FA+
Shop
Anthrocon 2011 journal
14 years ago
General
Damn, I nearly forgot this! So much for going to bed on time tonight...
Wednesday 22nd
I'll skip the details of the flight to the US, it was fairly uneventful. I arrived at Charlotte-Douglas airport on time, and from what I remember the flight to Pittsburgh was straightforward enough as well, except that the luggage didn't arrive.
This did cause me some panic as I couldn't find the receipt for it until I remembered that it had been stuck to the back of the boarding pass. Eventually it was established that the TSA had decided to do an extended check on about half the luggage, it had missed the flight and as a result about half the passengers were so separated from their belongings. Most of the stuff in my suitcase was replaceable, but I do pity the guy who seemed to have nothing except a guitar.
One awkward moment was when I was asked if there was anything identifiable inside it, at which point my mind locked up and embarrassed, I described the grey wolf tail that was the only thing which sprang to mind.
I took a taxi to the hotel and notified them that the luggage would probably be along later, supposedly around 8pm. By this time I had a major headache. Something like this happened in 2008, which I had taken to be the result of dehydration, but presumably wasn't this time because I had taken care to avoid that and none of the other symptoms occurred.
Sofox, Alondro and Shades were already in the room - apparently Shades had arrived before Alondro, which caused major problems as the hotel got confused and sort of transferred ownership of it to him. While I was pleased to see them the headache was starting to get worse so I lay on the bed and tried to sleep it off.
This didn't work and it actually got a lot worse before it got better. Sofox offered to get some kind of aspirin from the shop, which I eventually conceded might be a good idea.
At this point they went off to get food or something and I dozed for a bit until Mischa arrived. At this point I realised it was approaching 9pm, so I went downstairs to ask again about the luggage, but still no sign. At this point I discovered that the hotel room card no longer worked, but fortunately Mischa was still inside and was able to let me in.
The others came back later - and were locked out in much the same way, so I gave them my card and they got it reactivated for me. Sofox had bought some aspirin but by this point the headache was on the way out so I didn't need it. Mischa scanned through the channels and put on an amusingly bad film called 'Bloodsport' which we watched and then went to sleep.
For me this was not much relief because I was plagued by dreams of Charlotte airport and luggage - various combinations of having it with me, losing it and finding it again.
Thursday 23rd
We woke up around 7am on Thursday and I was in a foul mood on account of my luggage not being here. I borrowed Sofox' shaver, and when I was presentable went down to reception, where the luggage had finally arrived, and that buoyed my spirits remarkably.
On the way back, I got an SMS message from Wuffnpuff, inviting me to meet her at the Omni, but curiously I was not able to call her, so I sent a text in reply. I checked the luggage, changed clothes and did various other things that the missing suitcase had forestalled and then a group of us decided to go out and meet Wuff.
At this point I realised that I had forgotten quite where the Omni was. In the meantime more messages had been sent by Wuff but she was still not taking calls. We ran into Damaris and Mits in the lobby of the Omni, and eventually Wuff showed up. The problem was that she had taken to keeping her phone in her rucksack and couldn't hear it ringing.
Gabi, Zedd, Darkmoon and a number of other people turned up as well and at Damaris' suggestion, we made our way to the Warhol museum, via a pastry shop where we grabbed something for breakfast and I got the first look at the wrist-strap Damaris had been making for me.
Once at the museum, Sofox attempted to negotiate some kind of group discount but unfortunately failed, and we had to pay full price. The museum was interesting, but not quite as fascinating as I had kind of hoped. Probably the highlight of it was an installation on the top floor containing a room filled with silver pillow-shaped helium balloons.
Fans were installed to keep them circulating and also to try and prevent them from drifting out of their room, but this did happen. One of the attendants came along and took out a large stick that had been concealed on the window ledge for this purpose. She batted the balloon towards the entrance and when it came close I jumped up to grab it.
The grabbing part worked fine. Landing didn't, and the shock destroyed one of the buckles on my laptop bag. After punting the balloon back into the room, I paused to gather the little plastic fragments and tied the strap back onto it. The laptop bag was falling apart anyway so it wasn't a tremendous problem.
Afterwards we made our way back towards the convention centre, stopping first in a Wendy Burger place.
The only time I'd ever had Wendys' before was in the late 1980s, and it had been a memorable experience in that the burger was flat, pale grey and looked and tasted like wet cardboard. Either things have improved considerably in the intervening decades or that was a particularly bad example of the franchise because the meal was decent enough. For some reason the conversation turned to gambling and this drew enthusiastic comments from passing staff members.
Once fed, we went to get registered for the convention and then hung out in the Zoo (which for the uninitiated is one of the ballrooms turned into a general hanging out area). Amber showed up briefly, and had an interesting conversation with Gabi, who was trying to find a seat:
Amber: "You can't sit and eat. You have to stand and eat, like a giraffe! Stand there while I hold the pizza up for you."
Sofox: "But Gabi's character isn't a giraffe, she's a vixen."
Amber: "Oh. That's going to be a problem when I give her con-badge to her, then."
The Tea Party crept ever closer but there was some confusion as to where it would be. It had been suggested that it could relocate to Keaton's room if that proved to be bigger, but as time passed it became clear to me that she would not be in a fit state after arriving to organise it even if the room was suitable (and it later turned out that it wasn't anyway). I lent one of my SD cards to Mits so he could copy some My Little Pony stuff off it, but this took a long time, so I spent a lot of time hovering around him waiting to get the card back - someone appeared to take this as meaning that we were a couple - I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or offended.
Later, I went up to the room to grab a bag of goodies for the party and decided to put on my trench coat as well for the hell of it. Wuff came to help carry things, but somehow avoided actually doing anything. Eventually Keaton arrived about 20 minutes or so prior to the tea party, if memory serves. I snuck up on her outside the Zoo, and then the group of us headed off to the Omni.
