I'm back from Califur and back to my normal life now. I had a really fun time! I'll break it down day by day

TL:DR version:
Had lots of fun. The con was uneventful and kind of dull, which was perfect, because the furs at the con were awesome. I almost entirely ignored the actual convention and spent my time hanging out with the wonderful California furs and made a lot of new friends. I definitely want to go again

Friday:
Super early flight out, had to get up at 5:30am. My roommate  rover-marek took me (thanks!), and my flight left at 6:50am.

Because my fursuit's whiskers are very sensitive, I will never pack my fursuit head. Flying alone with a fursuit head as a carry-on is an interesting experience. Get a lot of strange looks, and a lot of people asking questions, and a lot of smiles and giggles. It was really fun, actually. Even TSA excitedly asked me what it was for (not suspiciously, they just thought it was awesome). The flight attendants immediately asked me to put it on when I got on the plane, and I had to be the responsible one and not hold up the line of people boarding to put it on.

I landed at SNA at 9:30am, waited a bit for  groggyfox and  dosner to pick me up at the airport (I could've just taken a shuttle for free, but I didn't realize that until after they'd left). The first thing we did after bringing our stuff to the room was head out to get greek food for lunch, and then to Safeway (or Von's as they call it down there) to pick up supplies like snacks, gatorade and alcohol. I have never bought snacks to keep in the room at a con before, but I'm really glad I did, as those cheeze-its ended up being entire meals more than once. There's not a whole lot of eateries within walking distance of the con, and I didn't have a car.

When we got back, we went down to registration. Reg took freaking forever. It was retarded. The line for pre-regs was long and not moving at all, and the line for non pre-reg was out the door.  growly pulled me and  dosner out of the line and put us at the front because we were one of the very few people who followed registration instructions and printed our registration confirmation out ahead of time. So we left the guy we were hanging out with in the line to go to the front, quickly got through registration, and waited for them to print our plastic badges. That's when the bullshit started: the printer goofed up, then they fixed it and continued printing badges. They kept calling names and handing off badges, and we noticed people behind us in line were getting theirs before us. We had waited about 20 minutes before I asked the printer why we haven't gotten ours yet, and he blew me off and just said he's backed up and getting to it (not even listening to my statement that people BEHIND us in line got theirs ages ago, and everyone I asked waited less than 5 minutes). We waited another 10 minutes, and I ask someone else, who realizes they'd completely skipped both of our badges.

Fuck.

So we'd been standing there for 30 minutes for nothing. They put us back to the front of the line, which ended up being directly in front of the person we were directly behind originally, before they put us in the front of the line the first time. Got our badges in moments after that.

Then we find out that all of the conbooks, shirts, and event tickets were only available in the dealer's den, and not at registration. So we go into the dealer's den and wait in ANOTHER long line to pick up the shirts and cabaret tickets and conbooks that came with our sponsor badges.

Once that was finally over, I finally took a shower, and me and  dosner jumped into fursuit at 4 pm. We decided on a policy: We take at least a shot of liquor every time we get into suit. It was a fun policy indeed. We roamed around for a bit, and then at 5 we headed to the fursuit lounge so I could sign up for the pet auction.

Pet auction was another mess for me. After signing up, they told me to wait in the lounge, because they were going to start moving us backstage in the main ballroom to get ready. So we finally go backstage, told us what was gonna happen and all the rules, etc, and at 6pm the auction starts. I ended up being #3 to auction off out of I think 26 total. It ended up being really disappointing, very few people bid on me, and I only sold for $25. Some people who didn't even have suits sold for $50, and one guy I'd never heard of went for $510. I was back in the lounge by 6:20, and had to wait around in there for over an hour and a half doing nothing while the rest of the people got auctioned off.

Eventually I decided to leave the lounge and wander for a bit, and as luck would have it, the moment I left the lounge was the same moment  drex150 and  kipper got to the hotel (which was a total surprise, since Drex told me he wasn't going to the con :P)

at about 8, my owner comes in with the other owners to pay and pick me up, and tells me he just wanted a photo and a hug and then let me go.

