'd yet to meet in person. Went great though. I think he interacted with my new friends more than I did. Found a lot of common ground there, so despite being outshined by my plus-one on that occasion I'll call that one a win.

Ordinarily I tend to avoid tabletop and video gaming at cons. Not because I don't enjoy those things, but because conventions always have two or three things that I'm missing out on in any given single hour, let alone the afternoon-spanning breadth of even a modest fantasy adventure. I thought at first to refuse an offer of some arpeegee-quetee, but then I remembered that I'm at Further "It's really more of a social experience" Confusion in [current year] so there was fuck all for events happening in general, and even more desolate on Sunday. So I went for it. Lanhao and his crew had a game of a Star Wars tabletop adventure going, and I took him up on his invite to throw my hat into the ring and have it immediately be stolen by jawas.

I was the only one who had the guts and moral turpitude to play a dark-side character, a move sure to earn sidelong glances from my compatriots. Hey guys, we're working for what is clearly some kind of mostly-cyborg mafia don. Don't blame ME when this party's ethos starts to turn a little gray! Anyways, we rode on a triumphant wave of glory to a conclusion that looked a lot like nearly all of us being bludgeoned unconscious in an engagement that still technically fulfilled the mission objective because the bloody row actually did manage to disrupt the enemy operation we were sent to stop. So yeah, big win there. Post-campaign dinner with Arc and Lan was a lot less of a dice roll because they're Air Force and defense contractor respectively, so we've got lots of war stories to swap. Naturally I have the dubious honor of worst military experience of the bunch as is typical for me. Woohoo?

The day finished off with a bit of fursuit chaperoning, which was all well and good as I'd run out of things to do, as one does on the last day of FC. Archai's latest fursuits (I swear, he buys a new one every year) are big plushy pillowy extravagances that can be a bit unwieldy to operate. So I got to be ground crew on that sortie. It's not quite the chore that it sounds. Really high-design suits like that generate a lot of buzz, so it's great fun to watch him work. The latest acquisition is a Thumper (of Bambi fame) getup that is just the most cute that could possible be stuffed into roughly 2-4 cubic yards. There's a lot of hare is what I'm saying. For that one I had to lug around a carpet-blower for life support. That IS the chore that it sounds, but I made the most of it. I'm sure Arc got tired of hearing my joke about calling it "the football" on account of the fact that he'll explode if he gets more than 15 feet away from it. So after burning him out (that didn't take long) and extracting him from his Disney suffocation chamber, there was not much left to do but dance the night away. Something I find far easier to do now that experience has given me the prescience to bring earplugs to such events. I knew that it bothered me, but until I was able to tamp it down a bit I didn't realize that the volume was literally the number one thing that bothered me about dances. Particularly the last-night dead-dog ones where they move all their industrial-grade air-slapping machines into a much smaller room and really raise the roof, and then lower it again and then raise it again several times a second. Along with the walls, and any other surface in the room.

Let it not be said that my efforts went unrewarded though. As after the post-con wind down I did get an opportunity for a role-swap. I don't know why Arc seemed unsure when he made the offer.

"Yeah like, it would be fine, if ya want."
"IF I want to? Fuck yeah I want to be the bunny! Show me the BUNNY!"

It's a pretty wild experience. Fursuiting is already pretty extreme, and plush suits are everything that fursuiting already is ramped up to a billion. No fingers, no range of motion, it weighs a ton and balance is a nightmare. But all the good stuff is ramped up too. It's exactly as comforting as you'd expect a bodysuit made out of pillows to be, and of course it's adorable as all hell. I did just a quick jaunt without all the cold packs or other support equipment et al, but I didn't want to overstay my welcome, and really, just a few moments is all you need to really take in the mystic grandeur that is the bean-bag-hare experience. The rest of the requisite squatting at Arc's place that accompanies any voyage on the effsea was occupied by intermittently assisting with electrical repairs thanks to some rats that thought the place's wiring could use a few modifications. Mainly it was scurrying about and flipping switches to help the repair guy with troubleshooting, but hey, troubleshooting used to be my life! It's nice to do once in awhile, really takes me back. Heh, I also got plenty of time in the way-back machine when we went to visit Arc's friend Taiyo. He kindly whipped up a hearty feast for us and the night was occupied mostly by me telling sea stories. I really felt like I was monopolizing the night, but he seemed really interested. So I rolled with it and, ostensibly, a good time was had by all.

You know it's funny. I do a lot of that kind of thing on my furry adventures. Just stumble upon a new person or group of people and really hit it off. Being the sun-fearing introspective nerd that I am, that's never something that I thought I'd do hardly at all, let alone consistently enough to get GOOD at it. I guess that's really it though. I got dumped into dozens of situations like that within the social pinball game that makes up most furry cons, and just through sheer volume of practice I gained a decent social sense. And I have plenty to talk about, and a compelling way of saying it. People like getting to know me. Heh, that's another thing I never would've been arrogant enough to expect of myself. Really though, it's starting to feel like, after all these years, now I'M one of those interesting people that you go to furry cons to talk to! I could ask no higher honor to be bestowed upon me by my contemporaries.

Alright so this one is most assuredly NOT a convention, but it's definitely one of the most furry things that's ever happened to me, and definitely something I never would've gotten into if I hadn't at some point made the decision to make cartoon animal people a huge part of my life. Actually scratch that I don't think I ever made that decision, it just kinda happened to me. I think that's how life goes. Lots of people have similar explanations for how they ended up in their present career, living accommodations, relationship, or why they have children now. I guess that's just the mechanism by which life operates, so let's dive in, shall we?

Alright, first some background to set the scene. I had been looking for a job for nearly all of 2017 by November of that year. The response pattern from potential employers that I had become familiar with was that I'd hear nothing for about 4 or 5 months and then get a quick form-letter email about how I could fuck off. So I felt like I had quite a lot of time to spare. Painfully so, in fact. So when an artist I'd been following for a long time named Spunkymutt had an offer up for about a week's employment I was intrigued. The opening was for a set of qualifications that I neatly matched. That is to say, someone with a car and license, a valid US passport, and quite a lot of contiguous free time. I actually still had an unused passport that I got when I was in the navy just in case and I'd never needed it, so I was all set.

When I inquired as to the nature of the work I found that Spunky needed to move from pretty far north in Ontario all the way down to Georgia. Quite a trek to be sure. She also had quite a volume of personal effects, a dog-shaped dog, and a human-shaped horse named Clovar to move as well. I forget the dog's name, so I'm gonna call him Sargent Claymore Sparkcannon because that sounds really dope. And don't ask me the breed either. He was a medium-small mottled tan thing that was probably just a mutt. Spunky told me a few of the breeds involved but many of them were unfamiliar and unnecessarily wordy so I lost interest midway through her enumerating the list. You may say that's inattentive but hey, when I say that something is too wordy you can take that to the bank!

We worked logistics for several weeks and settled on a date that worked. She was planning on just piling into the car, but I think she had a somewhat distorted idea of what the dimensions of a car are. I've done some impressive moves with just my profoundly average mid-size sedan, but that was always with just me. Once I heard that I'd have 1.5 extra passengers besides her, I knew we'd need some help. So I got a trailer hitch attached to my car in the interim. I suppose I get to keep that, but I don't know how much use I'll get out of it before this car finally bites the dust. It's 14 years old now, but I haven't worked it too hard in that time, averaged only 10,000 miles a year in its life. It's vacation away from the blight of northern road salt certainly did it some good. Anybody's guess really. Anyways, once I convinced my parents that running off to meet up with some randos from the internet and hang with them for a week was somehow a good idea, and had conversed with Spunky enough to convince her of much the same, I was off on my quest. It's actually kind of funny how well a fully-developed FA profile worked in my favor in that regard. Like, there's a LOT of content on there, over years of experience. If I'm pulling some kind of deceptive shenanigan here then it's one hell of a long con. Being a resumé for a chauffeuring job was never something that I intended my FA profile to be, but there ya go.

I'd researched the border crossing extensively, because the last time I'd gone to Canada it was before they'd started requiring passports to do it. I still didn't need to get a visa or anything because my visit was going to be quite short and I wasn't really going to be residing there at all, so the process was still relatively simple, it seemed. I'd asked about it and Spunky assured me it was nothing to worry about it. Dating someone from the frozen north as she was, she'd had much experience with it, and found it to be a friendly enough process. That was certainly true on the way in. They asked where I was going and why, what I had with me, and that was basically it. Didn't even look in my trunk. So with that hurdle behind me there was nothing left to conquer but a couple hundred miles worth of the Queen Elizabeth Way. I made it to Sudbury on my first day. That was a somewhat conservative goal for when I was coming right off the block, but I knew I'd have a LOT of driving ahead of me. Sure, you can drive for 12 hours a day and manage okay, but you're sure as hell not going to do that seven days in a row. So yeah, factoring in the slowdown from towing, moving stuff, and other complications, I settled on about eight hours a day in my plan. Yeah, y'all know what happens to plans every time, but it's good practice to at least draft one up. You don't have to stick with it, in fact you almost certainly won't, but at least HAVE a plan, jeeze.

So yeah, as I'd described the length of the journey to my friends "It'll be a whole day of driving to be not there yet." My stay at the Knight's Inn Sudbury was definitely a great way of beginning a journey of a thousand miles by getting your foot stuck in a sinkhole and faceplanting straight onto a handful of rusty razor blades. I don't have a lot of preference for hotel rooms, really. I just don't use them often enough to really have developed an opinion. Like 80% of my hotel rooms are bought to stay at cons and for those you just pick the ones with the con rate that are the easiest to fursuit at, or more likely, just whatever will take you and has less than seven people in the room already, since most cons these days seem to be bursting their hotels at the seams. That leaves one without really much of a decision about accommodations, so I never really developed any sort of brand loyalty for hotels. And realistically, operating in my price range, I've never really had any standout good or bad experiences that would lend me towards or away from a particular manner of lodging. Well, consider that milestone crossed, because I've got some things to say about the smoking crater that I spent that first night in.

It seemed like absolutely everything that I encountered in sequence from the moment I checked in was fucked up. The door latch was sticky and finicky. And I don't mean in the normal way where the locking monostable in the door requires you to perform the spinning lotus jujitsu with your card to trigger it and has a cartoonishly inflated idea of what human reaction time looks like. I mean just like structurally the door is perpetually jammed in a way that makes you feel like you're always breaking into your own room. Shoulder-checking was the only thing that consistently got you inside. The lightswitch right inside the door had no effect, so I had to wade into the darkness a bit to find a light I could actually use. The first thing the lamp by the bed illuminated was the fact that the phone jack had been torn out of the wall and left dangling there like the half-severed arm of a battlescarred highlander. Further investigation was a long parade of further disappointments. Despite lacking an alarm clock, the room seemed to have an array of devices that far exceeded its capacity for electrical service. I found that I already had to choose between the floorlamp and the fridge, and that was before I tried to come up with a place to plug in my laptop. After working out the power problem I found a wireless connection so spotty it made me worry I was on one of those "holodeck glitch" episodes of Star Trek where the simulation that I'm in can't handle what I've just asked of it.

Most baffling and infuriating of all though, was the fact that the thermostat had a hard temperature cap, and a low one at that. I thought that it was just stuck or something, but it was happy to let me set lower temperatures. It just wouldn't ever go over 15 degrees. Now because I was in the Canuck Republic at the time, I'll have to translate that into baseball and patriotism units for you. It's about 59 Freedom degrees. Not inhumane, but still a strikingly low cap. I could understand them not wanting people to crank it way the hell up and chain together a string of coffee pots to make a sauna in there, but that's a damn low bar for temperature. Now, I was still playing it conservatively I had plenty of time to myself that night, so naturally I set about removing the thermostat housing and then duct taping a bag of ice over it. That's more extreme than I'd normally go, but I had to draw a line in the snow about these squalid conditions SOMEwhere.The worst part of it was that I'd felt SO smart about booking two nights in a row there so I'd have the convenience of staying there both coming and going, so now I was stuck with it. Ah well, live and learn and all that. I'm sure it'll make for a good story someday.

Soon enough I was on my way to pick up my cellmates for the night. It's some nice country out there, which is some comfort because driving past trees and rocks is basically all you're going to be doing now that you're leaving civilization behind. I was running pretty short on gas by the time I reached Timmins, where my charges resided, so for better or for worse that was the most exciting part about that leg of the trip. Wondering if you're going to end up stalling out in the middle of the wilderness is certainly a kind of excitement. Between the conversion to funny-money and communism-gallons I couldn't even take a rough stab at what gasoline cost. A fair share more than in the land of obnoxious craft beer and cultural appropriation, but that's just one of those decisions where you realize that you'll be stranded in the frozen tundra without it so you just pony up. Fortunately global warming seemed to be doing its thing this time around and we actually had fairly little snow interference for a trip that sent me to a town so far up the map that it had no roads going north out of it.

Something that really caught me off guard about the trip was the fact that my phone didn't work in Canada. At all. No part of it. Strange, given that it worked in Dubai and Saudi Arabia and a half-dozen European countries just fine. Not sure what the deal there was, but there was really nothing for it but to press on. It was that extra little bit stressful because of course once I'd gotten comfortable with the idea that I'd have nothing to do for a long time to come, my job search heated up all of a sudden. I contacted a place called First Energy in October through a Facebook listing, and in less than two weeks they were flying me out there to interview. It went pretty well and they said that they'd get back to me. Naturally they'd gotten back to me several times with "well we don't have an answer yet." So being out of touch with them was a little nerve-wracking. First Energy had been sitting on this offer all week. Infuriating, but then again I didn't think they'd string me along if the answer was no.

In any case, I made my way to the Uhaul place to pick up the trailer I was going to be using. I got an idea of how far north I'd really gone when I found that the clerk there had some pretty spotty English. It really put me to test for a bit. My high school French class was twelve years past by this point. In the end my kinda-French and his kinda-English stumbled our way to a rental agreement, and I was on my way with a big orange box to trundle along behind my car. Towing with my car was a first for me, so it was kinda tough to know what to expect. The loss of visibility and reduction in top-speed were easy enough to predict, as were the reductions in acceleration and stopping power, but I underestimated just how stressful it is to tow something with a vehicle that's hardly optimized for that sort of thing. It makes a lot of disquieting noise that you have to adjust to. You have to let sounds that have for so long meant "something is catastrophically wrong" become routine, so that's a big blood pressure factor there. There's also the fact that roads that close to the edge of the Earth aren't that well manicured much of the time. Understandable, but the mechanics of a hitch ball tend to turn any bouncing motion of the trailer into a lateral motion in the car, creating a shaking stutter back and forth with the car's movement and making you feel like Cerberus has taken hold of the car in his jaws and is trying to shake it to pieces. There are moments of respite, but those are just so that Ol' Spotty-three-head can pass it from set of cavernous jaws to another when his neck gets tired from thrashing you about.

Regardless, I still had my escort mission to see to. I made it to the right spot, after knocking on the door of the wrong spot a couple times. The house is one row back from the street so it's easy to miss the first time. I took a bit of time to discuss the admittedly troubling matter of the fact that a skeezy internet stranger was kidnapping his grandson with the man of the house, and I think I made the best of that conversation, honestly. Knowing myself as I do I never would've expected that I'd be the type to develop any sort of charm, but I seem to be passing some pretty steep charisma checks without incident, so it seems anything is possible! We loaded everything up and my choice of the trailer was vindicated, as we got that thing about 40% full of stuff that would've gotten left behind otherwise. It also meant that we had plenty of space for people in the main cabin because we didn't have to jam stuff in there. Useful for morale on a long haul like this.

Spunky worried a bit about having Sgt. Claymore Sparkcannon in the car for so long. One of the reasons that I was needed was that he doesn't fly well, being a sensitive smol doggo and all. So there was some concern about he'd fare spending such long stretches in a car. He seemed to settle down pretty easily though. We had to take extra breaks for him, but other than that he wasn't a huge complication to the trip. I got everybody back to the Knights Inn without incident such that they could suffer though another internment there with me. We took a bit of a walk in a direction that may have actually been completely arbitrary and ended up at a place that sold food. We had a good time swapping stories there.

A lot of the labor burden here was on me, because neither of my passengers were licensed to drive, but I could already tell that having traveling companions would make this whole thing a lot less interminable. It was striking how much we ended up talking about practical adult stuff. Spunky is only just now getting into such things, so they were of keen interest to her. The cause of that experience gulf became starkly apparent to me when she asked what it was like to see 9/11 happen. I had gotten used to a younger crowd going to college and many furry events where late-teens sort of folks are still quite common. This got to me a little bit though. It was one of those moments where you get suddenly ambushed by time and have to reset the way you think of things. "Oh yeah, you're like 20. You wouldn't have... whoa. Oh shit I need a minute." I got my stride back after a bit of introspection and we managed to cover quite a few things. Credit cards, credit rating and finances, furry con logistics, taxes, job stuff, a lot of things I really wished someone would've explained to me when I was her age. Ew, 'when I was her age'. Remind me to not say things like that ever again.

I'd left a fair bit of time to spare on this day, and picked a roost just on the other side of the border. That way any hangups at the checkpoint would be padded out nicely and we'd be able to take that hit if it came. Unfortunately I underestimated a fair bit how hard border crossings can hit. Getting back into America was a far cry from the polite wave and a nod that I got going in the other direction. Pretty much an even split as to whether any given person will be happy or dismayed to hear that there's a row of super-jacked nightclub bouncers all along our border, but that's the way of it. We were stopped for quite some time while we got grilled by this guy who looked like he ate a bowl of bottlecaps for breakfast every morning before dramatically skullbashing the door open. I took it pretty seriously just because I knew that even if you're completely on the up and up just making these guys a little suspicious could cost you easily a day of administrative delays. It is the US government after all. So if there was a time to put on one's serious face, this was it. I certainly had my composure put to the test during the part of the interrogation wherein I got out to open up the trailer for him Jockswole McGridiron put the query to me thusly:

"Alright, if you lie to me about this you're all gonna be in big fucking trouble, so tell me right now: who's stuff is this in the back?"

I definitely wasn't planning on lying to him before but I extra SUPER didn't lie to him thanks to his particular choice of words. It still kinda felt like the wrong answer though, because we were shuttled off to a processing facility and detained there. Now don't get the wrong idea we weren't arrested or anything, but people with guns told us to get out of the car and go wait inside. So you know, kinda splitting hairs there really. Quite a nerve-wracking wait to find out just exactly what we did wrong. It turned out that they didn't like how much stuff Clovar was bringing with him because he had a visitation visa and this made it look like he was moving to America. When Spunky bristled at the accusation, I couldn't help but point out to her that he very much WAS trying to move to America, as that activity was what I'd been contracted to facilitate. Being confronted with this started to get everybody worried that we were in big trouble, but I kept my cool. Apparently my years of having important government people try to intimidate me was exactly the skill set that was needed for this juncture of our adventure. The reality of this simply was that Clovar had asked to come into America, and that request was refused. So we'd have to turn around and... figure out what to do next. I didn't have a revised gameplan yet. However I was quite certain that the mean bouncers wearing numerous weapons would most assuredly make certain that whatever we come up with, that plan starts with the car facing in the Canada direction.

I called it accurately, and that was basically what happened after a suitable delay for a cavalcade of bureaucratic rubberstamping. It's not the worst way for that to have gone, but we were already dejectedly composing a new plan as we approached the Canadian checkpoint after traversing the interstitial demilitarized zone a second time. Canada, to our surprise, was displeased to see us back. Now, being detained in Canada is a much more polite and congenial affair, but we still had to go inside and haggle for our fates with a desk clerk, an experience none of us cared to repeat. It would seem that Spunky had overstayed her welcome in the northlands whilst visiting her better half, and as such they were disinclined to let her back in. So we found ourselves at something of an impasse.