The tea party itself was good, as usual. I had brought with me the usual assortment of Kinder Eggs and some Kitkats, which went down well. Instead of the cookies which seemed to upset customs last time, I brought instead some roast ox crisps which are quite tasty but rather difficult to get hold of outside the Newport area. Gabi had brought a typically unusual selection of tea, and also some mochi cakes
which I had never come across before.
Alondro brought a remarkably good blueberry pie and also some pumpkin pie that had had the sugar missed out. I had a long chat with Keaton and managed to get some sketchbook stuff drawn by her and also Vexingly Yours.
About the only downer moment for me was when Bas insisted on explaining in graphic detail a method of torture he had described to Keaton for one of her stories.
I left around 11:50, since I still needed to catch up on sleep and that aside, I wasn't sure I liked the idea of trying to remember how to get back to the Westin way past midnight.
Friday 24th
We got up around 8:30 Friday, and I went to the Zoo to try and meet up with Wuff and then Keaton, causing us to miss the opening ceremony. Wuff was, as I recall, at the Zoo, and Keaton was at a coffee shop in the foyer. As soon as both groups were united, Wuff had to go and buy some stationary, so I came along in the hopes of finding a USB-on-the-go cable, which the laptop shop at the airport hadn't had in stock and which I had failed to purchase beforehand. They did actually have one, but only as part of a $30 collection of different USB leads so I skipped it.
Then as soon as we got back, Bas and Wuff decided to go to the local bagel shop, so I went with them. When we returned, went to look at the notice boards, and I finally got a chance to eat the stuff I had bought at the bagel place. We hovered around for a bit longer and then headed off to the Dealer's Den, which I believe opened around 11.
Once inside my priorities were to find the DMFA table, which was actually a consortium managed by Darkmoon, a sort of mini Artists' Alley. There I collected some items I had preordered - two chibis (one of Ren's character and one of Simeon), some shirts of Fi and of Kria, and also bought some badges and bookmarks
that Darkmoon was selling with extreme prejudice.
My next priority was to collect Pegasus316's rendition of Daryil (which I had been hoping to collect the previous year, but he couldn't make the 'con).
[As an aside, it can be seen here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3287168/ ]
Transporting the original of Dorcan safely home had been a problem in 2009, this year I had brought a large plastic wallet to place the artwork in, but at that point I realised that I had left it at the hotel so I ran back to get it and drop the DMFA shirts off there while I was at it. Around this time Mao collared me saying that I'd banned him from the DMFA forum and threatening revenge, which had me a bit concerned at first but turned out to be a prank.
When a suitable occasion presented itself I asked Amber if she had any writing advice for improving Jakob's temperament in Project Future. Her suggestion was "He should get laid."
When I got back, I collected the piece, commissioned a rendition of Simeon and went back to the DMFA table. There, Gabi had taken photos of a pair of fursuiters dressed as My Little Pony characters. I believe it was Tony who said "I have been hugged by Rainbow Dash... my life is now complete!"
I went off to commission some artists and ran into Jesus. When I was done I went back to the DMFA table and Darkmoon and Wuff went off to eat so I decided to tag along.
Darkmoon mentioned that they had taken almost as much in that one day as they had in the previous two conventions put together, and outlined some of his plans for extra merchandise, and widening the scope to appeal to the wider furry audience rather than specifically to DMFA and CVRPG readers.
We decided to go to Arby's, which coming from outside the US was a rather novel experience - it was almost like McDonalds but with slices of roast beef instead of burger inside the buns, nice enough but unexpected and somehow slightly surreal, like coming across sage and onion flavoured ice-cream, or a gravy sandwich.
Darkmoon and/or Wuff needed to get something from the hotel so we decided to eat there. At this point I figured it would be a good time to photograph Ren's chibi so I could upload it somewhere for him to see, since Darkmoon had offered to lend me their internet link if I needed it. This turned out to be a fatal mistake - technical details follow.
The laptop I had brought was a Toshiba AC100, basically an android tablet with a keyboard that I had hotrodded into running linux instead. The problem is that the AC100 has 512MB of memory and cannot be expanded in any way. Rotating and scaling the photo down was starting to cause it to freak out because the desktop was intended for running on machines with at least 1GB and/or swap.
So I created a 512MB file, and mounted it as swap in the hopes that it would make the system run more reliably. Instead, it crashed out and erased one of the system folders, leaving the machine in a non-bootable state.
Once I had given up, we went back to the Dealer's Den, and then the Zoo once the Dealer's Den had closed. Mits was around again and we tried our best to recover the Toshiba and I ended up spending about two hours trying to copy my data off the device so it could be reformatted. During this time everyone else left, but didn't say where they had gone - it turned out later they had headed off to the Golden Palace restaurant and hadn't thought to let me know, which left me a little bitter.
Once the laptop was done I roamed around the Zoo, waiting for them to return, and spent some time watching a guy who had brought a Wimshurst machine to the 'con.
People trickled back from the restaurant but then immediately went to the Rave instead, which I could not stand, and besides it was getting late so I called it a night and went back to the room instead, where Alondro was watching Ghost in the Shell.
Saturday 25th
This time we got up around 9am and Wuff invited us to queue outside the Dealer's Den with her. She was dressed as Katrina, a cat person from the CVRPG comic, and constantly worrying about the stitching on her outfit, which if I remember correctly, was her first attempt at creating a costume.
As soon as we got in, Wuff was sent on a food run to get something for Nyil to eat. Keaton turned up a bit later and since there wasn't much else for me to do in the Den, I went to meet her at the foyer and grabbed a snack there. When we were done, we met up at the Zoo where I tried unsuccessfully to get into contact with Ren and moved to the Dealers' Den. I hung around, waiting for the commissions to complete and also decided to get a few more done.
