Damn, what an excellent weekend. From Thursday night's "I'm just here to check in & say hi...aww fuck it, let's drink and go to the rave" to Sunday night's Last Supper at the Church Brew Works, I had an awesome time. The overall events I'll remember, as they happened:

...in addition to Thursday night raving, it was definitely entertaining to meet a slightly-more-than-tipsy  _Huttser-coyote. Under the watchful eyes of a few wolves and shepherds, the night started off with him all giggly and shy, and then came Coronas, and a shot of Rumple Minz...and...well...I went all paternal on his drunken buffoonery instead my usual majordomocorrupto. Who knew it was in me? Glad I did, though...'cos he's good people. So the tradition of Tonic drinking...raving...but not sleeping began for the weekend.

...on Friday, it was awesome getting a hatchback full of Furs ( _stormwolf77,  _gshep08,  _wolf400) out of the Convention Center radius and drag them up to Mt. Washington for lunch out on the deck at the Shiloh Grill and subsequent digestion on the deck at my apartment. And we also began the corruption of a new innocent, Pup. Dragged him along to the Leaf & Bean to grab cigars, and then back down to AC so he could see for himself why I became such a fanboy. He's still texting me about you guys. Good to meet  _shadowsfox at the subsequent cigar smoke-out in front of the Westin, too. More Tonic drinking...more raving...not so much sleeping.

...on Saturday, even though it was too brief, I was glad to get some facetime with my major fanboy crush  _sigdog (frikkin' big huge-ass hugs, my man...hit me up anytime). A little bit later, the watcher-to-participant cherry done got all busted. My first time ever putting on a suit, and I chose to do it for the "Death March" parade. I cannot thank  _firestormsix enough for being gracious and letting me wear Zeke the leather harness-clad Hyena. Many thanks to both him for the privilege (hope I did it justice), and to  _dodgercr for covering my back and making sure I didn't fall over during the march. Escalators are trickier than I thought. Great to run into and hang out with  _jyno,  _lavshep,  _dershep and  _shortwave too. Kinda didn't want to get out of suit after the parade, and the mental machinery started to kick into gear. I see another "baby step" coming in the next year. Then more Tonic drinking...more raving...even less sleeping.

...on Sunday, I finally took care of my postponed-by-Con-fun errands, but got my ass down there in the early afternoon to meet up Stormwolf and  _graywolf769 to wander around the closing afternoon of the artist's alley. That evening was the Last Supper at the Church Brew Works. Good beer, good nosh...and a lot of laughter. It was sad knowing the weekend was wrapping up, but it was such a great weekend, it kinda overruled the sadness. Unfortunately, my body went all "dude, you've had eight hours of sleep since Thursday morning...I'm shutting down now" and I crashed out by 9:00pm. So no more Tonic drinking...no more raving...just nine hours of sleep.

I'm seriously glad you guys made it this year, and that I was able to hang out as much as I could. Guess my next step will be to make the transformation a little more official. TonicJim will add "Doberman" to the AC'13 conbadge.

Much love to my peeps.