Yeah, remember that movie The Terminal where Tom Hanks gets trapped in an airport because some little legal snag had both host and destination countries saying "Um whups, no you can't come in." Seems like such an absurd movie premise that it would be fun to explore, right? Because that's just the kind of Kafkaesque exaggeration of the sprawling bureaucratic iniquities of our system that feels familiar but would never actually happen? Well, not only is that plot based on a true story wherein exactly that happened, for YEARS to some unfortunate soul, something very similar nearly ended up happening to us.

This is the difficult nature of border crossings. Really all they can do is bar you or not bar you, so there's not a lot of finesse to that decision. They also tend to be conservative with that judgment call. Even though we fully intended to get people repatriated properly, they had no way of assuring that we would make good on our word, since they don't have any enforcement power over us after we leave the checkpoint. So plead as she might, the guards' suspicion that Spunky might return to the heinous crime of... being in Canada too long was too great to let this pass unchallenged. I, being a fair sight less emotionally distressed by the proceedings, and also versed in the ways of obstructive bureaucracy, decided to put my faith in all that Canadian politeness shtick and take a last hail Mary shot at charming us past the guards.

"Alright look, I realize that this is a difficult position for you as well and I'm very sorry that we've misunderstood the regulations at play here. It's abundantly clear that the most bureaucratically expedient thing for us to do would be to send the American back to America and the Canadian back to Canada. I would be happy to arrange that as a final state, but the fact is that we have only one car. As such we need a solution that has all of us leaving here traveling in the same direction because I will not abide having one of us sleep here on the floor tonight while we sort out the legal niceties."

That one took a lot of thought to put together. Fortunately I'd had plenty of time to proofread it while we waited for the paperwork to grind through. I felt like I rolled a pretty solid persuasion check. I think that, plus the visible distress of my passengers, finally got them to take us at our word that we'd sort it out in exactly the way the Ministry of Truth wishes it in the end. They let us on our way with a stern wag of their finger, which I'm sure is the Canadian equivalent of 40 lashes. We moved quickly to a McDonalds to chill for a moment and collect ourselves, more because I needed some wifi to unfuck all of our logistics than anything else. I had a whole string of hotel reservations to cancel, and an as-yet-undetermined string of new ones to make. We batted a few ideas around, but I was pretty inflexible about what I'd let happen. There was talk of saying that Clovar was just visiting America, or bringing his stuff and then flying him, or just getting him there for a visit that was long enough to get married to Spunky. I wasn't up for ANY of that. I'll be party to NO plan that involves us saying things that are anything less than 100% true to the border patrol. The only reason that we got away this time with just some stern looks was because we didn't do anything illegal AND because we cooperated fully and told them the truth every time.

I really didn't want to say 'I told you so' because they were really trying to make this cross-nationality relationship work and were getting dicked around by the system in a way that's made them very genuinely upset. Really though, I'd previously mentioned that we had basically just elected a deflated orange, steaming wad of jingoism as president, and that wad got there by promising to dick around people who were trying to get into America as MUCH as possible, and I'd asked if they were sure that they had all the checks in the boxes before attempting this. So, whether or not they were Romeo and Julietting it up with trying to straddle these rival factions, I wasn't going to beat around the bush on telling them that I'm NOT about to legally stick my neck out for them to fix this mistake. I know that I just got into a whole hell of a lot more driving by going with that option, but particularly with an extensive government background check for my new job coming up I don't want to be testing out the limits of any federal laws right now! I believe I conveyed the sentiment with "Look, I'm happy to work with you on resolving this but if you cost me my shot at this job that I just spent a whole YEAR working to land I will leave you in the middle of the road and not even look back."

So, amicable agreement thus gained, we proceeded to our latest accommodations. I'd banked on making it a few hours back north that night because it wasn't too late and I was about to Groundhog Day the giant-ass drive that I had just done, and I paid dearly for that presumption. It turned out that we'd run into a busy part of the day for the QEW, and our two hour drive took us nearly five. It was too late to cancel our reservations for the night now, so there was no chance of getting anything closer. I had to power through. It was miserable. Trying to navigate all the heavy traffic with the giant rumbling trundlebox behind me was a nightmare, and I had to do it for just SO goddamn long. This was really the only part of the trip where I really suffered, and towards the end it was actually getting unsafe for me to drive, with my eyes bugging out and the whole deal. We made it okay though, and proceeded to some desperately needed rest.

We batted around the idea of leaving the stuff here and just getting Clovar back home, but that was still just a tiny bit deceitful, and also kind of a pain logistically. Finding storage for all of it on short notice would've been costly, and we found that even simply locating a storage facility with room open was quite difficult. We settled on leaving all of Clovar's stuff with him when we dropped him off. It would work fine because it was the transport of Sgt. Sparkcannon, not Clovar and his stuff, that had really necessitated a driving trip. The secondary benefit of this plan was that stripping off one passenger and set of equipment would unload us enough to fit everything in just the car. Quite possibly the only silver lining to be had in all of this. Honestly at that point I would've offered to drive Spunky to Mexico City if she offered to get that damn rickety chuckwagon off my back. I didn't know how much more of that damn thing I could take. And so it was that we did the first and second legs of our journey all over again. It was a lot quieter this time, with the mood being much more somber and introspective. We stopped at a Tim Horton's on the way up. An important ritual, I surmised. My time in Canada had led me to speculate that the real reason we'd failed to escape was because I had tried to leave the country without visiting at least one Tim Hortons.

We deposited Clovar and all his things, and of course got to hear the requisite "I told you so"s on that end. After that I got to put my charisma and intelligence modifier to the test again with a complex series of language and persuasion rolls to explain what the hell just happened and negotiate my way out of the contract I had for the now-empty insufferable wiggle wagon. The DM wouldn't let me look at how high the success DC for the checks were, so it's tough to tell if I just got slam-dunk rolls or Canadians are just really nice, but I got just about the best deal I ever would've dared hope for. Instead of charging me with violating our rental agreement, my homeboy at the edge-of-the-world storage depot communed briefly with the goddess U'Haulé in a far and distant plane of existence, and obtained the spiritual clarity to throw out the old agreement and draft a new one for a three-day local move. Basically he rewrote the rental contract for what I'd actually done with the trailer. An outstandingly equitable arrangement that had me leaving with a substantial refund. My first good news in awhile.

Since two of us (you'll never guess which two) had free accommodations in Timmins we decided to stay a night there and forego the progress we might've otherwise made that day. That was fine by me. My journey had gotten lighter but FAR longer, so if the two lovebirds wanted to afford me an extra break for them to spend one last night together I was all for it. It also left me a chance to try some poutine, thus making it even more official that I'd done all the requisite Canada things that I needed to. And so, we resumed. This next portion being the bulk of the trip you'd think there would be a lot of interesting things to say about it, but it was actually a fair bit quieter. We'd settled into a routine by this point, so a lot of it is covered under the "same shit" umbrella. Particularly since I'd done this part of the trip once already. Sgt. Sparkcannon was having an okay time of it too. He definitely unleashed a cacophony of rage at any cricket wiping its nose or any weaving spider dropping a stitch within 300 yards, as small dogs are wont to, but he was temperate otherwise. A few nights in he jumped into my bed at about 4AM and looked at me expectantly. I petted him for a bit, really unsure what to make of it. Like really, I'm glad that we're bros now little dude and I'm psyched about it too but this really isn't the time.

Suitably divested of our international fugitive, the second border crossing was mercifully uneventful. Since we were both American citizens we got the approval of the imposing wall of Oakley's and creatine supplements that makes up our national border. The big new wrinkle that came about upon our return to the land of sandwich buns made of fried chicken was that I found First Energy had been trying to call me a LOT while I was in Canada and my phone didn't work. They wanted to start all the background check processes and bring me in for a drug screening. Which, while not inherently definitive, are typically the last things you do before hiring someone. So the basically unlimited free time that led me to accept this quest might be about to come to an abrupt end in the best possible way.

Suddenly I was far less chill about our massive delays, but I still had a mission to complete. I'd really just have to do what I always do, take a shit sandwich and figure out how to gussy up the presentation to still win this round of Top Chef. As such I mixed in a lot of the business that I needed to. For me, Claymore's walkabout breaks (we were on a first-name basis by then) had become teleconferences with my new business associates, and suchlike. I made it work, but it's just so frustrating to try and do things while traveling. I had to drive to Kinkos, wait in line, print out some forms, fill them out, wait in line again, have them scanned, then email them. It's profoundly aggravating to do all that and pay $4.50 for something that would've been free and taken two minutes at home. Really not the best foot to lead with, but I'm sure dealing with my new employers won't ALWAYS be a mess.

The trip down through the US was mercifully free of major disasters. It even had a few pleasant things like a continental breakfast at the hotel that included biscuits and gravy, one of very few things I missed about the South. And yes, I did stop at a Waffle House on the way back up. There being a similar rule about WH in the South as there is about Timmy's in the far north. I wasn't about to invite the wrath of those particular uncannily specific demons of fate a second time. We took a few longer breaks to just kind of decompress a little. Getting up and driving all day followed by going to bed gets the job done quick, but it wears on you quite quickly. That went well. The detriment of that smooth sailing now being that a lack of problems means that there's very little of interest to talk about. I've wondered at times what makes my complaining so interesting, and I guess that's my answer! It's far easier to summarize something where it all went to plan. It's the disasters where things get interesting. It's like comparing a trainwreck to the green line getting there three minutes late like always. One of those scenarios is far more information-dense.

Anyways, at long last we made it to our destination. We unloaded everything amidst a pinball game of several additional small-to-medium-sized dogs, Claymore having endeared himself to the locals quite quickly, and at last I got a chance to really rest. It was a tumultuous time in the household, the details of which I won't go into for fear of revealing things that ought not be talked around, but it was certainly quite an environment to stumble into. I got a delicious hot meal in addition to the expected grilling for details about myself from Spunky's parents, so it's hard to complain too much. I tested their borders as far as humor pretty early when conversations veered political. I'd say the most telling sample was this:

"I don't believe in abortion."
"Oh really? Well you should. It's quite real. There's substantial evidence to back up its existence."

They actually thought that was pretty funny, which was an immense relief. I don't like to think about what can happen when a joke like that goes poorly. We got along great though, even a majority of the dogs got along with me. The atmosphere started typified by my passenger's family being understandably concerned that she had summoned this shady golem from the internet to pick up her and all her belongings, trusting a quite radical element with a great deal of capital value, not to mention her own safety. A pretty reasonable concern that I was not at all offended by. I'd have similar concerns in their place. What was a lot more surprising though, was how much that tone changed by the end of the day. Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but it felt pretty good to start from the point of being a potential predator that they regarded with suspicion, and within a few hours having her mother ask "Well why aren't you dating this successful engineer here who stuck out his neck to help you instead of your unemployed musician boyfriend?" Heh, I would've liked to endear myself to them in perhaps a less... confrontational fashion, but hey, I'll take the compliments where I can get them.

In any case, I spent two nights in a hotel near there to rest up for my long return journey. I hung out with the local crew for some time and got to know the way of things. Good people all around. I even got to have dinner and visit a bit with an old friend from high school who lives in Savannah now. I was at a wedding right before I left on my adventure and saw her there. When it came up that I was going to be in Georgia the following week she said "Oh really? I live there now. You should stop by and say hey!" Wow, I don't think I could've written a lazier coincidence if I tried. Just goes to show how reality doesn't really care about what's realistic or not. I was very tired by then, and had considered sticking around a little more, but by then I was under the gun to get back home and get started working on preparing for my own big move, a task that loomed imposingly over me now that I had completed my escort mission.

Similarly I had planned to visit Kathy Garrison on the return leg. She's a good friend and webcomic author that I've kept in touch with over the years. She's actually included me as a character recently. Uri the brigadier hyena. (Named after Uranium, for my line of work.) My likeness is in the military as a nuclear engineer. He enjoys writing stories, is fairly glib and sarcastic, and is famously long-winded in his speech. So really it could hardly be more accurate. I'm amazed she managed to fit that much detail in there and still have it blend in with the story! It's been a bit since I've been out that way, and it would've broken up the much lonelier drive home. Of course as always, fate had other plans.

It would have been nice to have a little break on my way up, but I ended up taking my break in Georgia because by then I just couldn't drive anymore. From there I just pursued the most expedient route home. Adding any more driving time at that point was a daunting prospect. I had been driving a LOT. Easily four times the longest drive I'd ever done by that point, and far longer than I'd planned to initially. The trip total was nearly 4,500 miles in total over the course of 12 days. Plus, now I had work to do. Work that I couldn't very well say I was afraid of, having spent the majority of 2017 in search of it. So as it was, I returned home, and prepared for my next incredible journey. Hard to say what to make of this mission in the end, but overall I'm glad I did it. It's an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. Not something that I'm gearing up to do again any time soon mind you, but I'm glad that I did it once in my life. I wish my new friends the best in starting their new lives in new places. Here's hoping that mine will go well too!

Alright well I've been wussing out about this long enough, I've got work to do so let's rip this bandaid off and spike it to the ground in triumph. To forestall all of these from turning into 30,000-word endless diatribes I'm channeling the indomitable warrior spirit of Erik from the iconic Internet Comment Etiquette Youtube series. If you're not familiar with his work, just picture me angrily pounding out all of this on my keyboard as fast as humanly possible while shouting it aloud. It actually worked pretty well for keeping me moving.

Furpocalypse 2016: Lookit All These Beautiful Bastards!

I started this one by brokering a roomsharing agreement with Spunky Shep from the Upstate NY Furs. He ended up doing a complication and said that he couldn't make it. Which was fine. I'm always prepared to pay for the room myself because complicatededs happen quite often to furries, but he actually called back to say that he'd worked out a swap and now he was putting in his place Snugs and Mugs, who were in fact NOT affectionate cuddles and branded coffee merchandise but actually a charming young couple with adorably matched names that I never thought to ask whether they were coincidental or not. I hear they actually got married soon after our encounter so I guess it's going pretty well for them in any case. Congratulations, you guys! Their substitution into my flop-space was a weird people-economy moment where the hot-swapping of individuals all happened outside my purview and I just had to go with it, but it all worked out in the end so best not to think too hard on it. We didn't interact a whole lot because cons are balls-to-the wall explosion festivals even at the most dreary of times, but at the very least stayed out of each others' hair and had a great con. Mugs even complimented me on my shower singing, which... hey, that's a thing that happened I'm not gonna tell you how to feel about it.

Anyways Furpocalypse is a smaller local sort of con so the play-by-play of it is a lot more socializing, schmoozing and hanging out than actual formalized events and as such things are a fair bit less cinematic. I won't really have a lot to put in here so this should be a short one. Yes, I know I've lied many times about that and I may yet be lying again! We'll just have to wait until it's the future to find out. Firstly, great big HUGE most high and honorable mention to two tiny ferret children who absolutely lit the place up with their boundless energy and inhuman enthusiasm. Skittles and Oreo dished out some of the most fun fursuit performing that I've seen all year, and that's a year that included my attendance at like 46 furry cons somehow! The energy that each one of them has plays off one another perfectly and their voices are exactly what cartoons would sound like if they stumbled into a hotel lobby out of a Space Jam toonland portal. "OUH myhgaad didjahear that she said we're cute that's so awesome we love being cute it's sooo muchfunyoushouldtryitaren'tyouhavingsomuchfuntoo-ohLOOKADOGWEHAVETOPETITRIGHTNOWBYEAAAAAAAaaaaaagh!" These two are basically made of 100% immaculate, soul-searing joy and they could probably raise the dead just by asking them to come play for awhile. Yeah that's right, they were so fucking cute they were actually in serious danger of accidentally becoming necromancers. Phenomenal!

I saw one of the ever-growing number of RadFox fursuiters in the lobby, they're kind of hard to miss what with their day-glow nightmare kaleidoscope of Technicolor radiation trifoils and all. I checked in with them because us nuclear furries have gotta stick together. This time around it turned out to be Rechner piloting Sievert. He was new to me but the whole RadFox crew is a pretty chill bunch of dudes so we got along pretty great. Later on he was debuting a pistol-grip nozzle that shoots beer a pretty impressive distance. So no mystery why he was so popular. I also came across Fibrekitty in passing, his fursuiting stage presence dramatically eclipsing mine in both height AND gregariousness. I came to find out that he's a fellow RPI alumni, so we had a lot to talk about. Gonna have to follow up with him some more in the future.

This note on the back of my con book just says "Mori: Find out who made this beautiful sassy fuck." So I guess that was my first sighting of him. But seriously though, HUGE fursuit crush right there, instantly. Like to the point where I was too nervous to talk to him much right then. That doesn't happen often. If you hadn't guessed I tend to visit voluminous words upon anyone within my blast radius quite readily at all times, entirely regardless of whether they would much rather I stop. There's also a hasty scribble on here that says "Zivom Werewolf" that I've yet to rediscover the meaning of. Much as that seems like a person's furname my search turned up empty, and I get the feeling that it was more of a concept or reference to some kind of content. Doing archaeology of my own past is really weird. If you're the one who mentioned that phrase to me or maybe that IS your furname please do me a solid and tell me what the fuck it means because I was apparently very interested in it at some point and really didn't want to forget about it, making my forgetting about it all the more distressing.

The fursuit parade happened. I was in that. Also in the fursuit parade was this giant-ass army surplus cargo truck, which we of course piled high with animal people and drove around the block in. As one does. 5/4 would risk losing arms again. Battsaults once again came in like a wrecking ball spreading high octane booze and free food in his wake. Seriously though he invited be to some totally baller shady nighttime parking lot barbecues which are totally things that happen somehow but hey this is some good kielbasa I'm not gonna dig too hard about what it's doing here. Or should I say grill people too hard about- okay I'll stop. Late that night I saw Farah and Kida and horrible silly-string-related things happened, the type of madness that scars men's souls. And uuuuh, fuck it, that's it moving on!

Further Confusion 2017: Bitch I do what I want!

I graduated from college at about this time. Woooo life accomplishments! That also meant that I had very little limits on exactly how long I could fuck off to go do furry things. Archai always said "Come by anytime and stay as long as you want." Naturally I was keen to put that to the test by hanging around at his pad for a jaw-dropping 23 days which, true to his word, he seemed more than happy to support. Jeeze, things are going pretty well for me but it's nice to know that I have a fallback for if I ever become homeless. I tried to do a bunch of things while I was there because sitting on Archai's couch the whole time would've been kind of a waste. Touring places, visiting Stormy Kittyhawk and Toby Snowwolf for a bit. Seeing like four different fraternity brothers who lived around there. Meeting up with my parents who coincidentally flew into Carmel right about that time. Some things worked some things didn't that's a risk you take when you live your life there's nothing to it but to do it okay moving on to the convention!

FC is still lazy as fuck and expects that you and all your rich Sanny Frisco Bay friends are just having enough fun circle-jerking each other to not notice that there are no events going on. For serious if it weren't for Archai being a gracious and charismatic host every time I would've gone to FC precisely one time ever and died happy knowing that it just wasn't worth the price of admission. The price of admission being coast-to-coast plane tickets and not the LITERAL price of admission in my case. Regardless I seemed to shoehorn my way into enough variegated social circles to keep myself occupied. Maybe someday I'll even BE one of these rich, insular Bay people. We can only hope! Seriously though, I did try to find a job in California. The one place that didn't robo-reject me right out of the gate totally told me to fuck off when I interviewed there. They said that I was "Overqualified and displayed insufficient interest in the position" which has gotta be like the least disappointing rejection ever. I just kind of thought "Um, okay? I'll come back when I'm stupid and desperate then?" So yeah, this is definitely a place to VISIT. I went to Titanium Tea XXVIIII and that was pretty dope. I threw back some fuckin' delicious cardamom spiced blend and talked to a bunch of chill dudes while wondering what kind of mixed messages the title of this event is going to send in a couple year when the number increments up to XXX. I guess we'll see. Oh wait never mind good thing it's already the future now so I can tell you, yeah they just took the number off for that one what a copout so totally super lame moving on!