Nyil, like Agent Elrond, was plagued by people commissioning My Little Pony badges from him (even though he raised the price on four occasions) and was only too happy to draw one of my characters because it was something other than a pony. He had on his desk a particularly camp rendition of one of his characters, specifically this:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5813738/
Rifling through my references I glanced down at it, and then at Daryil, and said "Okay, this has to be done." I handed him the Daryil reference. "What sort of pose do you have in mind?" Nyil asked, and I jabbed down at his camp picture - "He should be like that."
By the time it was done, it felt like I was the only person who hadn't seen it because he kept showing it to people and asking if they had any ideas how Daryil could be made to look more gay.
By this point I was starting to get a little broody, partly because of things Keaton had told me but particularly because I couldn't get in touch with Ren and his last message had left me rather concerned.
I sat by the concession stand, where Sofox and Rafe were discussing "Renard the Fox", a bizarre epic tale from the middle-ages which I had not heard of before. Sofox noticed I was brooding and tried to fix this by dragging me up onto the roof of the convention centre.
The view was okay but nothing terribly different from what you'd see out the windows in front of the Den, or out of the windows of the hotel, for that matter.
People began drifting back and we all reconvened around 2PM for the Fursuit parade. I had been desperate to try and get some shots of the Pony costumes, and hoped this would be my chance. Brady also said that one of his friends was dressed as a robot cat and I figured I had to get a photo of him also. Sadly the camera would not behave itself and took about 25 seconds to focus each time, ruining virtually all of the shots, even though I ran across the room to try and catch them on their exit path from the Dealer's Den.
This left me even more down, but fortunately I ran into the Ponies while crossing the causeway from the Den and managed to take some good shots before I was interrupted by Terence and Philip from South Park.
We made it out of the Den as far as the entrance to the Westin when my phone rang to tell me that one of the commissions was ready to collect, so I went back to grab it. By sheer chance I ran into Brady and the white robot cat - who turned out to be Raiettei dressed as the 'Shattered Glass' version of Ravage from Transformers.
I was then able to take some decent photos of him too, which left me feeling a lot happier. Once I had collected my ink of Sethir (drawn by Agent Elrond), I returned on to the Zoo where the others had gone. I tried again to talk to Ren via the Tiger Den computers, but no success.
A plan was hatched for us to go and get some sushi. I don't like sushi as I discovered last year, but I absolutely adore going out to eat with other people, so I was keen to go anyway, even if it meant grabbing a pizza or something afterwards. However, this plan fell through because of a certain incident which spooked Keaton completely. She excused herself on ill-health grounds and returned to her hotel, and people wandered off to make their own plans.
After regrouping and making sure that the antagonist was no longer with us, we headed to the Golden Palace and tried to figure out how to deal with The Problem. Eventually we came up with a partial solution, and when sure that Keaton was sufficiently okay, met up with her in the foyer of her hotel and just hung out there for a while before returning to the Zoo and then going to see Kage's Story Hour.
At the Zoo, things immediately went bad, but we salvaged what we could and scooted off to the convention centre. Outside we discussed ways to deal with The Problem again, only to be distracted by armoured hyenas and the fact that Sofox' hair was no longer symmetrical.
Blurry photographs were taken and eventually we went in and listened to the story. Aside from parts of it being uncomfortably similar to Bas' torture technique, it was well worth seeing.
Afterwards, we walked Keaton back to her hotel and then went our separate ways - Bas ran into Jordan in the foyer of the hotel and uttered a classic line from this convention: "Hey Jordan, do you wanna go drinking with Jesus?"
Sunday 26th
By now we were getting up around 9:30 am and went down to the Tiger Den at the Zoo to try again with Ren, and again he wasn't around.
Once I was done, I went to the Dealers' Den to collect the last of my commissions and to set up a few last-minute ones, including a wonderful rendition of Simeon as an adventurer drawn by Sandy Schreiber.
I had a pizza from the foyer - I have a peculiar fondness for their chicken pizzas - but for most of the next few hours I sat by the concession stand with Keaton and Aisha who were drawing in each others' sketchbooks.
At this time I managed to get a sketch from Aisha, paid Alondro $60 towards the extra hotel night he'd booked for monday, and instantly regretted it because I was starting to run out of cash on hand (and I could have settled with him by Paypal later).
There were a few intersting things I would have liked to have bought, but didn't because I was feeling too cash-starved at the time. I suspect one of them was porn anyway, and either way it may have made for some interesting questions at customs coming home.
Once the Den closed, I found myself part of a party who were trying to find Amber because she was planning a dinner out at a Brazillian-style steakhouse. We tracked her down and I tagged along because I really wanted to go out for a proper group meal, and ended up in the Omni foyer for a number of hours while the trip was planned. Originally it was supposed to have been 8 people, but it grew and grew, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Amber as she said that she was hopeless at planning these things.
At one point it was 15, and finally 25 when all was said and done. We were a little concerned that the person at the centre of our earlier troubles might reappear and tag along, and later Amber proclaimed "If [he] walks through that door, his larynx is f***ing gone! It will go down in 'con history!"
The next problem was transport, but it was somehow figured out.
Jordan: "Don't push her... She will kick us into the curb and go to McDonalds!"
Amber: "Yes! And when you're all in the taxi, I'll be like, 'SO LONG, SUCKERS!!! French fries! Nomnomnom!'"
Keaton: "Is there a Burger King nearby?"
Amber: "Doesn't matter! I will make one appear out of sheer HATE!"
