Friday Morning would be the day I would arrive at Furfright 2011. I got to Hartford from Baltimore without any issues before being picked up from the airport by Dusk and heading to the hotel. I got to the hotel and stood in the pre-reg line to pick up my stuff. Half an hour later, I had my badge, and I met up with  graywolf769 who I was rooming with. I got settled in and then it was time to explore the con.

My friend  icefoxix said the hotel was like a maze, and he wasn't kidding. I ended up walking the long way around to get to my room before I figured out there was a shortcut to get there. I wandered for a while and found out where things were. I hit up the dealers dungeon and dropped off my sketchbook with Heather Bruton and picking up some early items.

I checked out the game room, it was neat. Someone had set up a pinball machine with free play and there was a pop'n music controller with the movie version set in another area. That was very popular over the weekend.

In the late afternoon, I attended what would be my only panel of Furfright, which was learning how to do the Thriller Dance, as led by  jdpuppy and  Kwik So it's been a while since I've had to learn choreography to a popular song, and yes, some of the moves were not easy. There were about 40 who showed up to the class and by the time it was over, everyone was getting it. For some funny moments, we had  camohusky fake banging into the wall since we were in a small room and did have to limit some of our movements. Also, JD was referring to one of the moves as with attitude; I looked at it and called out "Bitch, Please!" as the move was going on, which folks found funny and picked up. It was eventually shortened to a few of us repeating "Bitch, bitch, bitch bitch!"

By the time the panel was done, I raced back to the game room to get in on the single-handed pinball tournament, but I was too late for that one. Oh well. I met up with Grey and we went out to get some dinner. I came back to the hotel and threw on my fursuit and headed to the dance that evening.

Now let me pause here and say that while the hotel was clearly running their HVAC based on the weather, it was too warm inside for fursuiting during the day. I figured that out after some early suiting and so most of my fursuiting activities would take place during the night.

At the dance I ran into Camo, Sadie, WolfpupTK, and Nbowa, who had all been at the Thriller Panel, and we decided to go find an empty room where we could practice and reinforce what we had learned. All we knew was at some point we would dance, depending on when Kwik arranged a time for us to show. So we ended up in a hallway in the hotel, and I was steaming hot due to being in suit, so eventually the head had to come off or else I was going to be hurting that evening. We did some practice, worked some stuff out, and JD happened to come by so we reviewed stuff with him.

Afterward I got word that Icefox had arrived, so I went and met up with him. We hung out at the con, talked with some friends, watched some poker. It got to be late (2 AM) so we all headed up to bed.

A good start to the con, but the real fun would come along later...