Stormy hosted kinky discussion panels and I of course went to both of them because they were the less businesslike version of the late-night sexy writing panels that I've always had a special place in my heart for. I can really get behind loosening up and dropping the pretext of writing and skipping straight to the good stuff. Even if I have less sexual experience than most Mormon middle-schoolers it's still fun to talk about this kind of shit. I also did the fursuit parade because of fucking course I did you think I would come to this thing and then NOT dress up like a carnival parade float what are you kidding me? I had to be hospitalized before I considered not wearing a giant traffic-cone-colored bag of carpet all day, it's what I do, fuck yeah! I went to a panel called "What's Your Problem?" and for those of you viewers at home who have asked that question already HAH! Sorry to disappoint but that was just a cleverly-named writing panel and not at all any sort of redress for my deep-seated emotional issues and the unhealthy ways in which I repress them. The panel was meant to address the problems that stop you from getting published as a first-time writer. Really useful stuff to know for new authors, as the ability to write and the ability to get published both take up a very large number of talent points and are located in entirely different skill trees. And as Kyell Gold puts it, "The best way to get someone to publish your novel is by having already published a novel."

It was about this time that I met Dasos Lukos, Damien Husky and Terraluna. I'm sure they regret that every bit as much as I do. And yeah after that it was mainly just logistical catastrofucks to try and get people where they needed to be and with furries that can take entire days so that can all safely be skipped moving on!

Furthemore 2017: Trash Jackal for Life

Oh man this one might be even shorter because I worked at this convention so a lot of it is just iterations of me moving supplies around and finding shit for people who were attached to their work in some fashion sharecropper-style couldn't move around like I could. I stayed plenty busy, but not with anything that would be fun to read about. Didn't even have a chance to fursuit this time, but hey, did good work, had good times. I do definitely know now that I'm going to have to actually pick a department and get a real job next time I can make it to this one. The first two times I worked at FTM I just had this freeform "run around and pick up stuff that fell through the cracks" kind of thing going on. It worked fine for something so nebulously defined. Just taking care of all the random little widgets that nobody thought of ahead of time had me running off my feet. They've gotten shit together now though. If a thing needs to be done then it's accounted for and it's somebody's job specifically. There wasn't a lot of sluice work that just fell in my lap, I often had to go looking for loose ends because there just weren't that many of them. I even had a radio this time so I would be easier to summon for problems. Occasionally I legit ran out of work and just ran off to do fun con things for awhile, that's new! So good on those guys. They took a job that I did for years and organized it out of existence. Hell I got there decently early and loadout was already nearly done when I got in. Heh, things going well isn't nearly as much fun to talk about as disasters are, but this is unmistakably progress. That's some good shit-get-togethering you guys!

I will say that running around tackling everyone who was trying to record Boozy Badger's panel was pretty fun, and I got to watch him talk in exchange for policing it. Good stuff. He's a fun guy to listen to. Definitely catch his shows if you get the chance. I actually roomed with Mori on this one, completely by coincidence. He happened to be friends with Nunavut Tuktu, who was my landlord this time around, another RPI alum actually. That place has even more of a furry scene than I thought! So yeah, I got to actually have some face-to-face with Mori instead of just fursuit-crushing on him the whole time, which is nice. The great thing about the furry fandom is you can meet your idols and not have that ruin your image of them because most of them are still pretty chill dudes, even when they're not performing for their adoring public.

One spot wherein we never run out of work is packing up at the end of the con. There's a ton of stuff to move, everybody's exhausted, manpower is starting to fall off, it's a trying time. So yeah I really got a workout then. What put us at the end of our rope this time was that a lot of our retro games in the video game room use CRT TVs because the timing and screen latency of newer models can interfere with many games that are old enough to rent a car, and games that need the lightgun straight up won't work unless the TV is pointing an electron gun right at them. So to support our retro technology needs, we put out the call for old CRTs, which many folks were only too happy to provide. Naturally during the pack up phase, toting around like seven giant heavy-ass televisions was cramping our style a little bit. Those of us charged with removing them were quite bowed by our lot, especially since these were some of the last things to go on the truck.

Finally defeated, we resolved that we'd just rid ourselves of the three shittiest TVs and be done with it. That was a quick consensus, but there was a bit of back and forth as to how exactly we were best to disappear them. The dumpster at the loading dock was certainly tempting when we were in that state, and had it been just one I would've been all for it. Just like punching someone in the face, the first one is a fluke and is far more easily excused. It's difficult to make three look like an accident. I knew that blame would probably make it back to us if they found a bunch of what is actually no-shit hazardous waste left at the hotel, and that wouldn't be good news for our venue relations. The vacuum tube also explodes violently when you hit it, you'll never guess how I know that. CRTs are really not the sort of thing you want to mess around with. Since I was the one fighting hardest for us to do the right thing, I brought my car around and loaded it up with all the offending machines, their fate to be determined after some sleep.

My charge proved to be a far greater foe than I imagined. Consignment shops all have a pretty consistent reaction when you offer them cathode ray TVs. Best Buy at the very least answered their PHONE to turn me down from HERE. All three shops that I called didn't pick up and made me drive out to them to experience their spiteful middle fingers in person. Recycling and waste management places weren't much easier. Most e-waste places want proof of local residency and I was a long way from home. If we had known this would be a problem we could've put up some of the TVs as prizes for our video game tournaments. Probably could've suckered at least ONE person with one.

When I looked back at these accursed poison boxes I was just like "Well I guess I AM the one that insisted we not just ditch them at the loading dock..." God, being a responsible adult sucks. No wonder furries never want to do it! If this comes up again I'mma set the damn thing on fire and run away. And really having done this kind of thing before you'd think I'd know better. My trash service back in Portsmouth was going to charge a $20 'large item fee' for a TV that a previous tenant had left behind. So I got a barbell from the garage and turned the large item into a bunch of small items. Wouldn't recommend that method necessarily. CRTs are actually VERY dangerous to tear apart. Most people underestimate how bad TVs are because they seem so innocuous and pervasive. Like the way gasoline is far more dangerous to handle than dynamite, but people are more familiar with the former. CRTs have huge capacitor banks that will still shock the stuffing out of you for a LONG time after the set is unplugged. They have a mercury lamp, leaded glass screen, and probably about a third of all the other different toxic heavy metals in their circuit boards. And as I found out, the vacuum tube shatters explosively when hit because of the whole vacuum pressure thing.

Apparently the iniquities of this particular technology are very much NOT a secret. There were SO many recycling places that I called that said "Oh yeah we'll take any electronic waste. Except Cathode Ray TVs. Don't you put that evil on me!" It was SO stressful driving around with those things. They're big heavy blocks of old-ass creaky plastic, so whenever they moved around I was just like "Aaaaa the car is making bad noises aaaaaa!" It was kind of cool though, when I actually got them into a place. I was still wearing my staff shirt when I went to the eWaste place that finally took the damn things off my hands, along with some portraits of my good friends Mr. Grant and Mr. Jefferson. The girl at the counter, just from seeing the logo on my shirt, said "Oh, are you with Furthemore? That's so cool! How did it go?" So apparently we've got some positive brand recognition out there. That almost made it worth it. Almost.

Anthrocon 2017: I've done this HOW many times?

Oh God what a mess. Having been to SIX of these things now they're all pretty much a drunken, heat-exhaustion-smeared haze in my mind. I'm having to hit up the old reports a lot to stop other years' events from bleeding over thanks to temporal confabulation. Here's hoping this one will be coherent at the very least. Any entertainment value is purely a byproduct I assure you. I met up with a lot of the usual Anthrocon crew. I'm not going to list them all because they know who they are and it's a ridiculous list because AC's attendance is more than twice the size of the town I grew up in. So I'm just gonna roll this here highlight reel and hope for the best.

The Science Furs panel was pretty cool. It's not often that social mixer type events like that really land, but for some reason having a diverse pool of nerds rather than a selective one where they're all nerd for a particular thing seems to stir discussion a bit more and make for a pretty fun time. I guess there really is a danger in having too much in common. It's fun to tell new people that you split goddamn atoms for a living. I mean, the ability to say that isn't WHY I do it, but that's damn cool. In some of my downtime, I was really enjoying blowing bubbles over the balcony and watching fursuiters chase them around. That's definitely one of those 'simple joys' moments that you only find at a furry con. Though I can't say I recommend it at this particular gathering though, as it wasn't long before the fun police came by and scolded me because I was "throwing objects off the balcony" in violation of their code of conduct. Yeah, this is clearly the most dangerous thing happening right now. Good job shutting down that crime syndicate, guys.

Battsaults was once again bringing the party, and got in touch with me to ask if I could help him out with finding a use for his three casks of mead. He definitely hit one of my core competencies there! My interactions with him over the course of the con were varied and sporadic, but I'll just pick the top like four-ish out of the whole compendium of sidequests and collect them in the same general area here for the sake of convenience. (The Saké of Convenience is also a popular and easily-accessible drink at this convention.) He happened to be rooming with KibaKun, who I've chatted with online a time or two through the Hypnofurs chat, and we were both keen to get to know each other a bit now that one had fallen into the other's lap so coincidentally. Yes, this is definitely my home con. I can't stop tripping over people I know there.

I also happened upon a green gas cap in the lobby that I was near-certain that I recognized. Sure enough it belonged to Battsaults. That's a very emblematic furry con event. You find a green gas cap on the floor and think "Hm, I'll grab this because I think I know the guy who drinks liquor out of the gas can that this cap goes to." And have that be precisely the case. "Goddamn, man. You find everything!" Was Battsaults' response to my turning in the quest item. I was also hanging out with Archai at the time I was headed up that way, so I got to play the Japanese slice-of-life RPG angle of looking at your friends' stats and seeing if they'll get a bonus from hanging out with each other. They most certainly did! That's a good feeling. I'm glad that Archai got to experience Battsaults and his crew, because they are definitely an experience!

I got nudged in the direction of a big poppyfur party by Archai at one point. And by nudged I mean he pretty much pushed me in the door and shut it behind me as he ran off to go do other things. Talk about throwing me to the wolves. Wait, well I mean there had to be at least one wolf in there, it was a crowded room. So yeah that phrase still holds. The occasion, besides conventions being great places to get drunk and snuggle on the couches in a suite, was Avi's birthday if I recall correctly. What I realized during the orientation phase of my expedition was that there were a LOT of pretty well-known furries there. I had heard of a majority of these people before through the waves they make in the furrynet. Naturally I was completely new to everyone which means that I hold all the cards here! No preconceptions, my destiny is of my own making! I don't really see these guys regularly, so it's tough to tell how that went, but it was worth a shot! The star-studded cast that night included but was most assuredly not limited to Zanth, DiamondDog, Dash Tiger, bunnies of both the Frosty and Twilight variety, the indomitable Sunny-D, Leopold Lion, and Rondo Foxcoon, a crowd whose combined Twitter followers likely outnumber the population of the United Kingdom.

I leveraged my preternatural ability to avoid being asked who I am or what the hell I'm doing in a place I have no business being to slip into the role of de facto bartender, and likewise endeared myself to the assembled clientele. Spawts hollered a drink request from across the room of just "Surprise me!" They did indeed know very little about me. I took on that challenge with great zeal, exclaiming something punchy and elegant to the effect of "Bitch I'mma carve that on your tombstone, let's fuckin' do this!" I may have been serving myself generously as well by that point. Who's to say? In any case Spawts was shortly converted to run on E85 for the remainder of the night. Real victory for Mother Earth there.

After the crowd thinned a little and people were toasted enough that having a full-time bartender was no longer so much of an issue, I got to talking to Avi, who had at last grown curious as to the nature of my presence there. Fortunately if there's one thing I can do very proficiently while drunk it's talk loudly for a really long time. It's my default setting in fact, so I just cruised right along. I really seemed to be holding his attention though. So I guess I was being suitably sociable and entertaining with whatever it is that was in my head at the time. I really should follow up with Avi sometime. Seemed like a great dude, and months later I heard that he'd asked around about me. So it seems I left at least one solid impression within the conclave of luminaries. Well, other than the Spawts-shaped dent in the couch where he spent a good chunk of the evening in powersave mode.

I did a bit of fursuiting, both operating and ground crew. Archai has a lot of really spectacular but also unwieldy huge plush suits, so sometimes I get tapped to handle for him. It's worth doing a lot of the time, because giant plush suits are SUPER popular, and it's really fun to watch him work in them. I got to catch up with Angrboda and the TF crew where I was introduced to Raveyote and other cool doods. I also met Kirisha and the um... different TF crew I guess? I should make that my next friend-bonus mashup. I don't know why it didn't occur to me right then. And to close, the Furlibs panel was a really fun after-dark story construction game that was elevated from good to ascended by the addition of a few terribly misfortunate artists who had to draw the story on a whiteboard in real time as it was being developed. Their struggle to produce "a raccoon sensuously rubbing a tree" and other bizarre constructs in just a few moments was the stuff of legends. A good time was had by all and then we all buggered off the end.

Furaffinity United 2017: Complaining Constantly and Loving Every Second

Typically I don't go to this one because it's opposite RMFC and I've got my Colorado peeps to keep up with, but as a tepid mixed blessing this year that wasn't a problem due to RMFC riding dramatically off into the sunset. FAU had kind of a local con feel to it, likely due to the relatively modest attendance, which peaked in the low 700s awhile back. On the other paw EVERYbody has heard of FA, so it still achieved a pretty noteworthy degree of market saturation. It certainly carries itself like a bigger con, with good logistical support and a strong programming schedule. It also casts a net over some of my old stomping grounds in the Tidewater area, so I got to see a lot of those dudes that I haven't seen in awhile.

First up I did the trivia competition hosted by one such familiar Tidewater dude Tyr Kangaroo. My first time doing such a thing at a furry con, but I've gotta get to more of those things because I wrecked that competition so hard I kinda felt bad about it by the end. I won a huge swagbag and I'm still working on finding a home for all the cool toys and junk that was in there. I picked up a couple great fursuit props and silly accessories. There was even a fox plush that's a passable likeness of my suit, just by coincidence. I wish carrying things around while suiting wasn't such a pain. Having that with me would actually be pretty cute. If you can believe it, I saw Mori yet again. He probably thinks I'm stalking him at this point. And of course he's like, not... a hundred percent correct about that. Or whatever. But I did end up going to a party and snuggling on the bed with him for quite some time. I think mainly he was just overheated so I was like... emotional support? Yeah that works I'm sticking with that.

I suitably steeled my nerves and got dressed up for the fursuit games. One of the nice things about having an old suit is that you can really get into fun stuff like that. You're not worried about keeping your look all pristine and proper because you already know you a janky-lookin' fuck and you're proud of it. Plus people fawn over really nice looking suits (people like me! Hi!) so you know that if you've got a ratty-looking vagrant aesthetic then anyone who's hanging out with you actually has a genuine interest in the real you. Yeah, that's definitely why I look like that, so I don't send the wrong message about how fun I am to hang out with. Wouldn't want people getting the wrong impression, you know? I think that if you look at me and say "wow, he looks depressing" that's a lot better than being deceived. Unlike those living Tide pods of people that are so brightly colored, shiny and beautiful on the outside but are actually filled with toxic sludge. Come on everybody, be honest! Be toxic sludge on the outside!

I got to hit up an interesting game put on by Geo Otter. It was an escape room RPG. So you've got the usual Saw scenario where you're trapped in an elaborate puzzle room and you have to escape certain death by figuring out the killer's twisted logic. It was interesting to figure out all that stuff, and really fun to work together with people on a variety of puzzles. Geo projected a pretty good atmosphere, had all the right materials to give us the information we needed and kept the game moving along very well. I never would've guessed that this was a new thing he was trying out. It was very satisfying to see a bunch of ideas come together from all sides and have them work perfectly. In the end we made it out of there in time and only one of us died! Your valiant sacrifice will not be forgotten, whatever-your-name-was.

I saw Kelix while we were both suiting and he was glad to see me again. We got to be super fox buddies as we walked about a bit while we were coming down off the adrenaline rush of the pitched competition in the fursuit games. We had to take a break pretty soon because next up, for both of us actually, was the talent show. Kelix was one of the hosts of the show and I planned to do fursuit comedy. Not just planned, I did! Kinda. I got nervous and forgot a bunch of my bit, so the routine I actually ended up doing was like 60% about how nervous and freaked out I am. Adapt and overcome, dammit! And, unlike many of my previous performances, there's actually a readily accessible video of this one. So do check it out if you feel so inclined, and let me know your thoughts!

The big standout from this con was the convention war stories panel. I've ducked in and out of a couple of those at other cons and they were nice, but they weren't a huge amount of fun or anything. A lot of crusty veterans from the good old days just talking about how "Oh back in my day we didn't have all these fancy Bluetooth-enabled sex toys and live video chatting for our cybersex! We had a Usenet board and a piece of rubber hose. And we appreciated that hose, dammit!" Now, I can't hate on them too much. The old fogies like that are the reason that the fandom is the prolific, beautiful thing that it is today, and as a future old person I most certainly support them having their moment to talk about how we came to be how we be todee. Having that kind of talk go on for over an hour is kinda low energy though, and it really shouldn't be. Furry cons are exciting! So it shouldn't be that hard to make talking about them something fun.

So yeah, I didn't have super high expectations going in, but I figured it's always fun to complain. Well, this panel opened up with "Alright, we're just here to swap stories and let off a little steam. We're not going to publicly throw shade on anyone in particular, so don't identify any people, cons or hotels by name. Unless it's the Cromwell Super 8 because those dickheads had bedbugs in their rooms and they acted like it was MY fuckin' problem." Show 'em how I felt, Chris Pratt! Yeah, I knew that I had found my people. This was a whole bunch of the exact same shit that I do all the time. People talking about all the uniquely insane bullshit that you only ever have to deal with at furry cons, suffering that's now super fun to talk about because it's long in the past. "We had somebody in our group that would just eat everyone else's leftovers at restaurants because he was always out of money by like 2PM on day one." "One time I couldn't shower that morning because the shower was full of pooltoys. Like, floor-to-ceiling just stuffed with them." This. Was. My. Jam!

"Hey they're playin' my song!"
"Complaining is your song?"
"Fuck yeah! Have you MET me?"

So yeah, that was pretty fucking amazing. I'd very much like to give credit for a FANTASTIC panel to our gracious host Majikcraft. They really knew how to take charge and create just the perfect environment for this kind of thing. I was so inspired that I felt like I should apply to host a similar panel at another con.I've got plenty enough stories to tell that I could carry an event like this, even if I didn't get a ton of audience participation. For me telling an hour-long story to a crowd of people is something I do without even realizing it. If ever I get a handle on what my future is supposed to look like more than a couple months out I'll have to give that a shot. I'd love to spread the tradition of something like this a little wider. It was a great atmosphere for a little back and forth, and I threw in quite a few punchlines that went over really well in other peoples' stories. That's exactly my kind of dynamic, one where interjections are constructive rather than being considered rude.

I waited quite awhile for my turn, because I wanted to gather my remarks a bit before presenting them. I had SO much that I wanted to say, but I settled for a single story, because I knew exactly the one to tell, and because I knew that I could monopolize the whole panel if I didn't throttle back on all the stuff I wanted to say. I regaled those assembled with the epic saga of Marius the Invalid from Anthrocon Past, both because I've told it many times and know it well, and because I knew that it would totally smoke everyone else's story. For the record, it did pretty much bring the house down. The line that received the longest applause break was definitely "So I got to talk with Marius' dad for awhile. We discussed his previous three trucks, which he had pictures of, and also his previous two wives, which he did NOT have pictures of." And for those wondering, yes! I also have terrible summarizing problems when speaking aloud, so the epic poem was interrupted by the host saying "Okay could you wrap it up so that other people can go? I think that 20 minutes is plenty." I actually picked up a couple FA watchers because I told the audience where they could find the full version online. Pretty good advertising strategy. I wish I could say I did it on purpose.