Sofox, Spice and myself travelled in Seth's car along with someone else I didn't really know and whose name I have forgotten. We arrived ahead of everyone else, and played I-spy for a bit while admiring the scenery. Eventually we went in anyway
and hoped that it wouldn't ruin things if we arrived before Amber did, since she had booked it.
An appetiser of delicious fried bananas was laid on, and when the entire party had arrived, we were given a run-down of how the meal worked. There was a buffet of salad and cold meats, but for the most part we would be served cuts of hot meat as the meal progressed. This was awkward for Gabi because she is vegetarian, but she survived.
Spread at intervals along the table were some devices akin to empty cotton reels which were painted red on one end and green on the other. If they were green side up, we would be served meat, if we wanted to pause the meal for a break, we could turn them red side up. Towards the end we were served cinnamon-coated pineapple, which was, like the bananas, delicious.
Overall the meal was fantastic (though some of the meat was more rare than I like it) and it made a wonderful ending to the convention.
At about 9pm we realised that the place was closing and moved to finish up. Keaton had a flight out around 4am so I bid her safe journey and we slowly filed out. The neat arrangements for arriving at the restaurant were not mirrored in going home.
At one point I had to run back in to drag Sofox out. Finally Amber lost patience and a free-for all occurred, with her, Sofox, Spice and myself piling into Seth's car and leaving the others behind to sort things out for themselves.
I had a quick look around the Zoo first, but I was starting to flake out and besides, virtually everyone I knew was trying to figure out how to get back from the steakhouse anyway, so I checked the computers again and returned to my room.
Monday 27th
One of the things I had to do was return to Wuff the phone which she had sent me to use in the States. I knew that she was leaving around 11:30 so I called her up and arranged a time to meet in the Omni foyer. I spent most of the morning there or helping Darkmoon clear out their room. Kimmy tried to give me a large quantity of his pasta, but I declined as there was too much. Had there just been a jar left I would certainly have taken it. I learned at this point that Nyil had earned hundreds of dollars in Pony badges.
With regret I said goodbye to Wuff, Darkmoon and Damaris and headed back to the Westin. Meanwhile, Gabi, Sofox and a couple of others had gone to the Toonseum, which was currently open only for Anthrocon badge holders. I went back to the Westin and found Alondro. Shades had left by now, and the hotel had left a checkout slip with his name on it which made us worry that still believed the room was in his name instead of Alondro. So tested our keycards once the checkout time was safely past, just to be sure. Satisfied, we went into town to buy drinks while the cleaner came by and dealt with the room.
On the way back we ran into Gabi and Sofox. Returning to the room, we tried to fix my laptop and got it into a state where it was partly working, enough at least for me to be able to get online at the airport or write something in a text editor if I wanted to.
We watched "My Neighbour Totoro" - which I was initially reluctant about because I had convinced myself it would have an unhappy ending - and then went to the Golden Palace again, where Alondro had probably one of the most epic fortune cookies: "You may attend a party where strange customs prevail".
When we got back it was approaching 7pm and we discovered that the keycards had been deactivated while we were at the restaurant, so we had to go and get them reactivated yet again.
Once this was deal with we watched a few episodes of My Little Pony, and Sofox and I took notes on the game we have been developing together - he had wanted to talk about it before, but each of us was waiting for the other to mention it.
Tuesday 28th
Alondro left around 7am, so Sofox and I slept late and then began to tidy the place up. I was becoming worried about the Daryil picture getting bent on the way home and Sofox called down to reception to see if they could find us some kind of cardboard backing. They addressed him with Shades' name, which he dutifully let slide.
When the cardboard was supposed to be ready, I re-tested the keycard again and went downt to collect it which turned into a minor fiasco because what the guy in reception was saying was different to what they had told Sofox. However, I ended up with a piece of plastic sign advertising a steelworks convention of some type. Which makes sense, I guess, being Pittsburgh.
Once we were ready, we checked out, at length got some change for the airport bus and went to the airport. We were separated at first but Sofox found me eventually. I was able to talk to Keaton on AIM but Ren was still out of touch (it eventually turned out that his internet connection had died most of the weekend).
Sofox and I clarified our discussion about the game from the previous night and he typed up notes which had previously only been recorded on paper. This happened right up until boarding, but we got most of it covered.
The flight from Pittsburgh to Charlotte was pretty uneventful and I managed to get a cinnabon - Charlotte Douglas airport is the only place I know of which sells them, since the UK branches were closed a couple of years ago. I think it's fair to say that
the chance to get a cinnabon was one of the main reasons I paid extra to go via Charlotte instead of Newark as I did last year.
I had plenty of time to look around Charlotte because the flight was delayed by three hours. Half of which was spent waiting while they replaced parts of the hydraulics, and then when the plane was airworthy again, we spent another 90 minutes or so waiting for the weather to clear enough for us to be permitted to take off. This showed in the announcements:
"Please turn off all electronics, mobile phones, laptops, anything that gives you pleasure."
"Okay, this is taking longer than expected, feel free to switch your electronic devices back on."
"Okay, we'll try this one more time! Please turn off all electronic devices, mobile phones, laptops, anything with an on-off switch."
...several times over.
Once we were actually airborne the flight was decent enough, except that there was some kind of a strike at customs and it took forever to get cleared.
...And that is my journal of Anthrocon 2011.
EDIT:
Photos can be seen here:
http://s89.photobucket.com/albums/k.....wolf/con/ac11/
Commissions, sketchbook stuff and the like are here:
http://s89.photobucket.com/albums/k.....ac11/sketches/
Wednesday 22nd
I'll skip the details of the flight to the US, it was fairly uneventful. I arrived at Charlotte-Douglas airport on time, and from what I remember the flight to Pittsburgh was straightforward enough as well, except that the luggage didn't arrive.
