Hello all! I missed you very much, and I really do look forward to getting back to work. Though you're going to have to give me a few days to travel back home (the 6th, wednesday, will be the 7 hr drive back to NC) and once that's all over with I'll be resuming the stream schedule. I hope you all have been well in the absence!!

So! Ignore this, really, because i'm only typing it for my own reference. It's fun to do these little journal recaps or else i'll forget everything LOL

RECAP:

Thursday we met at my mom's home and packed everything up and headed off to the hotel. The hotel doesn't allow check-ins until 3pm, so we dropped by the convention center and picked up the preorder badges. Nick and Ang picked fucking stupid badge names (Hawkguy and Long UFO respectively) and we left for the strip district to kill some more time before check-in. Destiny isn't a Pittsburgh native so she's never been--she really liked it, which made me a happy camper because she hates Pittsburgh (in her words, Shitsburgh) Mary got Thai food from a food cart and the rest of us got food from Wholey's. After that we stopped at a couple of shops including a novelty candy shop. Because I make poor decisions I bought ranch dressing soda ( IM LOOKING AT YOU). It was kind of sweet but mostly awful and a mistake LOL. Took an uber back to the hotel and moved our junk into the room. This year's room was smaller than last year's and also had a stupid bathroom layout. We were on the 14th floor....none of the windows were locked and there weren't any screens on the outside??? How has no one fallen out and splatted on the pavement yet???? Once we got settled in I think we just played board games and got pizza? I don't remember if we did anything else. Feel free to correct me if I'm in the wrong here. (EDIT: I REMEMBER. nick, ang and I went downstairs to work out, which was a horrible decision. nick does crossfit so he was fine and ang was pretty ok too but all of the machines are too big for me so i basically ate shit on everything. ang was nice enough to donate her inhaler to me but i apparently "swallowed it with my whole mouth" but at least i wasn't quite as miserable after that)

Friday Mary and Ang left early in the morning to get donuts. We ate and Ang needed something from Walmart, so all of us except Nick left with her to go back home. Dropped by her house, Mary's house, Lin's Garden for chinese, Walmart for glowsticks and other stuff, Burger King for those mac n cheetos, then back to the hotel. Nick was taking an online final for some shitty italian literature class while we were gone (drunk like a fucking savage). We left for the convention center. Generally going to anthrocon is less for the actual convention and more for us to all hang out together, so we don't go to many panels. Granted, we DO go to the panels we think are going to be a total shitshow: the open mic was the first panel we went to. Most of it was pretty cringe-worthy (especially since it was very raunchy and some mom and her little girl were sitting next to us) but some of the jokes were....ok LMAO. Mary, Destiny and I left early because Destiny couldn't handle the intense cringe and went to the blizzard games meet and greet (though none of us realized it was a meet and greet, where you have to, like, talk to people, so we left pretty quick). we went to karaoke and it was almost equally as bad as the open mic. The guy who sang Piano Man was pretty good, at least. And some fursuiter singing a japanese song was fired up and knew all the lyrics without looking, so good on you man. After karaoke we went back to the hotel to kill a few hours before Are You A Werewolf at 10pm. We went to Market Square to get dinner and played some board games before we headed back to the DLCC. This year's AYAW was...interesting. The crowd was more annoying than usual and two of us (me and Ang) died in the first round so it was an excruciating hour of sitting around doing NOTHING. I know Destiny hated it too because, in her words, "everyone thought they were so funny and they weren't" and she was kind of right about that. At least some of the people were nice (like and a geologist in a 1920's get-up called Osiris and the girl with cool earrings) but otherwise they really were all dicks. The moderator was being a dick this year too. Ah well. It was 2am at this point so we went home and crashed.

Saturday we woke up kinda late and went to watch the fursuit parade. They had Rita's ice (local italian ice chain) so we ate and watched all the fursuiters do their thing. Destiny was nice enough to humor me when I was chatting about wanting a fursuit. Then I accidentally spilled Rita's ice on the floor if there's no Rita's booth next year, it's because I left a huge red stain all over the carpet by the escalator (we TRIED to clean it!!! i swear!!). RIP. After window-shopping in the dealer's den and artist alley, we left for the hotel to eat (i think? again, , if i'm wrong feel free to correct me). We played some more games and Destiny took a nap. Nick and Ang pre-gamed before the rave while Destiny took a nap and I got ready. We had some time to kill before the rave so Nick and Ang and I wandered around the convention center's outside balcony; I forgot how pretty the DLCC is. The rave was SO MUCH FUN and we all had a really good time (though Nick got smashed and just bounced around in the inflatable donut for like 2 hours). Went home, put Nick and Ang to bed and crashed for the night.

Sunday was pretty lowkey, wandered around the dealer's den/artist alley for an hour or so and bought a couple of things. Had to leave a little earlier than intended and ended up not getting to buy some stuff, but that's fine. Wandered around the strip district and went back to the hotel. We just sort of hung out this day. Cleaned up a little bit and headed to bed.

And here we are! can't wait for next year