After the dance competition I was helping an exhausted angel dragon fursuiter with some latent locomotion and heat rejection concerns. I remember her name being Tiny Geiger, but that hasn't flagged anywhere online, so either I disremembered or she's a mysterious shadowninja with no virtual presence. In any case, I saw her back to her room and she just so happened to be friends with Exavier Wolfhymn, who I knew from my time in Virginia. And just like that I had my new crew. I hung out and chatted with those guys for quite a while, we went and got pho-ked up to bring the night to a close. It was good times. I actually didn't have a room for the last night, so I had to be moving along. I didn't feel too broken up about it because by then the place had thinned out quite a bit, but of course, plans never last too long at a furry con. I got called over to a game of Werewolf in the lobby. It was a blast. It's exactly the right game to play when you're worn out but still want to have some fun and socialize with people for the short time you have left with them.

Fortunately enough, that extra delay had me in the right spot to see Jibade (Ja-bah-dee. I include phonetics because I had to ask) when he came by to join. For those who aren't familiar, Jibade is THE Anubis fursuiter. He is a god among gods. And when I say he has a fursuit I don't mean in the way you're thinking. His costume is based on the more contemporary Middle Kingdom depiction of Anubis, once they'd stopped being so wild and stylized with it after Mentuhotep II rolled through told everybody to calm the fuck down. That is to say, the design has a jackal head and tail with human everything else. Naturally with Egypt being a desert nation that predates air conditioning by a few strides and a nose, the traditional clothing with which Anubis is oft depicted is fairly revealing, so you're really putting a lot of yourself out there by doing a faithful recreation of that look. And by the gods is this faithful. Like, drop to your knees and fucking recognize kind of faithful. I don't often experience jealousy over someone else's body. Like, mine is fine. I don't have too many problems with it and my body is holding up really well given how poorly I take care of it. And thanks to the furry fandom I know that a whole bunch of men actually think I'm pretty cute. I'm kind of like My Little Pony in that way. I never meant to appeal to college-age men but I guess it's still pretty cool that they like me. You see, just like MLP I really meant to appeal to little gi- OH SHIT WAIT NEVERMIND! I take it back, no! On second thought that is not a good analogy at all nope nothing to see here. If I were a cartoon it would be something whose target audience is exclusively consenting adults thank you moving right along now.

Yes, as usual I've completely lost track of my point, which I believe was something about Jibade looking uncomfortably attractive in his Anubis raiment. Not at all a new phenomenon by the way. Like, YEARS before I was comfortable saying such things out loud I would see Jibade's Ja-body walk by and I would think "Oh holy Hathor that is a sexy, sexy man." I probably still shouldn't be comfortable saying that out loud because "Oh holy Hathor" is an inhumanly dorky thing to say. Regardless, yeah. Jibade is just like *inarticulate awestruck glottal noise*, and I got to chat him up for a bit which was nice. Fortunately my time in the fandom has given me years of experience in talking with people that I have near cult-like reverence for without completely losing my shit. So as such I managed to not talk like a complete brick-headed moron the way I did here. I actually AM capable of acting like it ain't no thing, though the transition where that practiced mentality jumps is pretty noticeable. "Oh holy shit you're JIBADE? I didn't recognize you with your clothes on." *one-panel beat* "I mean, hey. What's up man? You wanna play some Werewolf with us? There's not much else going on and there's been a pretty good crowd for it so far." Fuckin' steady as a rock. For real. So yeah, I thought that was pretty neat, if you hadn't gathered. I got home super late and was dead tired, but it was worth the little overhang to have some of those special little experiences that really stick with you, and come back in crazy high-fidelity even several months later. Wow I really wish I had a couple examples to illustrate that point, but you'll just have to take my word on it.

Following Anthrocon 2016 I was sick because, of course I was. That happens literally every convention. So really I didn’t think much of it and was just grateful that I didn’t have a whole lot to do for the rest of the summer. It went on for quite a long time though. Three weeks, easily. Like usual it was never bad enough that I thought to do anything about it though. It’s just a cough and nasal congestion. I’ve been to the doctor for those symptoms many times and the result is invariably that you wait an hour or two and get charged $85 to have them tell you that you should rest and hydrate yourself well. Oh THANKS. I was planning to do 200 pound deadlifts and shotgun 24 ounce cans of Rockstar energy drink until I felt better. Good thing I sought the sage advice of someone who went through like 12 years of advanced education to arrive at the conclusion that water and sleep are good for you. That attitude kept me going for a long time, as sarcasm always does, but the latent appearance of some severe chest pain led me to finally give in and go to the hospital. In part because I knew that would get me seen, and in part because I know that chest pain is often the last thing you feel before you die. It felt more like a muscle ache than anything else, but it was getting to the point where I couldn’t breathe without the stabbing pain sending me to my knees, so I thought I’d have it checked out. I know, what a wuss, right?

So the ER crew did their normal routine to make sure my heart was okay. That workup included a CT scan, which of course entails lying flat on your back with your arms over your head. You’ll never guess what was the MOST EXCRUCIATING position for me to be in at the time. Yeah, I much preferred the way they did it last time when they did the drugs and THEN the scan. (Remember kids, drugs make life easier!) Eventually the attending physician got around to looking me over and poked at it a bunch to localize the problem. Not only was that the NEW most excruciating thing, I found that the pain was much more localized than I thought before. He found one small, particularly agonizing spot that was unquestionably the source of the problem. It was quite a dramatic and conclusive search actually. A pretty quick sequence of "Nope, nope, nope, aaaaaAAAAAAHHHHH YES. THAT IS THE THING. Good job. Also you're going to have these fingernail scars in your forearm for the rest of your life to remind you of this occasion now please step away from me thank you."

The “poke a bunch of spots to see what hurts the most” protocol may not be very fun, but it turned up a fair amount of useful information. The problem spot was small, specific and very close to the surface, meaning that the fault was likely the muscles of the chest wall, and not the deeper, keeping-me-alive muscles. This admittedly relieving revelation brought with it a different, much more existential kind of worry once we started working through the diagnosis proper. Upon reviewing my history, the attending physician asked if I’d encountered any ticks recently. Apparently, persistent cold symptoms followed by sudden chest wall pain lined up pretty well with the onset of Lyme disease. Now I never found any with their teeth in me, but I did pull easily four or so of the little bastards off me during my visit to help out at a friend's ranch in West Virginia. So it would be difficult for me to claim credibly that I was entirely free of them in recent history.

That added a bit of a new wrinkle to the interminable wait for the results to come back. I’m hardly an expert on Lyme disease but I hear sucks a lot. Only one star on Yelp when last I checked. I’d really hate to have that. In due course all of the vital statistics tests came back normal. That means I get the trademarked ER “You’re not dying so get the fuck out.” That directive came with a coupon for more narcotics, so I didn’t mind too much. That solved the pain problem, which is what got me in there, and God willing the pain was the only problem that I had. At least I knew that I was out of immediate danger, so I could put up with the delays in getting my results back a little better. Perhaps too well, actually. Had I been more of an ass about it I might’ve actually gotten this shit pushed through in a reasonable timeframe. As it was I just tried to take it easy and not let my opiate-induced sense of invincibility cause me to make the problem worse. I felt better after a couple days, but I couldn’t tell if that was “healed” better or “codeine” better. If ONLY I had some sort of objective measure of my health. Something that would return a definitive go no-go result, like say some medical lab tests or something. Turns out those were something I’d have to fight for, and I’d run out the clock on my chance to do so.

You see, it was coming up on my time to fly away on my magical journey to Denver, in order to participate in my now-annual tradition of darkening Nevir’s doorstep in and around the Rocky Mountain Fur Con timeframe. So, with a plane flight coming up and an extended stay in elsewhere to follow, it would be extremely helpful for planning purposes if I knew whether or not I had a debilitating disease that lasts for many weeks. It all stems from my extended stay away from traditional medical support in order to go fight terrorism on a 90,000 ton floating airfield. When I finally took umbrage with the delay and went back to the hospital to ask just what the deal was with the delivery of this highly critical piece of medical intelligence they told me that “you’re not dying” is the kind of result that they can just tell to a patient, but blood test results are for whatever asinine reason NOT such a thing.

Apparently only a doctor is emotionally mature enough to take in, then properly distill and deliver such news. I however, found myself at the lack of a doctor. Thanks to departing from my homeland to go fight for glory and freedom the moment I completed the sacred trials and became a man, the person listed in my records as my primary care physician was still my pediatrician. Naturally my pediatrician’s office considered the results that they were sent for the ER visit of a 27 year old man to be a bit beyond their purview and discarded them. Since I learned all this on a Friday and my flight was on a Wednesday that left me with only two business days to obtain a physician and undertake the necessary ceremonial rites to make him my own to the extent that the hospital would respect his right to observe those test results and break the news to me. Such thrilling adventures I find myself at the helm of these days.

In any case, I did the responsible thing to do when one is trying to make an important decision such as selecting who is going to oversee your health for the foreseeable future, I picked the guy whose last name was alphabetically first whose office said they were accepting new patients when I called them. So first thing Monday morning I was off to Doctor Curtin’s office (His was the fourth that I had to call) to fill out the new patient information form. After that I went back to the hospital to fill out the other form necessary to transmit my test results to him. It was a gamble, but his office was a small one, so I was betting that their clerical mechanism was a fair bit less of a bloated, lumbering bureaucracy than the large area hospital. I figured that meant I could safely bet on the office paperwork coming across the finish line at least a couple strides ahead of the hospital paperwork. Tuesday afternoon brought many happy returns on that particular bet. Too bad I didn’t spring for the trifecta ticket. They had 220:1 odds on it that day, I could’ve gotten a down payment for a new car. Thought I’d go with the sure thing though.

Anyways, that victory was stopped in its tracks by the response from my new doctor’s office. I’d have to have an appointment in order to have the results read, and their first opening was nearly a week away. I asked if the good doctor was available to take my call and subsequently threw myself on his mercy to get the answers I so desperately needed. For those keeping score at home (please consider other hobbies) it’s been two weeks since my hospital stay that I’ve been having to fight to get a look at my own goddamn test results. I’m pretty sure if our coroners were more honest and didn’t care if they got fired we could truthfully reclassify about half of hospital deaths under the cause of “Obtrusive paperwork”.

When I explained my situation to my-new-doctor-whom-I've-never-met (in far less florid language than I use with you lot, I assure you) he understood and to my desperate plea that he end this interminable suffering by but simply undertaking the effort of flapping his face meats into the communication mechanism before him, he agreed. I didn’t have Lyme Disease, nor any of the other things they tested me for, which included quite a broad array of illicit substances. I’d be offended by the presumption of all the drug tests but I was about to pop some codeine and fly to Denver to go suck down a bunch of weed, so as it was I could barely even see the moral highground from where I was at the time. You win this round, presumptuous hospital admitting nurse! Now if you'll excuse me I have some different "high ground" to get to. (Get it? It's an altitude AND drugs joke. I'm clever! AND SUBTLE! Notice meeeeee!)

For those of you who lost interest or succumbed to inevitable creeping madness somewhere in that tirade, the Sparknotes version is that there was nothing wrong with me, at least not that modern medicine could divine at the level of thoroughness that my modest insurance provided me. Their best guess was a tear in my chest wall muscles. Which would go away if I took it easy for a while, but it was still at least a little distressing that it seemingly came out of nowhere. If I’d done something to hurt myself that’s one thing, but it just kinda happened when I was chilling out over summer break. Oh well, I guess I’ll just quietly stew on the mystery for a while and then die. It only remains to be seen how long “a while” will be and whether me dying will be related to this incident or not. I can’t wait to find out! Turns out it's at least two years, so that's nice.

So yeah, with my newfound anticlimactic and yet still existentially troubling revelation I took to the skies for parts unknown. Upon arrival I got to do battle alongside the legendary Sketch Knight and I was around for a few other get-togethers at Ryoken’s pad as is the usual pattern. It’s a pretty happenin’ place, I’ve found. I also got to head out on the town for Foxtrot, one of those nightclub “furry night” deals. Those are always disorganized, overcrowded mosh pits, but furries are super pro at overcrowded mosh pits, so still fun! And of course I got to drop in for one of Hyenablu’s truly legendary afterparties. Fun nights all around. They’re the sort of events that I really love, but it’s tough to make them sound interesting in a text recreation. I guess the most typifying quote of the night would be my response to whether I'd like to join in on several rounds of whippets. It was a mature and responsible "Uhm, no thanks. I'm gonna go smoke weed, like an adult." Boom. Responsibility! I ended up bitching out and not getting particularly high because I'm still testing the waters here. I've gotten so high that I couldn't sit upright from a single hit before, so I'm operating with a fairly narrow green-zone here and I much prefer the low-end failure mode than the high-end one.

Other than that there's not a great deal to say that has any appreciable dose of narrative fire. It's a phrase that gets overused a little, but you really had to be there. A shot-by-shot recreation of the conversations would be tedious, and a summary isn’t much beyond “Yeah, we hung out and chatted and drank and had snacks and stuff.” Sure it wasn’t balls-to-the-wall action (although I did get a few offers at Foxtrot…) but you need that kinda stuff in your life. Mainly it’s a chance to get to interact with some cool people, of which the furry fandom has many. I really wish I had what it takes to remember all these guys because they’re just great. Especially since at this point a number of them are starting to remember ME, so I feel a little guilty continuing to call them “these guys”. Hopefully I can just blame the time delay for it, which is also my fault now that I think about it, so that doesn’t really get me anywhere. Anyways, I got to see the usual crowd, Nevir, Loomy, ZinWolf, and Ryoken’s new flame Reggie Hycoon. And I made the acquaintance of Ruckus Wolf, Kaida Tiger, and Reynard L during later engagements. So congratulations to them I guess. You’ve got an information half-life in my brain of nearly two years! I don’t know what higher complement I could pay you.

The impression that those parties left has dulled somewhat with time, and as such I do regret not writing it down sooner. A memory that I will surely take with me to my grave though, is my time at Casa Bonita. I was astonished enough simply to find out that the place was real, let alone to actually set foot in it. I assumed that this particular institution had been fabricated for that one episode of South Park. That was the only place I knew the name from, or at the very least I thought that it was some pseudonym or affectionate parody of something that actually exists. I came to find that Casa Bonita is absolutely real and that South Park’s portrayal of it is actually not bombastically insane ENOUGH. In fact, despite having been there I find myself LESS convinced that it's a real place and not some kaleidoscopic fever dream produced by oxygen deprivation and my ham-fisted experimentation with controlled substances.

This bizarre creature was far more complex and baffling than I ever could’ve imagined something shoved into the dirty armpit of a Cold War era strip mall could be, and it was far more of a mindfuck than any of the drugs I did during my stay. Casa Bonita is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a delicious flour tortilla and sprinkled with utter contempt for even the most fundamental physical laws that govern all of existence. I struggle desperately to describe it and dammit I am really good at describing things. The exterior was the sort of “Defunct K-mart spackled over to look like an old Mexican church” aesthetic that I was expecting. 3/4.7 stars at best. Yet my first impression when just literally walking through the door was that this place was a bizarre funhouse where somehow none of the incomprehensible nonsense reaching your eyes is an optical illusion. I think that one of the busboy's gender identities was "optical illusion" but everything else was ostensibly actually there. On Earth. THIS Earth even.

First of all the place was Tardis-level bigger on the inside, and of course also Doctor-Who-level lacking in continuity and constantly pulling nonsensical bullshit out of their asses. Even their line-management setup was crazy and over the top. Railings that looked to have been carved out of old church pews by a team of underpaid dejected street urchins lined the halls in complex patterns that probably looked like a cubist reinterpretation of the Nazca Lines from above. Most of them were set up so that you could skip past them because the crowd that night was apparently spectacularly underwhelming to both the staff and the structure, the latter of which I'm quite certain was also capable of observing and judging us. They had enough space there to put through two whole middle school field trips, or be invaded by Belarus. Perhaps both at the same time if Mrs Henderson’s social studies class and the 33rd airborne were willing to wait in the annex.

I was too disoriented by the negatively curved local spacetime to think too much about food. Honestly I expected that I'd be able to walk up to the counter and order "the usual" and they'd know what that was because I'd been there sometime in the future. I managed to blearily mime something to the cashier and ended up with food that was ostensibly mine at the other end of the quantum tunneling event that conveyed us to the main hall, so I'm calling a success there. A pleasant surprise, really. Usually I end up with terrible food after a volumetric probability wavefunction collapse. The wilderness guide conveying us to our seats moved with disquieting swiftness through the central hub structure, a speed and tenacity surely borne of many years of grueling survival training. You'd have to be quite battle-hardened to keep to your task and not be taken in by the sights and experiences surrounding you.

The main chamber of this expansive keep looked as though they'd taken the Great Hall from Hogwarts and extruded it vertically through an aperture with the footprint of an average Walgreens. All the strange grandeur and time-lost medieval décor was thus squeezed upwards and came to line the walls in row upon row of irregularly shaped trellises that tiered upwards like mountainside terrace farms that grow dining tables instead of rice. Subsequent to all this, whatever power-addled SimCity player was designing the place decided that the vertical integration of all the main dining space would make a perfect opportunity to add a giant waterfall that emptied into a pool on the main deck. I say 'deck' because 'ground floor' presumes that we were still in our dimension of origin, an assertion that I'd lost my confidence in by that point. It should go without saying that the waterfall came with the standard compliment of catacombs and winding lava tubes that traversed the rockface that it cascaded over, with palm trees, tropical sands, rope bridges and the usual bric-a-brac that populates automatically when one spawns a waterfall attraction in the middle of their Mexican restaurant. You know, as one does.

Now then I suppose I shall address the food, as this was, ostensibly, a restaurant. Had the food addressed me back somehow I wouldn't have been terribly surprised. Having lived in New York all my life I'm quite familiar with the dynamic of people from anywhere-closer-to-Mexico being supremely offended at what is referenced as "Mexican food" in the local parlance. I'm pretty sick of hearing about it because Maine and Alaska are pretty much the only places NOT closer to Mexico than we are, so I tend to avoid the subject. I've heard plenty of iterations on "You call this 'good Mexican food'? I don't know which of those three terms you've misused the worst!" Okay, I get it. I'm sorry that our migrant day-laborers are Puerto Rican where I come from and we don't have any different term to describe what Chipotle is. (Chipotle is also, oddly enough, the subject of a far les complimentary South Park episode.) The same thing happens if you mention Panda Express in a place where actual Chinese people live. That's just the reality for me of growing up in a place with more diversity (and headcount) in its livestock than its citizens. (We have cows of ALL colors thankyouverymuch.) Plus it happens all the way across the map. Anyone who's even half a notch higher than you on the Mexican-food-quality/Mexico-physical-proximity scale thinks that what you call Mexican food is no better than instant gravy and Quikrete reconstituted with elk saliva and there's no escaping that dynamic, so I'm not really even going to discuss the quality of the food. Since it's me, you know that having ONLY this 300-word paragraph counts as effectively not discussing it.

Though I will say that it rated pretty high on my Mexican-authenticity-slash-state-of-matter scale, a correlation that I find helpful in quantifying such things. Basically the more "authentic" I'm told that Mexican food is, the further towards the liquid end of the scale it is, and the more difficult it becomes to identify its constituent parts. With this stuff, most everything could be mixed evenly by stirring my fork around, so points for consistency in everything's... consistency. It could be eaten via fork but didn't have the constitution to hold the fork up. So that's pretty liquid and thus, super authentic I guess? Anyways it tasted real good and I put it all away with great satisfaction as we resumed our efforts to plumb the depths of this latest strange spacetime anomaly we'd come across. The hitherto unmentioned fresh-faced Ensign that we brought with us had long since been killed dramatically so we knew that we were getting to the good part.