This did cause me some panic as I couldn't find the receipt for it until I remembered that it had been stuck to the back of the boarding pass. Eventually it was established that the TSA had decided to do an extended check on about half the luggage, it had missed the flight and as a result about half the passengers were so separated from their belongings. Most of the stuff in my suitcase was replaceable, but I do pity the guy who seemed to have nothing except a guitar.
One awkward moment was when I was asked if there was anything identifiable inside it, at which point my mind locked up and embarrassed, I described the grey wolf tail that was the only thing which sprang to mind.
I took a taxi to the hotel and notified them that the luggage would probably be along later, supposedly around 8pm. By this time I had a major headache. Something like this happened in 2008, which I had taken to be the result of dehydration, but presumably wasn't this time because I had taken care to avoid that and none of the other symptoms occurred.
Sofox, Alondro and Shades were already in the room - apparently Shades had arrived before Alondro, which caused major problems as the hotel got confused and sort of transferred ownership of it to him. While I was pleased to see them the headache was starting to get worse so I lay on the bed and tried to sleep it off.
This didn't work and it actually got a lot worse before it got better. Sofox offered to get some kind of aspirin from the shop, which I eventually conceded might be a good idea.
At this point they went off to get food or something and I dozed for a bit until Mischa arrived. At this point I realised it was approaching 9pm, so I went downstairs to ask again about the luggage, but still no sign. At this point I discovered that the hotel room card no longer worked, but fortunately Mischa was still inside and was able to let me in.
The others came back later - and were locked out in much the same way, so I gave them my card and they got it reactivated for me. Sofox had bought some aspirin but by this point the headache was on the way out so I didn't need it. Mischa scanned through the channels and put on an amusingly bad film called 'Bloodsport' which we watched and then went to sleep.
For me this was not much relief because I was plagued by dreams of Charlotte airport and luggage - various combinations of having it with me, losing it and finding it again.
Thursday 23rd
We woke up around 7am on Thursday and I was in a foul mood on account of my luggage not being here. I borrowed Sofox' shaver, and when I was presentable went down to reception, where the luggage had finally arrived, and that buoyed my spirits remarkably.
On the way back, I got an SMS message from Wuffnpuff, inviting me to meet her at the Omni, but curiously I was not able to call her, so I sent a text in reply. I checked the luggage, changed clothes and did various other things that the missing suitcase had forestalled and then a group of us decided to go out and meet Wuff.
At this point I realised that I had forgotten quite where the Omni was. In the meantime more messages had been sent by Wuff but she was still not taking calls. We ran into Damaris and Mits in the lobby of the Omni, and eventually Wuff showed up. The problem was that she had taken to keeping her phone in her rucksack and couldn't hear it ringing.
Gabi, Zedd, Darkmoon and a number of other people turned up as well and at Damaris' suggestion, we made our way to the Warhol museum, via a pastry shop where we grabbed something for breakfast and I got the first look at the wrist-strap Damaris had been making for me.
Once at the museum, Sofox attempted to negotiate some kind of group discount but unfortunately failed, and we had to pay full price. The museum was interesting, but not quite as fascinating as I had kind of hoped. Probably the highlight of it was an installation on the top floor containing a room filled with silver pillow-shaped helium balloons.
Fans were installed to keep them circulating and also to try and prevent them from drifting out of their room, but this did happen. One of the attendants came along and took out a large stick that had been concealed on the window ledge for this purpose. She batted the balloon towards the entrance and when it came close I jumped up to grab it.
The grabbing part worked fine. Landing didn't, and the shock destroyed one of the buckles on my laptop bag. After punting the balloon back into the room, I paused to gather the little plastic fragments and tied the strap back onto it. The laptop bag was falling apart anyway so it wasn't a tremendous problem.
Afterwards we made our way back towards the convention centre, stopping first in a Wendy Burger place.
The only time I'd ever had Wendys' before was in the late 1980s, and it had been a memorable experience in that the burger was flat, pale grey and looked and tasted like wet cardboard. Either things have improved considerably in the intervening decades or that was a particularly bad example of the franchise because the meal was decent enough. For some reason the conversation turned to gambling and this drew enthusiastic comments from passing staff members.
Once fed, we went to get registered for the convention and then hung out in the Zoo (which for the uninitiated is one of the ballrooms turned into a general hanging out area). Amber showed up briefly, and had an interesting conversation with Gabi, who was trying to find a seat:
Amber: "You can't sit and eat. You have to stand and eat, like a giraffe! Stand there while I hold the pizza up for you."
Sofox: "But Gabi's character isn't a giraffe, she's a vixen."
Amber: "Oh. That's going to be a problem when I give her con-badge to her, then."
The Tea Party crept ever closer but there was some confusion as to where it would be. It had been suggested that it could relocate to Keaton's room if that proved to be bigger, but as time passed it became clear to me that she would not be in a fit state after arriving to organise it even if the room was suitable (and it later turned out that it wasn't anyway). I lent one of my SD cards to Mits so he could copy some My Little Pony stuff off it, but this took a long time, so I spent a lot of time hovering around him waiting to get the card back - someone appeared to take this as meaning that we were a couple - I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or offended.
Later, I went up to the room to grab a bag of goodies for the party and decided to put on my trench coat as well for the hell of it. Wuff came to help carry things, but somehow avoided actually doing anything. Eventually Keaton arrived about 20 minutes or so prior to the tea party, if memory serves. I snuck up on her outside the Zoo, and then the group of us headed off to the Omni.
The tea party itself was good, as usual. I had brought with me the usual assortment of Kinder Eggs and some Kitkats, which went down well. Instead of the cookies which seemed to upset customs last time, I brought instead some roast ox crisps which are quite tasty but rather difficult to get hold of outside the Newport area. Gabi had brought a typically unusual selection of tea, and also some mochi cakes
which I had never come across before.