Well fuck again. There go my plans for the evening xD

Not the owner's fault at all. He was a super nice guy, and it was great of him to donate $25 to charity just for a photo. But ALL of my friends had gone out to dinner without me, and I was left alone, bored and hungry (here comes the cheeze-it dinner) after having waited the last 3 hours to be someone's pet for the evening, and expecting to spend the next few hours hanging out with my owner. So I ended up romping around in fursuit for a while, then back to my room to cool off for a bit, eat cheeze-its and drink booze. At some point my friends came back and we all drank, and I headed back down to suit again until like 12-1am. I was in suit for like 8 hours that evening!  dosner went to go help shoot a video for the cabaret show, so I went down out of suit to chill and chat until about 3 am.

Saturday:
We slept in for a bit, then finally went out for food, dealer's den visit, and roaming around until the fursuit parade at 2. We walked to California PIzza Kitchen with some friends, had some delicious pizzas, and got back with just barely enough time to suit up for the parade. The parade was leaving just as we got down to it! I followed what has become my tradition of rounding up every otter in the parade to go together - which was just me and  kiswara this time around. No sign of  panthesurfingotter and  drex150 showed up after the parade was underway.

FNL (the variety show) started RIGHT after the parade, so we didn't even have time to get out of fursuit. We headed for the line to get into the show, and it wasn't clear whether there was a special early entrance line for sponsors and patrons, so I asked one of the main staffers (the guy who auctioned me off) if there was or not. He said he loves to support sponsors and he likes me, so he'd let me and Dosner in early. We ended up getting in the front row, which was really fun. Kiswara had forgotten his badge, so he had to go get out of fursuit and get his badge before coming down. We saved a spot for him in the front row, but apparently staff had closed the doors and were refusing to let anyone else in, because the show was full :( I even went outside to see if I could find him out there, but he'd already left.

After the show we got out of suit and found Kiswara again, and went with a huge group to go to a nice curry place for dinner. While there, we found out that while the Cabaret show starts at 9, seating starts at 8 - we found this out at 8:15.

Well, fuck again.

We rush back and get there at about 8:45. Turns out that show actually DOES have a dedicated sponsor line for early entry, but it was too late. So we just go find the best seats we can.

The cabaret show was...interesting. There were some really funny skits, and a few strip shows. But the strip shows were all female, and the only nudity ever seen were boobs. In fact, there were almost no male performers out of suit, except a couple guys doing Flow with staves. The fursuit skits were cute though, and not being restricted by PG-13 was fun. The big problem though is that they waited FOREVER between acts for people to start donating money, sometimes as long as half an hour of the MC talking while strippers got tips for charity, before taking out the next act. The show altogether lasted 3 hours - didn't end until midnight. I was the only one in my group who didn't leave early.

After I got out of the show, I found Kiswara again and invited him to come drink with us. I headed back to my room, got really drunk, had fursuit cuddles and a generally good time. Didn't go to bed until 6 am!

Sunday:
Got up, got coffee, felt like shit for a few hours. I fursuited for a little bit, hung out a little, got lunch at..don't even remember where. I went swimming for a few hours with Dosner, Drex and Kipper (4 otters swimming, go figure) in the hotel's beautiful half-indoor half-outdoor pool and hot tub. The con was over by mid afternoon, and we all left the hotel to go to Laguna Beach. 3 people were fursuiting, the rest of us just wandered the beach for a few hours. It was really beautiful, and I hadn't seen a real beach in years. Got to see wild dolphins playing in the waves, too. At 8:30 we got dinner at BJ's, which was really very fun and we had a great time. Finally got back to the hotel at midnight, at which point all that was left to do was pack and have a little to drink as we chilled with friends. We let Drex and Kipper stay in our room since our other two roommates had left already, and they didn't have a room for the night.

Monday:
Got up at 6:30am and Drex and Kipper took me to the airport, then flew home. My con was over D:

Thanks again to all the awesome furs I met and old friends I saw. It was a really fun, relaxing, and much needed, weekend