So yeah, after our meal, and the shows, because some form of dinner theater/sketch comedy/local qualifying diving competition/costumed deathmatch seems to be quietly simmering in the background on the main stage at all times, we decided to venture into the catacombs, because how could we not? Also the main stage is the waterfall and performers occasionally run past you shouting about pirates or whatever. I don't even have that much fidelity on that aspect of the experience because it was somehow the LEAST crazy thing that was going on at the time. Like, a scraggly homeless man in a quiet public library asking if you want a piece of candy in a hoarse wheeze would be pretty creepy, but swap the setting to a blood-stained mental ward that's alight with gunfire in the background and suddenly you barely even notice that dude. It's much the same with Casa Bonita's labyrinthine and apparently non-Euclidean floorplan. When the mere existence of the structure itself is some kind of dent in the basal nature of reality, the guy in a gorilla costume chasing a girl in a bellydancer outfit off a cliff kind of becomes background noise after a bit. Don't worry, she fell in the pool so she was fine. Unless she never existed in the first place, which is a caveat that applies to just about everything I experienced there. I was at all times prepared for a dramatic zoom-out while the Twilight Zone narrator enumerated our strange and quasi-ironic fates.

So yeah, from one of the upper echelons of the table trellises (trellii? Treleses?) we stumbled straight into a video arcade, confirming my theory that the local spacetime flux caused certain portions of the structure to exist in different time periods. None of us much fancied the opportunity to blow a couple pounds of quarters trying to beat "ASS"s high score on Donkey Kong Junior, so we proceeded through the arcade to emerge in the like... downtown area, I guess? It's really hard to describe the shape or purpose of anything because I have no references for what the different areas consisted of or even a general concept of their shape. The area was laid out more like a World of Warcraft dungeon than a restaurant, and these interstitial transit areas looked like an indoor version of a chintzy state fair designed by Dr. Seuss that moonlighted as a highly festive fallout shelter. Somehow the different levels of the structure stayed up despite none of them really agreeing on a single vertical plane to exist on. Many of the levels just kind of sloped gradually into one another in the many grand causeways in front and secret passages in the back, such that it was easy to lose track of your exact elevation relative to your starting point. I'm convinced that we reached the edge of the map and wrapped around at one point, because I have no other explanation for the shape of the circuit we made. In no way did the total displacement of our path integral form a closed loop unless there was substantial clipping at the edge of this pocket dimension.

Despite the lion's share of the trip being dedicated to exploration and getting repeatedly lost, I don't think we saw half of that place. There was always more to discover, even if all you were discovering in that direction were MORE huge dining halls. Suddenly the huge-capacity line management glyphs that were traced out in the entryway made a bit more sense. They could feed a platoon in here. That platoon would need huge combat logistics coverage so that they didn't lose anybody, but they would be well accommodated. Little shops and attractions dotted the landscape as we journeyed past all the other temporally-displaced artifacts that littered the timeways. I found a giant old radio at the end of one hallway that I of course flicked the switch on, figuring that at the very least some kind of secret passage would open. The silence confirmed that it was just for decoration, as one would've reasonably expected. Then the ensuing roar of static reminded you to check reasonable expectations at the door because the gap was merely a delay for the vacuum tubes to warm up. That or the damn thing was haunted. I didn't stick around to figure out which. I don't know how many old supermarkets had disgorged their stock of gumball machines and other coin-operated viscera here, but it had to be at least a decade's worth. There was even one of the mechanical horses that bobs back and forth if you put a quarter in it. That one later went on to become famous in a fun sort of way. We wandered through a souvenir kiosk that went back far enough that we got separated, but we met up again at the haunted cave and went through there back to the saloon. It sounds like I had a dissociative episode in the middle of typing that sentence but that was a sequence of events that totally happened in exactly that way.

When closing time was on the horizon and all of us were exhausted from exploring, we resolved to make for the exit. A scant 40 or 50 minutes later we were out of there. We had to take a brief pause for the necessary quantum translation events such that we were no longer moving at an oblique angle with respect to earth's native spatial dimensions and we were on our way. I'd say that I'll never forget my time at Casa Bonita, but I'm not sure of that. I'm not sure of anything anymore. It's likely my brain does not function the same way after leaving as it did when I entered. In a way I may have experienced that matter-transporter death conundrum in that one cannot be truly reconstituted from your constituent molecular pattern without necessitating the destruction of the original image. But, in all, it was certainly a mystery worth investigating. Even if most of what one discovers in there is naught but the madness that has quietly seethed deep within you all along.

Well, at this point I've completed the mission that I set out to with this journal, and relayed to the people who are attempting to assemble my psychological profile after I hijacked that Soyuz craft some insight into what drove me to forsake this ruined, treacherous rock for the cold embrace of endless oblivion in the stars. So I guess this is the part where I keep pushing buttons on my keyboard and see where this momentum takes me. Sounds like an awesome plan. Let's get this trainwreck a rollin'! So the next adventure after the Restaurant at the End of the Universe and attached Boundless Caverns of Time was our foray into the much more solid and less quantumly unstable Wailing Caverns. It's a national park founded around the eponymous cave system that I think I never paid back my admission for. Oh shit have I owed Ryoken $25 for the last two years? Fuck, this is why I need to write things down in real time!

Anyways, normally an undertaking such as this would've been rather exceptional, as one doesn't often get an opportunity for amateur spelunking in like manner. But honestly being cast down into the unceasing dark void of the earth was rather tame compared to the wormhole that we'd been pulled through on our last outing. And honestly that somewhat reset the meter and brought it right back to exceptional again. The place was very notable in its simplicity. You wanna walk through caves? Have at thee! Our guide regaled us with a lot of historical trivia about how the discovery of the cave made rich, and then utterly ruined the explorer who came upon it, as so many great discoveries do. And then ghost stories and the like, but mostly we just walked through the place and appreciated what a singular experience it is to be so deep down in a natural, unspoiled place like this. The quiet and darkness of the cave was a very dramatic contrast to my journey thus far. I'd liken it to going on six roller coasters in a row and then dropping straight into a sensory deprivation tank. Like, that's such a dramatic hard reset that I had to short the CMOS jumper on my brain to get it started again. I think its MAC address is still reading 00:00:00:00:00:00. Oh well, I set the date and made sure that the BIOS was still set to send a start signal to the cooling fans so it'll probably be fine.

While it was tempting to just do the old bit of startling people while the ghost stories were being told, I found it even more fun to undercut them with punchlines.

"The ghost usually does little things. Minor, unexplained disruptions. Knocking over things, making little rattling noises, snuffing out candles..."
"Leaving the coffee pot empty, claiming tour guides as dependents on its taxes..."

"The depths of criminal depravity that he sunk to in here have likely never been equaled on the surface."
"He later served four terms as governor of New Jersey."

"Terrified, she ran all the way out of the caverns and stumbled into the gift shop-"
"Where she remains to this day."

A lot of those got pretty solid laughs from those assembled. I felt accomplished. It's a little tough to lighten the mood when you're cloaked in pitch darkness underneath thousands of tons of rock. It was a good trip. Altogether I'd rank it among the best places to be buried alive.

So yeah. The con, then! Just in case any of you had forgotten what I was writing about this in the interim. I know I certainly did! Honestly it doesn't stand out that much to me after all I had to go through to get there, but I'll give it a go. This particular year's con may not be the most emblematic of that region's events, but it's still worth talking about a bit. I say that because this year we were at a different venue due to renovations. It's always interesting seeing a new venue react to a furry con. "Interesting" in both the gift and curse sense of the word. Places are just never prepared for us in so many different ways. I scraped an exit sign with my head in the hall and I didn't even have horns or giant ears or anything. Apparently I can see the future because I foresaw that being a bit of a problem and by the end of the con it had been knocked clean off its mount. So there was a lot of that kind of adjustment for the place that occasionally hampered things. This time around was also not particularly typical because this was the last year before the con had to be hard-reset in order to put down a fascist insurrection among its ranks. Now I know that sounds drab, but this was 2016. Fascist insurrections were quite rare back then if you can believe that. Regardless, that was all in the future. Or it was going to be in the future. It's your past now, but it was that version of me's future containing things that will have had already happened by the time you read this. Sorry. Lingering temporal distortions.

A small slice of time at the opening was actually used by me typing on my laptop in the lobby to finish my Anthrocon 2016 report, because at the time I still insisted upon finishing it before embarking on the next con. This was of course, the start of my great tapestry's unraveling. It was also an unusual year in that I'd elected not to bring my fursuit. Part of that was what an expensive pain it is flying with one, but I also had the consideration of the literal pain from my mystery wound in my chest, and my ongoing sickness. There was actually sort of a dip in the middle on that front. At the end of the con someone asked me if I'd come in with that cough. I responded as truthfully as I could "Nope, I came in with a different cough. But you know, shit happens." I'd tried to tell myself that lacking a suit wasn't a big deal and that I'd previously had fun at cons, this con even, without one. Its absence did still sting a bit though. Plenty of gaps cropped up wherein fursuiting would've fit in pretty well and probably been good times. Ah well, I dug that hole, I may as well sit in it because hole-sitting is a good low-strain activity for when you're injured and going through a key illness transition to a fresh new bacterium. Plus if I die down in here from all of that stuff they can just throw some dirt over me and be done with it. It's like killing yourself in a bathtub. Death is all about convenience these days!

I led with the Housepets panel, led by the guy who made that thing. It was a delightful little exploration of the unique kind of fame that the internet age has brought about. Wherein one finds someone who is popularly considered to be quite a success in his chosen field walk up in front of a group of his adoring fans and just say "Wow, people actually showed up. I was not expecting that." That humility is a beautiful and charming thing that just doesn't seem to hold up under the pressures and cocaine-addled hedonistic adulation benders that real fame appears to consist of, and I say that as someone with very few accomplishments to justify the extremely high opinion that I have of myself. In any case, that panel went really well for something that started with "Okay uh, let's talk about the thing I guess."

After that I got to have a chance to hit up my cellmates for this excursion. By this time I'd visited Denver on enough occasions to have an extensive network of underground contacts with which to secure lodging. Or maybe I just had Ryoken hit up some of his bros or something. I don't remember that well so I tend to just assume that it was the more cinematic one, as I do with most such moments of indecision. I had a good crew this time around, and having failed to acknowledge them was one of the things that motivated me to actually write this stupid thing at long last. So without further grandstanding to stall for time, I'll present to you my years-old first impressions of some people I've never seen since then. I'm sure they'll be thrilled. We've got Ejit the super cute bat, Lumas the freaky spiderdog, Apari the dog who had some dope-ass vinyl decals that he kindly shared with me, and Fictive Fox who... also exists in my memory in some way connected to these other folks. Anyways, we had a good dynamic there in that room, and I'm not just saying that because I got free leftover pizza basically every time I saw them, though I'm sure that helped. If that was a subtle conditioning mechanism to trick me into forming positive associations with you guys then bravo! Really, this was a period wherein this whole pattern of "throw in with a huge group of randos and instantly act like you're all best friends" was really starting to come naturally to me, and they were great sports about me plying my trade. I do hope to see all of them again and God willing I'll be coming back to this record such that I can track all you lovable critters down! In a like... friendly non-predatory sort of way. Unless you're into that, I ain't gonna judge.

Many of the usual con things happened. A fursuit parade, fursuit dance comp, fursuit charades, fursuit games. Naturally those probably would've been a bit more memorable if I'd had a fursuit but I've specifically called people out for feeling despair at experiencing the consequences of their decisions so I'm not gonna dwell on that bit for a second longer. 'The Amazing Pickles' was indeed pretty amazing with his truly unique comedy magic act. It kind of mirrors this con journal in a way. I've got a lot less content than usual thanks to this critically flawed stringy jelly computer in my head I'm using to bring up all this detail, so I've gotta play up the performance aspects of it in order to stay entertaining. That's basically Pickles' style as well. Delivered by someone with less stage presence who wasn't obviously having the time of their lives with it, this content would've been supremely boring, but he made a laugh riot out of it just because he believed in it, and made us believe in it to. "Pickles" is far to common of a name for me to successfully dig up a link for ya but who and where ever you are, top notch work to you! I went again to the performances and improv workshops of 'the Unmentionables' and was asked AGAIN if I'd like to join them. So apparently SOMEbody appreciates my sense of humor, MOM. I guess I'll just add that to the list of things pulling me towards this strange and magical kingdom in the sky. Or as Loomy says basically every time he sees me "So when are you moving to Colorado?"

I got invited to a party for Mavi, at which I'm honestly not certain whether or not Mavi ever appeared. That certainly does describe a furry gathering though. Plans made by and of furries tend to be more like general guidelines than law. We gathered, hung around for a bit, walked to a different hotel, found people, lost people, went for a spin in a hot tub, drank a bit in someone's room, all the while wondering where in the hell Mavi is. Ah well, such is life. You can't always succeed, but you can at the very least have interesting failures. Freefox's 'Free Can Cook' was once again an informative and delicious show, during which I learned a few neat tricks about pan-frying that I may not have survived college without. Other people who existed, probably, include Paintless Dog, someone called 'Pocket Monster' whose name is completely unsearchable for obvious reasons, and 'Fri Ri Jackal' whose name is unsearchable because that's probably not how it's spelled. Good job to those people for whatever it is they do.

Towards the end Srice the Deer got some QT with me and fulfilled the all-important requisite of giving me a place to put my stuff on the last day when I had to check out of my room but wasn't leaving yet. Always a contentious moment, that. You'd think he would be a little more searchable than some of the others but actually has a pretty spotty net presence. Here's my best guess for him. And that's really all I've got for the con. Phew, I'm glad the other stuff was so interesting because this is the quickest rundown of a con I've ever done. Maybe that'll make the other reports a little easier because they didn't have quite so many interesting ancillary activities. That ought to help me get over the tiny spastic episode that I just had looking it up and realizing that I've got SIX more conventions to talk about if I want to do this thing properly. Here's hoping that the time-based information-density ramp-up doesn't totally kill me by the end of that.

Oh also I did a weed before I left because I knew I'd have a job that forbid it again very soon and hey, when in Rome... light one up for Nero or whatever I don't know. Also also it was because they had edibles, which I've always wanted to try. I'm still on the fence about how my brain feels regarding weed, but my lungs definitely disapprove. That makes edibles a good fit, and I'd had their chief pitfall explained to me MANY times by MANY people, very few of whom I'd even requested that information from. Most every edibles story I've heard follows a similar five-act structure, that is to say:

1. Not high 2. Not high 3. Still not high 4. Not high 5. Oh fuck take me to a hospital.

The drug permeates your system very slowly by this vector is what they're saying. It takes easily an hour to start to feel anything, and by no means is that the last thing you'll feel from an average dose. So using weed in this way and not way overdoing it when you don't get instant gratification is something that requires patience, discipline and good impulse control. That's rather a lot to ask of stoners, so tales of folly are quite common. Here's one spot where I actually won't go into a ton of detail because I find people talking at length about being high to be insufferable at the best of times so I'm not about to be the one subjecting everyone to it.

I will say though that when I looked on the coffee table the next day there was a dosage report that was listed to the minute and to the milligram for the whole day. So not only did I stick to a starkly conservative dosing plan even while pretty baked, I actually wrote it all down in perfectly understandable metrics. There were also a LOT of doses on there. I ate a fair bit more than I'd planned to and probably more than is prudent. That's my guess anyways, I don't know my illicit-drug-based social conventions very well. That particular mis-step was a bit of a surprise to me. It's as though some unfamiliar element interfered with my decision-making process in some way during that period. Mystery, that. I guess I'll put down "you left me alone with the weed and I very slowly ate it all" as the obligatory disaster that always seems to happen when Ryoken leaves me in his house unsupervised for too long. I don't think I ever paid him for any of it either. Good God I am such a terrible guest, why do these people keep putting up with me? Hm, that sums it up pretty nicely actually. I could title half my con reports that.

Anyways, it seemed that the world needed to maintain balance or whatever, so I figured that I had to counter the powerful narcotics that I flew in on by being high on the flight home. It's only fair. And there you have it folks. All this stuff is what I found memorable about my most recent adventure into the Rocky Mountains, thus confirming how physically incapable I am of tamping down my word count. I mean, I didn't need more evidence of that but would you LOOK at this thing? There's like hardly any information in here and I nearly overran FA's word cap again! Oh well. It's good to be right even if you're right about something that infuriates you. Until next time, folks. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Alright, things have been complicated in the interim, so a whole bunch of cons have happened without benefit of a stenographer tapping away diligently in the corner. Honestly the slippery slope is pretty easy to get really far down before you realize what's going on. The next con happens before you write up one, and you figure you should record in chronological order so you've gotta do this one before that one and the queue keeps piling up so starting that one seems like an ever more intimidating task, so of course all the stuff you usually do goes by the wayside, including all the important little auxiliaries like making contact with all the people that I've met to keep up with them. I hadn't realized what a big part of my convention experience I'd made all this recording stuff out to be until I was a half-dozen cons behind and I was contemplating junking it altogether. It's still a tough call to make, honestly. I mean, it's been long enough that leaving the void-cons completely dark is a pretty tempting option. I've lost so much of the detail and nuance of them that making an account of them be at all compelling would be very difficult. I'm not sure I'd be happy with the final product. And of course the socializing stuff would fall flat in equal measure at this point. Poking a bunch of people to say "Hey, remember me from like a year and a half ago? No? Well can't blame ya I guess bye!" would hardly be a good use of my time.

All this is certainly not helped by the weird neuroses that I have when something important and ongoing looms over me. For a long time I've had this pattern wherein I'd tell myself that I'm not allowed to do something that I like until I do something I need to do that I've been putting off. For that incentive I'd usually choose writing, because it's something that I love, and something that tends to draw upon the same resource pool as the important work stuff that I have to get done. Since it's still a bunch of critical thinking and typing on a computer, I definitely shouldn't burn up all my writing juice on fun stuff when there's work to be done. That was a great motivator for me for many years.

That all kind of broke down in college though. Not only did many of my "supposed to do this" stuff become nebulous and extremely long-term, the short-term stuff like assignments and research papers also had huge writing juice costs. As a result, I did almost no significant fun writing in college, a time that I'd always assumed would be prodigiously filled with such things. I got out of the habit of it, and only came to realize that towards the end of my job search in 2017, a pursuit that consumed nearly all of that year. Now that I've got this new job and things are actually steadying out for me, I've realized that I've finally DONE THE THING, and I can put an end to these four long years of punishing myself. I know some people are into habitually punishing themselves, but if I haven't developed a taste for it by now then I suppose this would be a good time to hop off that hypetrain.

A conversation with ToraKiyoshi really cemented my present plan for me. When I relayed the details to him, he said basically "Probably better to skip the reports you haven't done. You'll have lost too much detail by now, but I have GOT to know how your trip to Casa Bonita went." I can dig that. That's absolutely a story that deserves to be told. So that's where I'm at right now. I'm going to type that one up, and then see where that momentum takes me. In all likelihood I'll do at least a brief rundown of all the shadowy, half-remembered voidcons, but really, there would be diminishing returns on digging into those too far. I just don't want to have that gaping hole staring me in the face every time I come back to this record, if I do decide to resume my routine of obsessively carving into stone every instant of every con I go to.

It really is best to do it now, as I'm sure to only lose more information with time. God willing, these things will pare down a little bit in general, just by virtue of me going to so many cons that they start to become routine to me, and there's not this explosion of flailing madness that I have to get down every time. At FC, a caravan of billboard-bearing station wagons drove by blaring a siren with a dude screaming out the window into a megaphone about what a good deal I could get on a new sofa this weekend and that event got like, a polite nod of acknowledgement from all those assembled. Nobody was really phased because it was like the fourth-weirdest thing that had happened that morning. Kind of the dreary sort of day where you only do one or two impossible things before breakfast. I'm getting ahead of myself though.