Alondro brought a remarkably good blueberry pie and also some pumpkin pie that had had the sugar missed out. I had a long chat with Keaton and managed to get some sketchbook stuff drawn by her and also Vexingly Yours.
About the only downer moment for me was when Bas insisted on explaining in graphic detail a method of torture he had described to Keaton for one of her stories.
I left around 11:50, since I still needed to catch up on sleep and that aside, I wasn't sure I liked the idea of trying to remember how to get back to the Westin way past midnight.
Friday 24th
We got up around 8:30 Friday, and I went to the Zoo to try and meet up with Wuff and then Keaton, causing us to miss the opening ceremony. Wuff was, as I recall, at the Zoo, and Keaton was at a coffee shop in the foyer. As soon as both groups were united, Wuff had to go and buy some stationary, so I came along in the hopes of finding a USB-on-the-go cable, which the laptop shop at the airport hadn't had in stock and which I had failed to purchase beforehand. They did actually have one, but only as part of a $30 collection of different USB leads so I skipped it.
Then as soon as we got back, Bas and Wuff decided to go to the local bagel shop, so I went with them. When we returned, went to look at the notice boards, and I finally got a chance to eat the stuff I had bought at the bagel place. We hovered around for a bit longer and then headed off to the Dealer's Den, which I believe opened around 11.
Once inside my priorities were to find the DMFA table, which was actually a consortium managed by Darkmoon, a sort of mini Artists' Alley. There I collected some items I had preordered - two chibis (one of Ren's character and one of Simeon), some shirts of Fi and of Kria, and also bought some badges and bookmarks
that Darkmoon was selling with extreme prejudice.
My next priority was to collect Pegasus316's rendition of Daryil (which I had been hoping to collect the previous year, but he couldn't make the 'con).
[As an aside, it can be seen here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3287168/ ]
Transporting the original of Dorcan safely home had been a problem in 2009, this year I had brought a large plastic wallet to place the artwork in, but at that point I realised that I had left it at the hotel so I ran back to get it and drop the DMFA shirts off there while I was at it. Around this time Mao collared me saying that I'd banned him from the DMFA forum and threatening revenge, which had me a bit concerned at first but turned out to be a prank.
When a suitable occasion presented itself I asked Amber if she had any writing advice for improving Jakob's temperament in Project Future. Her suggestion was "He should get laid."
When I got back, I collected the piece, commissioned a rendition of Simeon and went back to the DMFA table. There, Gabi had taken photos of a pair of fursuiters dressed as My Little Pony characters. I believe it was Tony who said "I have been hugged by Rainbow Dash... my life is now complete!"
I went off to commission some artists and ran into Jesus. When I was done I went back to the DMFA table and Darkmoon and Wuff went off to eat so I decided to tag along.
Darkmoon mentioned that they had taken almost as much in that one day as they had in the previous two conventions put together, and outlined some of his plans for extra merchandise, and widening the scope to appeal to the wider furry audience rather than specifically to DMFA and CVRPG readers.
We decided to go to Arby's, which coming from outside the US was a rather novel experience - it was almost like McDonalds but with slices of roast beef instead of burger inside the buns, nice enough but unexpected and somehow slightly surreal, like coming across sage and onion flavoured ice-cream, or a gravy sandwich.
Darkmoon and/or Wuff needed to get something from the hotel so we decided to eat there. At this point I figured it would be a good time to photograph Ren's chibi so I could upload it somewhere for him to see, since Darkmoon had offered to lend me their internet link if I needed it. This turned out to be a fatal mistake - technical details follow.
The laptop I had brought was a Toshiba AC100, basically an android tablet with a keyboard that I had hotrodded into running linux instead. The problem is that the AC100 has 512MB of memory and cannot be expanded in any way. Rotating and scaling the photo down was starting to cause it to freak out because the desktop was intended for running on machines with at least 1GB and/or swap.
So I created a 512MB file, and mounted it as swap in the hopes that it would make the system run more reliably. Instead, it crashed out and erased one of the system folders, leaving the machine in a non-bootable state.
Once I had given up, we went back to the Dealer's Den, and then the Zoo once the Dealer's Den had closed. Mits was around again and we tried our best to recover the Toshiba and I ended up spending about two hours trying to copy my data off the device so it could be reformatted. During this time everyone else left, but didn't say where they had gone - it turned out later they had headed off to the Golden Palace restaurant and hadn't thought to let me know, which left me a little bitter.
Once the laptop was done I roamed around the Zoo, waiting for them to return, and spent some time watching a guy who had brought a Wimshurst machine to the 'con.
People trickled back from the restaurant but then immediately went to the Rave instead, which I could not stand, and besides it was getting late so I called it a night and went back to the room instead, where Alondro was watching Ghost in the Shell.
Saturday 25th
This time we got up around 9am and Wuff invited us to queue outside the Dealer's Den with her. She was dressed as Katrina, a cat person from the CVRPG comic, and constantly worrying about the stitching on her outfit, which if I remember correctly, was her first attempt at creating a costume.
As soon as we got in, Wuff was sent on a food run to get something for Nyil to eat. Keaton turned up a bit later and since there wasn't much else for me to do in the Den, I went to meet her at the foyer and grabbed a snack there. When we were done, we met up at the Zoo where I tried unsuccessfully to get into contact with Ren and moved to the Dealers' Den. I hung around, waiting for the commissions to complete and also decided to get a few more done.
Nyil, like Agent Elrond, was plagued by people commissioning My Little Pony badges from him (even though he raised the price on four occasions) and was only too happy to draw one of my characters because it was something other than a pony. He had on his desk a particularly camp rendition of one of his characters, specifically this:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5813738/
Rifling through my references I glanced down at it, and then at Daryil, and said "Okay, this has to be done." I handed him the Daryil reference. "What sort of pose do you have in mind?" Nyil asked, and I jabbed down at his camp picture - "He should be like that."