I guess the point I'm making is that cons are just a thing that I do now, and all the weirdness and bombastic insanity have just become so much a part of me that they don't stand out in the way that they once did. I weep for the loss of that sense of wonderment, but if it'll be enough of a simplifying force to keep these con reports going, I'm all for it. These have been wonderful records for me to have, even if only a scant few have read them. It's coming up more and more often of late that people I see bi-annually-ish will wonder precisely what our history is together. It's very convenient to be able to say "well let's go to the tape." I think it plays into my persona of being the straight man to the whole fandom's slapstick routine. It's also a really good journal for just like, me as a person. Even going back just a few years I see the differences in myself. These are basically time capsules of the person that I was so long ago. I'm sure such things will only become more valuable with time.

So, soon here follows, an experiment. One that, like many experiments, may explode catastrophically, or revolutionize life as we know it. The only way to know for sure is to pour some of this fizzy green stuff onto this thingy in here and swirl it around a bit.

Wow, having a civilian job is great. This is like four straight years worth of tough decisions being validated right now. I'm really hype about how good the health coverage is at my new job, which I realize is basically saying "I like this job because if I get sick they won't just cut their losses and let me die." Which is somehow a thing you don't see much of anymore.

Anyways, what makes me appreciative these days is that I recently asked for some time off both for New Years and for FC, fully expecting them to blow one or both back in my face, as has always been customary. They approved both immediately and without incident. That's amazing, but as I'd long presumed failure and only recently had the temerity to ask, I haven't really planned this out and I'm left without a place to sleep. Naturally the place has been booked solid for months and everybody's already got their arrangements made. I REALLY don't want to buy plane tickets without securing a shelter first, but of course those tickets become more expensive by the minute and... bguh. So yeah, if you have any leads on space let me know. It would be really cool if this could actually work. A lot of my bay-area friends have started to reference my FC trips as an "annual tradition", and I guess with three consecutive such trips under my belt now, they're not exactly wrong!

I just started a new job on Monday. That offer came out of nowhere and I had like a week to find and move into a place so I'm catastrophically exploding inwardly right now, but I bought tickets and booked rooms and apparently eight million people are going to be there so I will at the very least drop by over the weekend and say hey. If I make it there alive I hope to see you. And if I don't I'll haunt the SHIT out of that place.

I wasn't considering this until very recently because I want to save major expenses for when I have a job, or at least a pretty firm prospect, but this was too good an opportunity to ignore. There's a nuclear careers information session with Dominion Energy in Norfolk on August 23rd. A bit of a drive, but I can't very well say I have a lot of demands on my time. Would be a shame just to go to the session and then head back, so I'm going to stick around for the weekend and go to FAU. It's on the way and it happens at the right time, so for once I think this will actually work. It's a bittersweet realization that I've never been to this one before because it was usually up against RMFC, and now that's no longer a problem. Still, a heck of an opportunity fell into my lap just now, and I'll be damned if I'm going to ignore it! Hopefully I'll see some of you guys there.

Just a quick note to say I'll be at the thing. It feels like a cop-out to just say I'll be doing "the usual Anthrocon things", but for real, this will be my SIXTH Anthrocon. I've done enough of them that I now actually HAVE usual Anthrocon things! So yeah, hit me up on telegram if you want to be part of one of my AC things, or want to add a new one to my list!

I'll be staying at the Omni with  lanhao and I'll be around for awhile. Wednesday to Monday or so. I'll have Blackjack with me. Omni might be a pain for suiting, but I'm sure I'll find a chance to show him off. See you guys there!

Hey guys, just a quick note to say that I'll be staffing FurtheMore this upcoming weekend. I may not have a lot of time to hang out or whatevs because I'll have a lot of work to do, but I'll definitely be there and you'll probably see me in many places. We're still not sure what department I work for, so I bounce around quite a bit. As to finding me, my personal deets haven't changed much from my numerous other con maymays. I'll be rooming with nunavuttuktu and some of his broskies.

My con badge name is always the same as my FA, and my personal badge looks like this: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14031890/
I may even have the chance to wear Blackjack if I get a spare moment. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21317999/

Otherwise just look for the tall, skinny, bespectacled blond kid with the ridiculous hobo beard that I've grown since getting out of college. Hope to see you guys there!

Hey guys. Heh, you know it occurs to me now that I've never made a journal that addresses my watchers in a familiar and conversational sort of way, and that may have contributed to the problem I'm having. You see, I've been getting into a few hypnosis groups on Telegram, and I've been quite pleasantly surprised to find that I have some fans there. That was something that I didn't really expect to find. I don't really do what I do for fame or accolades. I write and share my stories because I enjoy writing, and because sharing it can make people happy. I know that writers don't get nearly the attention that artists do, and I felt like I'd made my peace with that long ago. The thing that gets to me is that when I tell my friends about this recent surprise find they all act like I should've known this already. "Well of course you've got lots of fans out there. You've got 600 watchers, closing in on 20,000 page views. There's obviously some people interested in you!" Yeah, it sounds pretty compelling when phrased like that. I guess I just put more emotional weight on other kinds of feedback. When it takes a great story that I worked very hard on three months to accrue 20 favorites, and a couple comments from six people, four of whom were friends of mine, that lends itself very nicely to the perception that my content is just being quietly ignored. Sure that's been kind of a contributing factor to the way my output has fallen off sharply in recent years, but again, I was cool with that.

When I inquired further as to why I might be popular but in some sort of... secret way, where nobody ever says anything about my work unless asked, I got some more answers that struck me as a bit plausible. "People think you're SO popular that you'd be too busy dealing with all the attention you get to bother with them. They don’t want to waste your time." Seems reasonable, I guess. For people who don't know me well anyways. When I first met archai at Rainfurrest he was surprised that I would hang out with him at all, let alone gladly accept his invitation to dinner. Even though we went on to become good friends, his initial thought was "Well, he probably won't have time to waste on someone like me. He's a talented writer! He must have better things to do." I definitely know people who are like that. Through no fault of their own, mind you. They have to sort through dozens of notes a day so anything that's not business or a friend has a good chance of being overlooked, or they just disregard notes entirely because it's too much of a hassle. I definitely understand that if I was looking at having to sift through 40 notes in my inbox every day that would be an untenable amount of work. There's just not enough time for that. I can't imagine what it would be like to have thousands of people clamoring for your attention all the time, so I guess I understand where that perception comes from.

Let me assure you guys that this is not the case for me. Meeting Archai was very exciting for me, mainly because I was approached by him. I’d been writing for three years, and in the fandom for easily twice that at the time, yet Archai was the first person ever to recognize me, unprompted, by badge and name alone. That has yet to happen since that time. Being bowled over by a tidal wave of attention is the opposite of my problem. I respond to every Watch, Fave, Note, and Comment that appears in my notifications and it takes me very little time to do so. For me it's a joy, not a burden. I like to look up the people that enjoy my work, to explore our common interests a little. I gladly spend the extra time on that sort of thing. Even when I look through their profiles and try to personalize my "thanks for the watch" shouts for people, and write very comprehensive responses to any verbal feedback I get, there's just not that much of it for me to respond to. It's not unusual for me to go days or a week at a stretch without a single one of any of those four notifications coming up. I am FAR from overwhelmed. In fact quite the opposite. A lot of the time I feel lonely around here. So if you think I don't have time even to just say hey to you and acknowledge your interest, that responding to your feedback would be a burden to me, you are quite wrong. I'd LOVE to hear from you. Each and every one of you. It brings me tremendous joy to hear that my works have touched people and made them happy. Don't think for a second that you're not worth my time, please! I can't promise that we'll become good buddies and talk long into the night about our innermost secrets, but your words will mean the world to me, and I will absolutely let you know that.

The other thing I've heard is "People are intimidated by your skill. You have very developed writing style and you write so well that people who aren't also writers feel like their feedback wouldn't be good enough for you." I guess if I turn the tables I can identify with that one as well. If ever I’ve held a tablet pen I immediately put it back down for fear of wasting its potential. And for a long time I felt weird about leaving feedback for artists because I didn’t understand the mechanics of their craft. I can accept that it's a perception that's out there. Lots of people say that they don't want critique because it hurts to have the faults pointed out in your work, or that they don't want murry sexy comments about their content because that makes them uncomfortable, or that they don't want comments at all because they just can't be arsed. So let me put that to rest. I have the ilovecritique and creepycommentswelcome icons up on my page for exactly this reason. I know that some people might be worried that I don't want to see their particular kind of feedback, but I'm here to tell you that I want ALL kinds of feedback! Good, bad, indifferent, informed, ignorant, poor grasp of English, whatever you've got going on. In fact if anyone knows any other groups whose mission statement is basically "No it's totally cool I gladly accept comments of this type!" then let me know and I'll add their icons to my userpage. The only thing I really don't want to see is like... flaming, shitposting, or personal attacks against me and other people. And really, the kind of people who do that wouldn't stop just because I said I don't like it.

So yeah, let's say no restrictions! I love to hear that you thought my story was hot and that you got off to it or fantasized about it, that's why I write porn! I love to hear what people struggled with or what they think would improve things. I experiment with my writing a lot, and hearing from you guys is the only way to know if my experiments are working! I may not go back and re-write a story based on your input, because in that way lies madness, but your opinions absolutely will shape the direction that I go in with future work. You don't have to be a writer to tell me how a story made you feel, or point out a part you thought was confusing, or accuse me of species favoritism, or anything! The fact that you read my story is all that it takes for your comments to be meaningful to me. I'm here for you guys, the readers. You don't have to create content of ANY sort to read something and tell me about how it made you feel. Even the posts that are just like "Hey, good job!" or "Fuck yeah, I came." are fine by me. Simply the idea that someone out there took the extra five seconds to press ten keys to say a couple nice words makes a huge difference to me. That's why I think that sammypanther is a glorious gift to the world. She's out there every day putting in that same tiny but tremendously meaningful effort for thousands of people. Just a tiny little ping to say "Hey, you did a thing. It was good. Keep doing more things!" Don’t worry so much about how you might be received, guys. It’s okay! I've always thought that it was just the length of my stories that put people off of them, not the idea that I might be hostile to commenters. It's so strange to me to think that people could happily take all the time to read through 40,000 words and then suddenly have reservations about typing like 10 or 12 of them at the end.

That's really what I'm getting at here. I could handle a flurry of attention, or just being a relative unknown. But I can't abide by this situation that is apparently rather common, or so this evidence leads me to believe. I'd really hate to think that there are many people out there who love and follow my content, but are afraid to say so. Please, if there are any of you out there who have found some excuse in the past to not say anything to me, do come forward. It doesn't even have to be publicly. Notes or Telegram, or whatever you want to use are also fine. And for those reading this who don't have that problem, but are maybe more familiar with it than I am, what do you think I should do? The idea that I'm seen as aloof and unapproachable really bothers me, and I'd like to do what I can to show that I love to reach out to people, and really wish they would extend me the same courtesy. I am, as always, open to any of your comments and suggestions.

Okay, so I've taken down my most recently posted image. It was a gift from a well-meaning but scatterbrained friend who couldn't remember who drew it. As such I couldn't credit the artist, or the owner of the other character involved. Seeing no other solution, I used posting the art as a chance to crowd-source my search for that information. Thanks to some clever sleuthing on the part of my watchers, I came to find the owner of the other character in the image, and learned that it was NOT authorized to be used in that way. The image is gone now and you're not going to be seeing it again.

I'm sorry for having caused a disruption. I was excited to get my gift posted on Christmas day and I didn't afford the due diligence that I usually do to the use of other peoples' intellectual property. I'm not posting the names of anyone involved because I'm not here to sling mud. I ask that anyone who knows these details keep silent about it as well. I'm just posting this so that people who saw the image know what happened to it. I really shouldn't let this kind of nonsense happen and in the future I certainly won't. Thank you guys for your consideration and understanding.

Well the next con is here and I still haven't finished my report from the last one. That seems to be how these things go now. Things in my life seem to get complicated far faster than I can uncomplicate them. Before I let myself dwell too long on the rather worrying implications of that, I thought I'd announce that I'll be at the thing this Halloweekend. It's actually somewhat close to my college, so I'll be able to swing all three days even with class in the morning on Friday. I'll be rooming with  spunkyshep ! Missed my chance at rooming in the main hotel, but I'll make it work. Hope to see lots of you folks there!

While I was being lazy and procrastinating on writing this, I found myself wondering what it would take for me to finally get my shit together and actually DO the con report. Apparently that thing was flying to Denver for RMFC. I’d really hate for these things to start piling up, so yeah, let’s talk Anthrocon real quick. I got a text from Archai on Wednesday asking when I was going to arrive at the con. I was already there at the time, so I guess you could say I was pretty excited about this one. This was my first time ever arriving so early, but if there were a con wherein I could actually make just hanging out and socializing for a couple entire days work, this would be it. AC has always been my home con even though it’s a substantial drive away, mainly because it has my people. Most other cons it’s tough to find people I know, but at this one I can’t stop tripping over people I know and it’s awesome. To that end, I bumped into Kurodod in the lobby and let him know that his art is sweg as all hell. We chatted for a bit and he gave me a business card with a sexy Vaporeon booty on it so I’m calling that time well spent. While I was in the lobby waiting on getting access to the room I got to spend some time with Kelix and his crew, who had gathered there for nefarious purposes that I did not inquire as to the nature of. Never met any of those guys before but they were nice and I had to admit that Kelix had quite a fetching bright crimson, highly snuggleable fox suit, so that worked out well. I ended up bouncing about a bit with those guys to fill time. Kelix was getting overheated right about the time I actually did get into my room, which was convenient since the headless lounge wasn’t set up yet, leaving him in a bit of a bind. I invited him to de-suit and chill a bit in my room and he gratefully accepted. I wouldn’t necessarily advise inviting guys you just met to come up to your hotel room and undress, but hey it’s a furry con. I’ve gotta live a little.

Archai over the phone had taken a sudden and rather notable interest in how I’d gotten to the convention. Being that he was flying in at the time I plied my deductive reasoning talents and asked if he’d like me to pick him up at the airport. And so began my next exciting adventure. For those of you thinking that a trip to the airport hardly qualifies as an adventure well, you severely underestimate my ability to complicate things. There was a lot of communications traffic in the course of this because Archai’s three roommates had all dropped out on him and he was looking for ways to fill the room back up. I was one such means of doing so, occupying space being a valuable part of my core skillset, but the other spots were a bit more of a challenge. We’d managed to get in touch with someone on the Twitters who was looking for both a ride and a room. So after I’d spent 20 minutes looking for the cell phone lot, picked up Archai and then spent an additional 30 minutes looking for the cell phone lot AGAIN, (Pittsburgh airport is not laid out very well is what I’m saying) we came to find that our prospective guest had actually found both of those things while we were dicking around in this maze of concrete barricades that they claim are roads. So yeah, furries still hard at work coming up with ways for me to burn up extra time on my early day. Good onya mate!

Little did I know that the baffling maze of concrete barriers had only just begun, as on our way back we found that some form of nuclear holocaust had obliterated the southbound lane of the highway. At least that’s the only explanation that I could come up with for essentially all of it between the airport and hotel being closed. We quickly lost the detour path; by quickly I mean ‘after 8 or 10 miles’ because just SO much of this road was fucked you guys. Naturally we still weren’t far enough from the stricken highway for my GPS to stop stupidly directing us back to it. Archai decided to show me up by firing up his fancy pocket supercomputer and use the Waze app, which was apparently far more responsive to traffic and closures. He queued up our destination in order for it to… stupidly direct us back to the highway by a different route. We eventually did accidentally come across the detour again and paid EXTREMELY close attention to its clumsy and confusing routing through tiny surface streets pretty much all the way back into downtown. It was easier because by then enough traffic had been diverted that the whole route was just a slow, bewildered caravan of people trying to wedge all their cars through places they had no business going. So it really just became a matter of following all the other lost huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Though that might be the wrong city. Anyways, we made it back, ostensibly alive, but by then it was what the fuck O’clock in the morning so bed was the only realistic option. I had to chill for a bit because I was too frustrated with the three-hour trip to the airport to properly sleep, but in time I managed to wrestle my demons into submission for a night of rest.

Starting early with the con tradition of waking up at about lunchtime, I managed to come across Gray Muzzle for a bit of food to start the day. Honestly a big chunk of Thursday was spent on coordination. I’ve learned many times over that having everyone ever forever attend Anthrocon is a double-edged sword. Sure people are more likely to be there, but they’re extremely easy to miss in the crowd. Plus they’re likely to be busy because ALL the things are happening in addition to ALL the people being around. That means a lot of legwork in actually finding yourself in the presence of people that you’re looking for. I came across Danruk Rooface in the zoo wherein he and his friends taught me to play cribbage because they wanted to test just how much of their nonsense I would put up with I guess. It was an interesting game, hampered by a lot of bafflingly arbitrary rules but definitely playable. That and some more zoo shenanigans got me into the evening hours, wherein Archai said I ought to stop by his way for some gyros. I met Velux there, a gryphon friend of Archai’s and a member of the indomitable “Oh yeah I recognize you from all the weird fetish porn in my inbox” club. He’s tremendously flattered to hear that I’m sure.

Having the luxury of doing so, I decided to close out the night by throwing on my suit. Out on the street mingling with whoever is nearby (his natural environment) I found Zarafa, the incomparable purple giraffe who greatly enjoys my company and yet seems quite committed to temporarily forgetting who I am every time I meet him. I suppose I can’t blame him overmuch. He’s getting on in years and appears to spend half his life up to his armpits in skinny twinks. So I guess I can understand my not standing out in the crowd. He was quick to introduce me to Scotty Minotaur, whom I’d always known as Raptor Jesus, and Fibre Kitty, one of the most energetic and engaging suiters I’ve ever met. Fibre was a particular recommendation to me on Zarafa’s part, as apparently his hugs rival mine in strength and enthusiasm. I wasn’t about to let such a challenge stand, and in doing so I came to find that he was in fact quite skilled at the embracing arts. I saw him on a number of other occasions and I like to think that a mutual respect developed between us, both recognizing the other’s skill and dedication. It was a joy to walk the streets with them. Something about being in a group seems to make us more approachable. We got TONS of folks who wanted pictures and to talk about just what the hell we were doing. That was really fun. I underestimated how much community relations one can do whilst suiting, so I’ll have to keep that in mind in the future. Even at night, all the heat and activity outdoors wore on me quickly, so I soon turned in.

Friday opened with, oddly enough, opening ceremonies, before they turned us all loose once again on the unsuspecting convention hall. I went to Quipfur next, out of no actual interest in the event, really. Quiplash is a decent game, but really I went because I knew that was a solid chance for me to meet Serathin. He’s one of my favorite writers and has been for years. He was hosting at the event, in fursuit no less, and he actually made it a lot of fun. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him then or at any other time, now that I think about it. I really regretted that I never managed to come in contact with him when he was free to hang out for a bit. He was always in suit and ALWAYS had something to do. Ah well, that’s a challenge for another time I suppose. My attendance at Quipfur also provided a chance for Unstableimagination to catch up with me. My description of “the guy in the back who is the only loser playing this game on a laptop instead of a smartphone” was apparently sufficient to lead him to me. That was a great opportunity too, because not only had I been following his art for years, HE was a fan of MY work. A revelation to which I responded with a demure and composed “AWGUBRAWRAAAAAGH!” That’s a rare and exciting event, is what I’m saying. Fortune smiled on me as we were wandering the lobby later and I came across Williamca, a prolific commissioner that I follow. I got to not only say hi to him, but introduce Unstable Imagination as “one of my fans”. Hah! So exciting! Never saw Will again, but even just getting to shake hands and put a face to someone is a blessing.

After I and my fan (EHEHEEE I HAVE A FAN) parted ways I set myself to refining my routine for the open mic. That was something of an interesting experience as that routine had gone through a number of iterations and rewrites due to time constraints. Or rather, the quantum superposition that the time constraints remained in up until the actual start of the event. I looked everywhere I could and most sources would only confirm the presence of a time limit and not really anything about what it might be. I asked everyone I could think of about what it might be; Con Ops, Sparf in programming, 2 Gryphon, the only person involved that I didn’t ask about it was Alkalai and that’s just because he was impossible to find and may in fact not be real. Plus the staff get all worried when you say you’re looking for him. They get this really somber look on their face when you ask how you can find him.

“Now, are you sure you want that? Are you sure you understand the implications of this? Because if you find him then you might have to talk to him. You seem like a nice kid, I don’t want to see that happen to you.”

So yeah, I got at least a rough stab at the time limit and tailored my routine to that. I was a little bummed that I was missing the Transformation Meet and Greet, but I’d had a good enough time doing standup at FurXoticon that I was really excited for the chance to try this out in front of a larger audience. I got there nice and early to get my name on the signup sheet and luckily enough, I settled in a spot next to Serathin as we waited for the show to start. I’d love to regale you with how my set went, but to do so I’d have to make something up because I never got to go up on stage. I guess it was nice of them to not string me along and make me believe I had a chance. As soon as the show started they immediately dispensed with the signup list and just picked people at random from the audience. As soon as I saw ALL of those hands going up I knew I was dusted. There was no way even ten percent of those motherfuckers were getting their shot at the stage. Especially with the way the number of hands kept increasing. I think that’s what got to me the most. The fact that people showed up to watch and then just got it in their heads that this was comedy karaoke and everybody gets a turn was really galling. Yeah, I know that’s the point of an open mic, but it was just fucking excruciating to know that I’d completely wasted those hours I spent practicing (which I could’ve spent on a million other things had I known in advance what a worthless shitshow this thing was going to be). And it really salted the wound to be sitting there watching a bunch of obviously unprepared goons stumble through a couple meandering run-on sentences before flaming out and giving up, all the while knowing I wouldn’t get my chance to actually entertain some people. One guy wandered in halfway through the event and he still got picked to go up. There were a few good bits, sure, but I would’ve much preferred it if the good performers had been determined by preparation rather than arising spontaneously from the law of averages. All they would’ve had to do was stick to their damn signup list! If they narrowed the pool to people who walked in the door, on time, with the intent of getting up on stage, they could’ve improved the quality of the show immensely and not have had to tell so many people to go fuck themselves because they didn’t get picked.

Anyways, one of the people who got picked (the bastard!) was Battsaults, the crazy steampunk crux dude that I met at FurryCon. His material was kind of unstructured but he really committed to the physical stuff, so it was still a treat to watch. Plus I thought it was awesome that he told the phone story because I was involved in that one. For those of you who don’t want to go back and research that one, have you ever gotten drunk and woken up without your phone? Well this one time at FurryCon I got drunk and woke up with more phones than I started with. So maybe it’s my fault when you can’t find your phone. Who knows? I don’t decide how the universe works. Silver lining number two of the comedy shitshow was that they didn’t kick us out before 2 Gryphon’s show so I got to keep my primo seats. Well, sort of. I was sitting in a supersponsor-only zone and I was just a drooling proletariat scum like usual, so I had to move to a slightly less primo seat. So like, a secundo seat I guess? In any case, I ended up close to the spot where they were giving out cookies made in the likeness of the Great Giraffe, praise be unto him (BREE!) so I got to eat one of those. And the slightly tarnished third silver lining, I guess, was that I heard from Unstable Imagination that the TF meet was kind of a flop. I wasn’t super surprised about that. Meet n’ greets are notoriously lacking in direction. You can see that right in the mission statement, which is “Let’s get a bunch of people together that have this one thing in common and then… uh, mumble-mumble, PROFIT!” So yeah, at the very least other people were also not having fun whilst I was not having fun. Hah! Suck it, other people!

Anyways, as I was trying to console myself I came across a telegram message from awhile back regarding food. It was late enough that I’d called food a lost cause, but I took a chance and followed up on the message. Turns out that they were still in the queue at Sierra Mercato, a decently fancy place across the way. I still had time and a biological imperative to eat food, so I went for it. The “they” in this case was Ryoken, the very same one who is now hosting me for RMFC. His partners in crime at the time were Reo, someone whom I had seen pretty much everywhere since forever but had never been granted the honor of really meeting, and Drakien, some complete nobody I’ve never heard of but he was cool too. So yeah, we did the whole fancy restaurant thing. Wine, cheese platter, nice cocktails and all. They even had a cider selection. Granted there were three types of cider on the menu and they were out of the first one I asked for, but honestly a non-zero cider selection is all I really ask for. It was really great food at a really great price, honestly. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the con I forget that Pittsburgh is taking better care of us every time. And so with that, I went back to get wrapped up in the con again.

I had some trouble meeting peeps for the TF art jam because they moved the zoo down into the dirty basement across the way again and very poorly communicated that to everyone. They still had the sign up that said “the Zoo” in the old location and had events going on in there, so it was all very confusing. I managed to shout into enough electronic social networks for that critical bit of intel to work its way back to me and I managed to find a path through the dungeoun down to the new Zoo and find the aforementioned peeps there. Far too many to list, but I’ll give shoutouts to my major players. LunarKeys was as always “happy” to see me. LanHao was ever-futilely trying to keep some sense of order. Reklaw was looking as though he’d stared long into the abyss a bit too long. Ah, such a good crew. It’s a shame that I arrived so close to the end of the night’s shenanigans. I still did manage to get to know Dsarvess while I was there though. He’s been quietly and diligently working in the background to turn absolutely everything in the world into big, long, sinuous Dragonairs, so of course I’d been familiar with his work for a long time. He didn’t seem like the type to open up very easily, so I felt honored that we got to talk as much as we did.

It really felt like the night was winding down after the TF crowd dwindled, but apparently my next adventure was quite ready to find me, so I needn’t have worried about looking for it. I was chatting with a few people in the Westin when with a warbling rebel yell “Haaaaeey!” 200 pounds of totally shithoused raccoon fell on my shoulders, very nearly knocking me to my knees. Whether by curse or by providence is anyone’s guess, but Diezel had found me. We’d met on a few other occasions, but I didn’t think he’d remember me. In the interest of full disclosure I still don’t know if he did or if I were merely a free-standing structure within arm’s reach when he found himself in need of such a support. The sweaty, exhausted rodent that I suddenly found myself wearing like a scarf had far and away won the dubious honor of drunkest person I’d ever seen in a fursuit. He may have been named after petrol but he smelled far more like ethanol and regrettable decisions. Just as I was considering how best to proceed with my new rather burdensome fashion accessory his chase team caught up with him. Apparently the well-fueled Diezel was being accompanied by a strikingly handsome twin pair of black and white jackals, Zharr and Sarus. I would’ve much rather I’d met them under more favorable conditions, but sometimes when life runs out of lemons it hands you a precariously staggering raccoon who’s constantly on the verge of vomiting on you.

So yeah, evac was in order. Appropriate, seeing as my new charge was holding onto me like I was the last chopper out of Saigon. I’m sure that his two escorts were plenty capable, but in addition to being almost literally attached to the unfortunate rodent I got the impression that someone with the benefit of a complete field of vision and working fingers would be needed for this mission. And so, the newly formed adventuring party steeled ourselves against the elements and set out into the wild. For a capable person this would’ve been a short walk, but we had a bit more of a challenge on our hands. Getting through the lobby was quite a painful “one step at a time” sort of affair, particularly getting down the stairs of course. I was worried that I’d be at it all night. Crossing the threshold though, was a big breakthrough for us. Diezel is the insufferable sort of drunk that won’t admit he’s even the least bit impaired even as he’s actively plowing into a wall and slumping to the floor in near-unconsciousness. The advantage to that is that once the obstacles thin out a bit, he can be aimed, in a fashion, such that we can get him moving vaguely in the direction of his destination and actually have some momentum behind his movements. I handed off physical support duties to my squad while I handled elevator buttons and doors and such. I was also quickest on my feet when Diezel went barreling straight for a set of stairs that likely would’ve been the end of him if he took the short way down. So yeah, I got him into his room, alive, for certain generous definitions of “alive”. We got enough suit pieces off of him to let him throw up and proceed drift in and out of consciousness in relative peace. Once we got in touch with his roommates and everything seemed stable I started to feel like I was in the way, so I left him in the care of the two jackal super-best-friends.

It would seem it was my turn to be hard to find, as Bluedude had been looking for me extensively and we’d never even been near each other. He has a “hug list” for every convention and was hoping to check me off. I think that’s just the most adorable goddamn thing, so I was happy to help him out with it. He was at the Whose Lion is it Anyway show and was concerned that it was going to end before I got there. Granted, it was approaching midnight, but I told him not to worry. I can count on zero hands the number of times that Whose Lion has ended on time. Turns out I was right and I got there with plenty of time to get the check in that box. Seeing as I’d made the pilgrimage all the way over there I figured I ought to uphold tradition and finish the night out with the late-night sexy writing panel.

Except it wasn’t the end of the night, apparently, because I came across Vaylute on my way back to my room. Sure it was late but for once providence came through for me and dropped someone I had been looking for in my lap. Who was I to question fate’s judgment? So yeah, over the course of the wee hours of the morning we gathered together Vaylute’s crew. Naturally there was the better half, the ever-lovely Leila Snowpaw, a fearsome wyvern assassin Wyvy and a super trippy spirit wolf thingy that remains utterly beyond my comprehension, Alpha Theist. It was quite an ensemble cast and we had a great time of it partaking in the venerable old tradition of eating pizza and gyros at irresponsible hours of the morning to try and stave off the crushing hangover that would come inexorably with the rising sun. It was a really great group and I’m glad that I seized the opportunity, seeing as it was the only such chance I would have. And so, from there I proceeded to actually for real go to bed.

A mercifully quiet morning followed, allowing me to get the late start that I needed and ease into the day. I had a lot of good quality time in the lobby. I had some bubble wands that I picked up from the party in West Virginia, and those were such great fun for those times when I was just wandering about. Fursuiters respond in wonderfully entertaining ways when bubbles are descending from the skies. Naturally the fun police told me to cut it out because apparently bubbles fall under the “throwing objects off the balcony” rule. Yeah, careful with those soap bubbles, somebody could get hurt. Still, I got a nice chance to interact with some great folks. Fibre was there again, lending great energy to the scene as always. Weichund was there being super friendly and dangerously adorable. Kiwi was certainly a riot, and I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Ouiji, a member of a latent surge that I’ve observed in the number of adorable bat fursuits making rounds on the convention floor. It was really fun to watch him play up the super-tsundere persona, and I will say it was quite a novel experience to get a hug that extended all the way down to my knees. Nice, warm batwings. I never wanted to leave! Naturally I came to mention at one point how I’d heard of Ouiji, from a comic that Reyn Puppeh made awhile back. Naturally the… particular nature of that comic led to Ouiji’s notable discomposure when I brought it up. I feel at least a little bad about it but seeing a visibly-humiliated little fluffy bat trying so earnestly to silence me on the subject without making a sound himself was easily the cutest thing I’d seen all con.

From there it was time to prepare for the fursuit parade. I got appropriately decked out and proceeded down to the staging area. It was a HELL of a wait, so I was glad for a lot of familiar faces who showed up. The cookies ‘n cream jackals from last night came by to tell me that Diezel was okay. I also saw Serathin and Ryoken again, too many familiar faces to list. It was nice to have their company as we all stood there wrapped in our stifling plush outfits, wondering just what in the hell we’re all doing with our lives. Then came the photo, then more waiting, and then the parade, which consisted mainly of temporally distributed waiting. It was a lot of stop-and-go traffic is what I’m saying. That can be dealt with for the most part, but it becomes quite dangerous when the route includes escalators. The heat and delays were interminable. There’s only so energetic you can be after more than two hours of this torture, especially while you’re moving at half the speed of smell. I think it was worth it though. The outdoor route attracted insane amounts of people who were all having the time of their lives. I guess I’ll just have to say this was an instance wherein I was willing to suffer for my art. I managed to catch up with RadFox and his entourage of radioactive suits while we were recovering from our ordeal. It was a little awkward because we were all just kinda tired and disoriented, but I’d hate to have missed the chance to say hey to him. It’s always fun to see those guys rolling deep with their searingly-colored trifoils on display. Apparently there’s yet another Rad Fox suit in the works, so that army is still going strong.

After walking by the badge and photo booths and seeing that I’d be there all day if I tried to use them right then, I went back to my room and got my human costume out for the next few items on my list. I managed to meet up with Impy and Grey for Story Hour, which I guess is a tradition at this point because I’ve done that every time now. Kage was entertaining as always. Hearing from him was a welcome way to unwind. After the show, the culmination of much logistical work throughout the convention occurred and I managed to summon Furian to my location such that I might actually meet him. The rest of the evening was rather quiet so I was glad for the opportunity to hang out a bit. We ended up heading back to his room because he had a few “You’ve gotta try this before you die” drinks he wanted to test on me. He had a soy-based liquor that sounded very intriguing, which of course ended up being the most caustic and revolting bilgewater I’d ever had the misfortune of bringing anywhere near any of my bodily openings. And some Malort, which I’d heard to be legendarily awful but turned out to only be moderately awful and even less so for the expensive version. So yeah, I got to meet all Furian’s friends and also drive them into a blind rage because he handed out squeakers somehow not realizing what an apocalyptically bad idea that was. I don’t remember anyone else’s name from that room, but that’s probably just as well, because I’m sure that they all justifiably hate my guts, and also my skin, and everything in-between. So yeah, after narrowly surviving that encounter, much to the chagrin of my hosts, I wandered the convention floor a bit before dropping by the “Readings in Terrible Fiction” to hang out with a few friends there and basically rifftrax some amateur stories. I’d never done that event before and I have to say it’s the perfect thing to do at an irresponsible hour of the morning when you’re so exhausted that most everything is funny.

I rather liked the idea of doing the fursuit team games, but then I saw that they were at 9AM Sunday, so I laughed derisively and resolved to sleep in that day. The time that I did end up eventually rolling out of bed was in good time for the dance competition, so I went to that. They had an amazing showing this year, as always. I love the capacity this fandom has for making me do things that I wouldn’t have ever thought of on my own. I’d never imagine that I’d be interested in dance, and yet there’s something absolutely magical about it. Two hours just fly by in a whirlwind of color and light. I really liked the way they handled it this year with just one judge giving one remark each time. It’s a great balance of giving each performer the recognition they deserve and also keeping the show moving along. It was kind of funny, someone I saw there commented on the ribbon that Furian gave me.

“Hey, where did you get the ‘I excel at awkward’ ribbon?”
“Oh, I got it from this big black wolf that has a bunch of rubber tentacles coming out of his back.”
“Oh yeah, I know him. Thanks!”

It’s pretty insane that the above sentence is not only coherent but successfully conveyed the information that he needed. There was a bit of a lull after the dance comp as the con started losing steam. I saw that as my opportunity to suit up one more time to really let loose for a last hurrah, and of course also do fursuit badges and get mugshots in the photo room. I’m so excited to finally have some good pictures of Blackjack to show off! He’s really starting to feel like my suit now and I can hardly describe what a relief that is.

I managed to get the squeakers that I got from Furian into my big puffy bubblepaw fingers, so now when I bap people it squeaks. It sounded stupid but I figured I had nothing to lose by going for it. Once I did it though? Oh. My. God. I have squeakyboppers! It’s the best thing that’s ever happened. One of the people who I was just bouncing around all over in the general vicinity of couldn’t help but comment “Wow, you really enjoy having a fursuit, don’t you?” And you know what, I do! I really do. And it was wonderful to hear that joy was readily apparent to other people. I’ve always felt a little awkward about using an old and worn suit that quite literally isn’t really me, but you know what? I see people out there all the time in some pretty shabby looking suits, and they are just fuckin’ killing it, so I have a lot of faith in the idea that it’s the player, not the costume, that really makes the character come alive. It was also nice to see Hengstolf when I was picking up my badge. I’ve lost touch with a lot of the Virginia guys, so it’s good to see them around once in a while. When they were confirming my identity, Sparf introduced me as “The guy who writes those really long convention journals.” That was one of the things I thought of when I was having trouble getting this one written. Well if that’s who I am now, I guess I can’t very well give up at this point! I managed to suit enough to miss closing ceremonies, but they were over in a flash so I guess there wasn’t a lot to them.

After finally dressing down I went down to the Zoo to find a good chunk of the TF crew still doing their thing. Unfortunately it seemed I was mainly there to say goodbye to people, as it was getting to be that time. It was nice though. I did manage to meet Splyced and Zangy there, two artists that I was very glad to have the chance to meet, even if it was only for a fleeting moment. A traditional moment had become a fleeting one because I’d realized that I’d done that thing where I forget to eat and Archai offered a chance to get food because the photo room was finally shut down. So I went off to eat with him, Kyreeth and Warp. It was quite a relaxing dinner, and a great way to coast down after spending a couple hours bouncing off the celling. I’d also not been to the Sharper Edge yet, so it was practically a necessity. I got to see LunarKeys and Dsarvess there one more time, they seemed to be doing much the same thing I was, just kind of cooling off and trying to hold it all together for the last little bit of the con here. I heard that from most everyone I texted about that time; that they had to get a move-on tomorrow morning so they were packing it in. Archai must’ve sensed that I was considering doing this as well because when we got back to our room he took notice of how I’d yet to be visibly intoxicated in the course of this con and he immediately set about rectifying that. After a long quest to procure cranberry juice at this unholy hour, we mixed up the necessary refreshments and got to work. I could kind of feel the energy of the hotel dying off, but, properly fortified as I was, I no longer cared. I managed to come across enough folks to keep me going. I thought that I was just having a good time, but Casidhe was quick to confirm the reality of the situation for me when I came by and said hey to him. “Oh hey! How are y- oh wow you’re really drunk.” So yeah, big fat mission accomplished to Archai on that one.

Apparently we weren’t done though. When our drinks ran out he simply ran off to obtain more, leaving me in the care of a handful of good folks who seemed to be in much the same mindset as I was. I’d never met any of them, but we got along quite well. I assume that Arc knew at least a few of them and didn’t just leave me in the care of a handful of random homeless people, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Scrubzy was kind enough to share with me some of his home-made apple moonshine, so of course we were immediately best friends. I also came across Anvil Devil, a name of quite fascinating origins. Apparently it’s a small tool that, if struck incorrectly with a hammer, can break an anvil. Quite an imposition, being that anvils are rather difficult to replace. Other names that now seem vaguely familiar to me as a result of this interaction include: Fizz Otter, Leonfox, Nightclaw, Eaglebird, and Erro. Sorry if I don’t remember much else about you guys, I was really drunk. So yeah, I wasn’t really hungry or anything, but the group was headed to Primanti Brothers and I was in no condition to get out of range of my babysitter so I went along with it. It was a relief that Archai is just as skilled at getting me out of these positions as he is at getting me into them. He gave very careful advice to keep me on the right track. “Keep your voice down.” “Keep drinking water.” “You don’t have to yell we’re right next to you.” “Here, eat this sandwich, also they can probably hear you outside, take it easy.” I can’t be sure, but I think he was saying that I talk loudly when I’m drunk. Also apparently someone paid for that sandwich for me. Wooooo! Anyways, I had a great time with those guys and I don’t as yet have any reason to believe that they didn’t enjoy themselves as well. So I’m going to tentatively assume that a good time was had by all and life is just grand. In any case, Archai patiently ushered me towards a bed and brought about a pleasant close to the night.