By the time it was done, it felt like I was the only person who hadn't seen it because he kept showing it to people and asking if they had any ideas how Daryil could be made to look more gay.
By this point I was starting to get a little broody, partly because of things Keaton had told me but particularly because I couldn't get in touch with Ren and his last message had left me rather concerned.
I sat by the concession stand, where Sofox and Rafe were discussing "Renard the Fox", a bizarre epic tale from the middle-ages which I had not heard of before. Sofox noticed I was brooding and tried to fix this by dragging me up onto the roof of the convention centre.
The view was okay but nothing terribly different from what you'd see out the windows in front of the Den, or out of the windows of the hotel, for that matter.
People began drifting back and we all reconvened around 2PM for the Fursuit parade. I had been desperate to try and get some shots of the Pony costumes, and hoped this would be my chance. Brady also said that one of his friends was dressed as a robot cat and I figured I had to get a photo of him also. Sadly the camera would not behave itself and took about 25 seconds to focus each time, ruining virtually all of the shots, even though I ran across the room to try and catch them on their exit path from the Dealer's Den.
This left me even more down, but fortunately I ran into the Ponies while crossing the causeway from the Den and managed to take some good shots before I was interrupted by Terence and Philip from South Park.
We made it out of the Den as far as the entrance to the Westin when my phone rang to tell me that one of the commissions was ready to collect, so I went back to grab it. By sheer chance I ran into Brady and the white robot cat - who turned out to be Raiettei dressed as the 'Shattered Glass' version of Ravage from Transformers.
I was then able to take some decent photos of him too, which left me feeling a lot happier. Once I had collected my ink of Sethir (drawn by Agent Elrond), I returned on to the Zoo where the others had gone. I tried again to talk to Ren via the Tiger Den computers, but no success.
A plan was hatched for us to go and get some sushi. I don't like sushi as I discovered last year, but I absolutely adore going out to eat with other people, so I was keen to go anyway, even if it meant grabbing a pizza or something afterwards. However, this plan fell through because of a certain incident which spooked Keaton completely. She excused herself on ill-health grounds and returned to her hotel, and people wandered off to make their own plans.
After regrouping and making sure that the antagonist was no longer with us, we headed to the Golden Palace and tried to figure out how to deal with The Problem. Eventually we came up with a partial solution, and when sure that Keaton was sufficiently okay, met up with her in the foyer of her hotel and just hung out there for a while before returning to the Zoo and then going to see Kage's Story Hour.
At the Zoo, things immediately went bad, but we salvaged what we could and scooted off to the convention centre. Outside we discussed ways to deal with The Problem again, only to be distracted by armoured hyenas and the fact that Sofox' hair was no longer symmetrical.
Blurry photographs were taken and eventually we went in and listened to the story. Aside from parts of it being uncomfortably similar to Bas' torture technique, it was well worth seeing.
Afterwards, we walked Keaton back to her hotel and then went our separate ways - Bas ran into Jordan in the foyer of the hotel and uttered a classic line from this convention: "Hey Jordan, do you wanna go drinking with Jesus?"
Sunday 26th
By now we were getting up around 9:30 am and went down to the Tiger Den at the Zoo to try again with Ren, and again he wasn't around.
Once I was done, I went to the Dealers' Den to collect the last of my commissions and to set up a few last-minute ones, including a wonderful rendition of Simeon as an adventurer drawn by Sandy Schreiber.
I had a pizza from the foyer - I have a peculiar fondness for their chicken pizzas - but for most of the next few hours I sat by the concession stand with Keaton and Aisha who were drawing in each others' sketchbooks.
At this time I managed to get a sketch from Aisha, paid Alondro $60 towards the extra hotel night he'd booked for monday, and instantly regretted it because I was starting to run out of cash on hand (and I could have settled with him by Paypal later).
There were a few intersting things I would have liked to have bought, but didn't because I was feeling too cash-starved at the time. I suspect one of them was porn anyway, and either way it may have made for some interesting questions at customs coming home.
Once the Den closed, I found myself part of a party who were trying to find Amber because she was planning a dinner out at a Brazillian-style steakhouse. We tracked her down and I tagged along because I really wanted to go out for a proper group meal, and ended up in the Omni foyer for a number of hours while the trip was planned. Originally it was supposed to have been 8 people, but it grew and grew, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Amber as she said that she was hopeless at planning these things.
At one point it was 15, and finally 25 when all was said and done. We were a little concerned that the person at the centre of our earlier troubles might reappear and tag along, and later Amber proclaimed "If [he] walks through that door, his larynx is f***ing gone! It will go down in 'con history!"
The next problem was transport, but it was somehow figured out.
Jordan: "Don't push her... She will kick us into the curb and go to McDonalds!"
Amber: "Yes! And when you're all in the taxi, I'll be like, 'SO LONG, SUCKERS!!! French fries! Nomnomnom!'"
Keaton: "Is there a Burger King nearby?"
Amber: "Doesn't matter! I will make one appear out of sheer HATE!"
Sofox, Spice and myself travelled in Seth's car along with someone else I didn't really know and whose name I have forgotten. We arrived ahead of everyone else, and played I-spy for a bit while admiring the scenery. Eventually we went in anyway
and hoped that it wouldn't ruin things if we arrived before Amber did, since she had booked it.
An appetiser of delicious fried bananas was laid on, and when the entire party had arrived, we were given a run-down of how the meal worked. There was a buffet of salad and cold meats, but for the most part we would be served cuts of hot meat as the meal progressed. This was awkward for Gabi because she is vegetarian, but she survived.