There’s not a lot to say about Monday morning. It was, of course, the big shuffle wherein everybody gets the heck out of here. I recalled, at the time, that I wasn’t under time pressure and I’d heard a few people talking about having rooms for that night still. However, as quiet as it was and as tired as I was, it really didn’t seem worth the extra money to stick around. If sleepspace were free? Sure, I would’ve stuck around a bit more, but the only place where there was free sleepspace to be had was separated from me by six hours of road. So I had to make that choice early if I wanted to get home at a reasonable time of day. I didn’t much like the idea of a lot of night driving in my condition at the time. I actually did have to stop and nap a few times along the way. I’d heard a few people lament that they wish Anthrocon was longer and frankly, I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. There was already plenty of activity to keep me going when I got there on Wednesday and a lot of people were still hanging around when I left on Monday afternoon. If you’re still anxious for more after SIX DAYS, then you just didn’t convention hard enough. So I guess I’m proud to say that with five of these things under my belt now, I know how to get the most out of Anthrocon.

Alright then. Seeing as I’m literally sitting in the lobby at RMFC right now proofreading this, I guess I’d better just send it to the internet so I can get on with my next convention!

Ah, alright. I’ve been putting this off for much too long because I’ve been far sicker than usual following this con and it’s also been stupidly, dangerously hot this week. All this stuff below is travels and side quests that happened on my way to Anthrocon. I'm splitting them up because I know this will far exceed the limit for one journal, and so people can skip to the next one if they just want to hear about the convention. This journal may not mean a lot to you if you’re not familiar with the major players involved, but the small elite few who actually enjoy reading my con journals seem to want to get as much as they can get so I’m posting my account of it regardless. Skip to the first break if you want to hear about the con. For those curious, this crowd is a group of webcomic artists that I know. I’ll list the major players all for those curious.

Kathy Garrison Kellogg – Carry On: A fun slice-of-life sort of comic about hyenas.
Scott Kellogg – 21st Century Fox: A speculative fiction romantic comedy adventure… thing.
Mark Stanley – Freefall: A long-running, award-winning hard-sci-fi comic about the adventures of a genetically uplifted wolf on a new colony world. The fact that I wrote fanfiction of it attests to my affinity for this one in particular.
As far as I know Tiger-T has no webcomic but he was Legolas to my Gimli on this adventure so I’m still linking him here.

Yeah, grand start for this adventure. I managed to wake up far earlier than my summer-standard noon-ish on account of actually having something to DO that day. I was glad for the extra time, as some tiny last-minute things ended up taking the whole morning. Neither the Microtel nor Kathy’s residence showed up in my GPS, so I had to spend some time fiddling with it to get me someplace close to the hotel. That way I could regroup there and figure out the rest of my plan of approach. I also needed to print off a new insurance card for my car. I went to USAA, who promptly told me to fuck off because my policy had been cancelled. Were you planning on TELLING me that or was it supposed to be a surprise? It turned out that they just had old credit card information. So I updated and paid it off in full, in exchange for the privilege of still having no proof of insurance for the next aslongasitfuckingtakes. Yay, I’m good at car.

So anyways I got to the arbitrary point on the map I had chosen. I made it there without too much trouble and poked around a bit to find the hotel. All I had to do to get there was take a quick swing through the loading dock out behind a supermarket and wind my way up a narrow, dark road. They chose a poorly-accessible location is what I’m saying. I went into the place to find that their everything was broken and I may as well not have bothered. A recent brownout had broken their cable service, internet, and booking computers. So checking in took roughly a half hour and led me to a room that was already occupied. Realizing that I’d find neither rest nor information at the Microtel, I set out once again for… the intersection of the two roads in that area that my GPS has actually heard of. Yup, once again I SUPER know what I’m doing. Against all odds, I actually found the tiger-striped balloons that marked Kathy’s driveway and I made my way up into the fields to take part in the festivities.

I was quite floored by the spread that greeted me at the top of the hill. Quite a well-provisioned camp had been set up there and much livery was already underway. There was an interesting sampler to be had at the buffet, which is all I really ask of a party, truly. Alligator, bison, lamb, venison, it was quite a spread. It was interesting to spend some time with all of Kathy’s relations there. Introducing yourself with “Hi, I’m from the internet!” is a really fun and only slightly terrifying gambit to run. And of course it’s a treat to get to see other forum folk. Such opportunities have always been rare since I came on the scene. Ya can’t help but wonder what kinds of things would go on if we got all us loonies together in the same place. Mainly it’s little things. The way Angela kept calling Tiger_T “Mr T” was quite endearing, for instance. The marksmen in the crowd dazzled onlookers with some impressive bb gun slinging. Some of these guys are unsettlingly good at hitting moving targets, and many an injured balloon choked and sputtered its deathrattle out across the landscape. As the sunlight dwindled and the thickly-hanging plague of insects shifted from flies to mosquitoes, out came the pyrotechnics. I was glad for the opportunity to watch the display as I was likely to be busy the following week during America’s annual reminding-the-sky-who-runs-shit festival. Scott was feeling a bit off as he sometimes does these days, but he seemed quite energetic and attentive of the ongoing explosions. Quite fortunate, I suppose, given the number of ensuing events wherein one’s personal well-being depended notably on running away from a particular location very quickly. What followed was a very entertaining mystery room sort of challenge where we all tried to clean everything up in the dark. As far as I know it worked out okay. Naturally this frantic shuffle made everything a bit more difficult to find, but as far as I’m aware everything is still somewhere.

The next day was the much-anticipated luau, which opened with a selection of foods that have way too many vowels in them for me to reproduce them adequately. I’m still getting over the hernia I got from trying to call out the town of Aiea all in one go. And there was also Spam. Honestly I thought that Spam being a traditional Hawaiian food was some kind of meme or marketing construct, but it actually makes perfect sense. For many years the meat of the blunt-snouted western spamallamas was the only meat that would reliably survive the long trip across the pacific. Granted it can also survive light artillery bombardment and most natural disasters, but I’m not sure if that’s virtue or criticism really. The day’s entertainment was of course our hula dancers, who put on a stunning show. They bounced around the Pacific ring of fire quite a bit, showcasing styles from many different cultures on all manner of islands. They even dragged us up there with them to learn a few steps. Providence apparently let me evade photography for that particular part, which I suppose is for the best. I’ve never had the best luck in taking command of these weird gangly legs of mine in order to produce something resembling coherent rhythm. One fun part was when he was doing a real aggressive territorial display that made Honey run out and fiercely bark in defense of her own turf. I’m amazed at the fact that looking like a waddling furry Twinkie does nothing to diminish her warrior spirit. The dancer’s ability to intimidate fierce Chihuahuas and noisy guinea hens was quite impressive. The show was fun and only a couple things accidentally caught fire, so it’s aces in my book.

After the show was another large vowel movement as the main course came out, followed by some more hanging out in the shade of the porch. This was my chance to get a little QT with Mark Stanley, whom it was my honor to finally meet on this occasion. Burning up the rest of the day just chatting and hanging out was fine by me under such circumstances. Mark has a great deal of perspective to share. His knowledge I’m sure it would take years to scratch the surface of, but it was that perspective that struck me most readily in the moment. He’s got a way of thinking about things that is quite interesting to behold and rather impossible to describe. I’ve been told, at times, that I’m pretty smart, but ever since graduating high school I’ve been in far too deep over my head to ever feel that way myself. In discussing sundry little things like the implications of the Higgs Boson, what mass actually is and how it’s expressed, I came to realize that holy shit I’m actually contributing meaningfully to this conversation. It came surprisingly naturally to me, so much so that I might even say I could do that kind of thing again sometime. That certainly wasn’t a destination I had in mind when I set forth on this great journey of life, but it’s one I’m proud to have stopped at.

I guess I’ll slip this in here too. This is a link to the panda shirt that I was telling Angela about. It stems from a joke that for all I know Mark made first.

The day wound on and many of the guests operating on stricter timetables had to totter off for the evening. So it fell to Tiger-T and I, the listless squatters who intended to remain, to gather things up and get them in some kind of order for the night ahead. As it had many times during the party that task consisted, for me, largely of keeping tabs on all the things Kathy asked me to hold for her real quick that she never really came back for. And maybe just a little sitting on the floor so that Sparky could tell me about his problems. He’s an ailing old dog, so he had much to unload on me. At least that built some good faith, I suppose. By the end of the weekend Joy had decided, tentatively, that I would be allowed to live. Just about the highest honor she awards to shifty passersby. In any case, the night meant one more dark and spooky trek up through the fields to our camp up on the hill. It took some time to get used to the tremendous amount of disappointment that I was dispensing along the way, given that I brought neither food nor the promise of a release to greater pastures. By which I mean actual, physical other pastures that the sheep expected me to give them access to and not assistance in shuffling off their mortal coil. I suppose I’ve got to be more careful in my use of florid language. When one reaches a certain concentration of floridiitude, meanings start to blend together a bit and misunderstandings become all but inevitable. It’s pretty intense when those misunderstandings can lead to the mass-culling of livestock though, so I’ll be more careful. I do endeavor not to be as enthusiastic with my misunderstandings as the little yearling lambs that come barreling at you with all their might with the expectation of their daily milk ration just by virtue of you being vaguely human-shaped and in their pasture.

The Sunday Spam-n-pancakes breakfast was just the sort of relaxing moment many of us needed after all the partying and work we’d done, both in varying proportions. Good food and good talk was had. The crowd had dwindled with Mark, Angela and most of Kathy’s kin having taken off, but it was still a good group. It opened the floor for a lot of fun shit-talking about the forum members who weren’t present. Don’t let ‘em tell you different, that’s exactly what we do whenever any of you guys aren’t around. Tiger-T debuted some beautifully bound compendiums (compendees? Compendii?) of both the 21st Century Fox and Carry On archives to date. How he got such brilliant print quality is as much a mystery as how he managed to smuggle all those massive tombstones all the way there to present them. Once again everyone else took off in their time and we proceeded to a slightly more enthusiastic teardown, boxing up all the tents and awnings and such and shuttling the tables and chairs back to where they actually lived down the road. With Kathy pretty much running on fume-scented air and the house only trivially resembling a place people might live in, at the time it felt more like damage control than a cleanup, but we made it work. At least until the monsoon came. Tiger-T’s drainage project proved quite handy at managing the runoff, so that’s another hats-off to him.

The next day brought a sojourn into town to return the animal standees that had leant such wonderful atmosphere to the safari day. That ride in an unlicensed junker farm truck went about as well as the hula dancers did, quite diverse, entertaining and only a minimal number of unintended fires. The trip back was the real adventure, given that the wipers were in varying states of disrepair or existence and I was not quite up to the task of both navigating in this unfamiliar area and reminding Tiger-T that stop signs exist. A big part of our perilous sojourn was motivated by a need for some mechanism by which we might contend with all the flies that we’d invited inside with all the activity over the weekend. With this being a farm and all, the number of unintended guests was quite intimidating. We came across a frog in the bathroom and Scott rather effectively captured the mood by saying “Fuck it, he’s hired.”

It was a rather difficult problem to contend with, actually. Since most of them were in the kitchen, the aggressiveness of the agents used had to be carefully tempered. There were plenty of products available to wipe out a broad range of the creepy-crawly spectrum, but there wasn’t much for just flies. I guess the conventional wisdom was that you just swat them with something. What we couldn’t convey to the wielders of that dismissive attitude was the scale of the invasion. We were at pretty much “We have angered Hades and he has dispatched unfathomable pestilence to claim us” sort of fly population, so the idea of smashing them all was ludicrous. Such volume of insects is actually a fair bit LESS disgusting if kept in a solid state. I shudder to think what the cleanup would look like if I were to devote the day to aggressively liquefying them one by one. Eventually some patient searching turned up a sticky thing that looked kind of goofy but ended the day covered in enough flies that newcomers were jostling through the adhered mounds of corpses to get a spot. So I’ll call that a win. We also picked up a patch kit meant for the air mattress which, in turn, was meant for taking a bit of the sting out of camping in a sheep pasture. Apparently it was meant for rubber-only tasks because the adhesive was quite actively repelled by the material that the mattress was made of. Though my fingers were thoroughly coated in allegedly sticky stuff by the end of the endeavor I was no closer to getting the troublesome bag to hold air. Ah well, I can’t win ‘em all.

Another effort that we were stocking up for was our trip to Westpark. It was an objective that we’d decided on to make good use of Tuesday. There was quite an array of things that needed to be taken up there and it would probably be wise to check up on the place with all the flooding that had hit many other parts of the state over the weekend. Since Hades had cursed the kitchen it was probably worth taking a look to see what Zeus had made of Westpark. I’d never seen the fabled Westpark before, so I was up for it. It seemed to be a good use of my time. Tiger-T seemed to be running out of ways to make more work for himself and I seemed to be running out of ways to avoid it. Though part of that was the heat. It was the kind of oppressive sticky heat that doesn’t even let you get through a complete thought much less motivate you to do things. Even just working on this writeup felt like too much work. “Too hot to type” is a very unique climactic arrangement, one I don’t hope to encounter much in the future. We still both managed to hit our core skill sets pretty well during that time. His was in landscaping, cleaning, organizing and such, and mine ran more in the vein of disposing of leftover food from the party. Hey, when in the company of hyenas, do as they do.

The volume of stuff that was meant to make the trip with us was quite impressive, and we discussed the option of taking two vehicles. I really pushed for cramming it all in the Subaru because it really would’ve been such a shame to have someone driving alone all that way. I was really hoping for a chance for us to all be together on a long road trip. I had plenty enough five-ish-hour lonely driving expanses planned for that trip already. Putting Tiger-T on the case proved to be the right choice, as his organization tetrising got all the required belongings and people into the vehicle without bringing harm to any of them. And with that we were on our way. I was really glad that we made it work, because we talked non-stop the whole way there. Chances to get Kathy sitting still had been sparse up until that point, so this was a valuable opportunity. Conversations roamed a great deal, as they’re known to. At the outset a lot of it was me explaining weird fandom stuff. I find myself doing that a lot, actually. I kind of like it, to be honest. I’ve learned a lot about all these crazy folk that I continue to subject myself to for some reason, and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned with any who are interested.

It was a bit nerve-wracking seeing the landscape turn more and more strewn with debris as we traveled. Fortunately our destination seemed quite well-off by comparison. Sure the creeks had swelled and meandered somewhat, but it was hardly the scale of disaster that we saw on the way. I was glad for the chance to explore the property as we checked in on all the animals and such things on our rounds. I’ve spent a lot of time in big cities and trapped in steel cages in the middle of a vast uncaring expanse of nothingness of late, so getting a chance to walk about some big open pastures and woodlands was very refreshing. Westpark seemed a bit lonely for its recent lack of tenants, but it’s certainly a charming place. I could definitely see myself falling in love with a spot like that. Kathy was justifiably quite protective of it too, chastising me once for crushing a tick on the furniture. I really should’ve known better, but that was my third tick of the day so I do hope I can be excused for losing my sense of decorum a bit by then. And of course “Don’t use my dresser to crush a tick!” simply brings to mind one heaving a whole chest of drawers over one’s head and bringing it down on top of the offending little bug. Which as much trouble as those things had been giving me I didn’t feel was all that out of line, really.

The drive back was far quieter, what with all of us being quite worn by then. I tinkered a bit and got my music widget going, subjecting the Subaru’s other occupants to the adventure that is the shuffle button on my playlist. Often the first thing anyone comments on when they get in my car is the strange juxtaposition of speed metal, My Little Pony songs, classical music and video game themes that I tend to have my speakers spewing out. I also put on a podcast that didn’t put everyone to sleep immediately so there’s that. We switched drivers towards the end of the trip, and while it did stop us from crashing due to Kathy falling asleep we fared scarcely better. To hear her tell it, it was my sedate and cowardly driving that allowed Kathy to nod off so easily now that she was safely in the passenger’s seat. The slow speed was mainly a function of West Virginia being composed almost entirely of sheer cliffs as though it were crafted from a handful of Lego bricks discarded haphazardly by the gods, and also a much different gearing system in Kathy’s vehicle. If I had tried to roll down a 9% grade without braking in MY car the number of land-speed records broken in the attempt would only be exceeded by the number of pedestrian femurs broken as I found myself unable to stop after reaching a town. It was a surreal and confusing experience to keep trundling along at roughly the same speed while the car falling off the edge of the world was a significant concern. Hold on, where’s the part where I’m ramming on my brakes until they smoke to keep it under 90? Where is all this momentum even going? Am I driving a giant clockwork flywheel toy right now? Seriously, what the fuck though?

Anyways, my craven and unmotivated driving apparently still made decent time, as it soon got us WELL past the unmarked and not-really-exit-resembling exit that we were meant to use. Naturally I still had no idea what the fuck so I didn’t really get suspicious until the highway ended. So apparently the answer to Kathy’s dismissive “what could go wrong?” was “Well, the road ended, I don’t know where we are and also we’re running out of gas.” So yeah, we got home a little late from that one. Probably didn’t help that I cleaned off the windshield at the gas station. I cost us about 20 minutes or so with my driving, but I was set to cost us an HOUR with my accidentally giving Tiger-T the idea to wash the car. I swear whenever he’s not working he’s thinking of things he could be working on. Lunacy, that boy! Regardless, we all made it home okay and tumbled into our respective sleeping spaces. The next day I was off on my next adventure, which I’ll be chronicling below. Hopefully I won’t be such a bitch about it and it’ll take me less than a month.

The thrilling conclusion is online now. So by all means check that out.

Alright, Anthrocon is approaching with dizzying speed all of a sudden. Which is odd given my understanding of the nature of time. Theoretically it should be always approaching at the same speed. Regardless, it's on the metaphorical horizon and that's as good an excuse as any to get that massive FurXoticon journal off my userpage. So yeah, first big change in plans is that RMFC and FA:U ended up on the same weekend, something I came to realize only recently. Having enjoyed a marvelous time the previous occasions on which I've thrown myself on the mercy of  ryoken and  nevir I've decided that I'm going to do RMFC instead. Unfortunately the delay has led to all of the rooms in the main hotel being booked solid. So if anyone knows of any openings therein, do tell!

Now, as to the near future, this will be my fifth Anthrocon, so you guys really should know my MO by now. And by "you guys" I mean "the six people who actually read my journals", but few though you are it would be untoward of me to forget about you entirely. So I'll scratch out the major details briefly here.

I'll be rooming at the Westin Wednesday through Monday with  archai
The most readily distinguishing thing about me would probably be this badge. Also the name on my actual conbadge is always my FA username.
The suit that I inherited recently looks like this and I'll be wearing it any chance I get. I've decided to name him Blackjack, and with luck I'll have a badge for him by the time he's ready to hit the streets.
As usual I'll be all up in the writing panels, they may even tap me to host a few this year, which would be fun I'm sure. I'll be at Quipfur entirely because it's a chance to meet serathin . There's a TF meet this time. Like an actual official event kind. Not just the kind that lunarkeys flails around trying to get perfect and we just end up stumbling into each other in the zoo randomly at some point. That will probably also happen, so I'll go to that too! The TF meetup is opposite the open mic, which I'd really like to do now that I've gotten my feet wet on that. Ah well, that's a decision for another time. I'll probably be into a lot of the fursuiting events for obvious reasons. Might see the puppet show again, that was cool last time around. Then there's the usual stuff, comedy, concerts, ceremonies, dance comp, all the wonderful fun things!

Anyways, if you're hoping to meet me there please do reach out directly and get my number. I don't have a smartphone so text or calls are the only reliable ways of getting a hold of me at the con. I've found that meeting someone simply by providence, while beautiful in its childish innocence, has a spectacularly awful track record.