Spread at intervals along the table were some devices akin to empty cotton reels which were painted red on one end and green on the other. If they were green side up, we would be served meat, if we wanted to pause the meal for a break, we could turn them red side up. Towards the end we were served cinnamon-coated pineapple, which was, like the bananas, delicious.
Overall the meal was fantastic (though some of the meat was more rare than I like it) and it made a wonderful ending to the convention.
At about 9pm we realised that the place was closing and moved to finish up. Keaton had a flight out around 4am so I bid her safe journey and we slowly filed out. The neat arrangements for arriving at the restaurant were not mirrored in going home.
At one point I had to run back in to drag Sofox out. Finally Amber lost patience and a free-for all occurred, with her, Sofox, Spice and myself piling into Seth's car and leaving the others behind to sort things out for themselves.
I had a quick look around the Zoo first, but I was starting to flake out and besides, virtually everyone I knew was trying to figure out how to get back from the steakhouse anyway, so I checked the computers again and returned to my room.
Monday 27th
One of the things I had to do was return to Wuff the phone which she had sent me to use in the States. I knew that she was leaving around 11:30 so I called her up and arranged a time to meet in the Omni foyer. I spent most of the morning there or helping Darkmoon clear out their room. Kimmy tried to give me a large quantity of his pasta, but I declined as there was too much. Had there just been a jar left I would certainly have taken it. I learned at this point that Nyil had earned hundreds of dollars in Pony badges.
With regret I said goodbye to Wuff, Darkmoon and Damaris and headed back to the Westin. Meanwhile, Gabi, Sofox and a couple of others had gone to the Toonseum, which was currently open only for Anthrocon badge holders. I went back to the Westin and found Alondro. Shades had left by now, and the hotel had left a checkout slip with his name on it which made us worry that still believed the room was in his name instead of Alondro. So tested our keycards once the checkout time was safely past, just to be sure. Satisfied, we went into town to buy drinks while the cleaner came by and dealt with the room.
On the way back we ran into Gabi and Sofox. Returning to the room, we tried to fix my laptop and got it into a state where it was partly working, enough at least for me to be able to get online at the airport or write something in a text editor if I wanted to.
We watched "My Neighbour Totoro" - which I was initially reluctant about because I had convinced myself it would have an unhappy ending - and then went to the Golden Palace again, where Alondro had probably one of the most epic fortune cookies: "You may attend a party where strange customs prevail".
When we got back it was approaching 7pm and we discovered that the keycards had been deactivated while we were at the restaurant, so we had to go and get them reactivated yet again.
Once this was deal with we watched a few episodes of My Little Pony, and Sofox and I took notes on the game we have been developing together - he had wanted to talk about it before, but each of us was waiting for the other to mention it.
Tuesday 28th
Alondro left around 7am, so Sofox and I slept late and then began to tidy the place up. I was becoming worried about the Daryil picture getting bent on the way home and Sofox called down to reception to see if they could find us some kind of cardboard backing. They addressed him with Shades' name, which he dutifully let slide.
When the cardboard was supposed to be ready, I re-tested the keycard again and went downt to collect it which turned into a minor fiasco because what the guy in reception was saying was different to what they had told Sofox. However, I ended up with a piece of plastic sign advertising a steelworks convention of some type. Which makes sense, I guess, being Pittsburgh.
Once we were ready, we checked out, at length got some change for the airport bus and went to the airport. We were separated at first but Sofox found me eventually. I was able to talk to Keaton on AIM but Ren was still out of touch (it eventually turned out that his internet connection had died most of the weekend).
Sofox and I clarified our discussion about the game from the previous night and he typed up notes which had previously only been recorded on paper. This happened right up until boarding, but we got most of it covered.
The flight from Pittsburgh to Charlotte was pretty uneventful and I managed to get a cinnabon - Charlotte Douglas airport is the only place I know of which sells them, since the UK branches were closed a couple of years ago. I think it's fair to say that
the chance to get a cinnabon was one of the main reasons I paid extra to go via Charlotte instead of Newark as I did last year.
I had plenty of time to look around Charlotte because the flight was delayed by three hours. Half of which was spent waiting while they replaced parts of the hydraulics, and then when the plane was airworthy again, we spent another 90 minutes or so waiting for the weather to clear enough for us to be permitted to take off. This showed in the announcements:
"Please turn off all electronics, mobile phones, laptops, anything that gives you pleasure."
"Okay, this is taking longer than expected, feel free to switch your electronic devices back on."
"Okay, we'll try this one more time! Please turn off all electronic devices, mobile phones, laptops, anything with an on-off switch."
...several times over.
Once we were actually airborne the flight was decent enough, except that there was some kind of a strike at customs and it took forever to get cleared.
...And that is my journal of Anthrocon 2011.
EDIT:
Photos can be seen here:
http://s89.photobucket.com/albums/k.....wolf/con/ac11/
Commissions, sketchbook stuff and the like are here:
http://s89.photobucket.com/albums/k.....ac11/sketches/
Wait, what?
Heh.
Anyway, great con report thanks for writing it, helped me remember a few parts I'd forgotten. Lotta good stuff happened.
And yes, I did borrow the shaver. I remember being a bit surprised at your willingness to lend it, but it was much appreciated. Now, if I had waited another 25 minutes I could have used my own, but I didn't know that at the time because they had said they'd call the room when the luggage arrived...
With the camera the problem was that there were lots of people, all moving, and the autofocus really, really didn't like that.
The steakhouse we were at was the Green Forest in Rodi Road, but yeah, it's the same kind of thing.
As for Totoro, things like that usually end with the protagonist's birthday, and they go off to meet their magic friend only to discover that they're now too old and can no longer see them...
The game is called 'The Flight of the Maxima':
http://tfm.sofoxcentral.com/