Back from Spaacccce! 1st Day. 132nd Journal
4 years ago
This is my head.
Well, I'm back! Thought you got rid of me? Ha ha, no. I have returned!
Anyhoot, I arrived back to my lair safely enough after attending StratosFur furcon last weekend. It was their first year and had to limit the attendance due to the "thing" but it went well all in all. Wished they had more panels and not stacked the few they had on top of each other. Hopefully it'll improve as they start to grow and gain experience. These things take time to iron out.
Speaking of missing events, there was no fursuit parade this year. Too bad as I love to go to those. There was fursuit group photos but it was broken up into separate groups. I did get a bunch of individual photos taken in the photo room. I hope to get them send shortly. I did a few different poses while wearing different accessories throughout the weekend. The allow anyone to come back for multiple photo sessions so I took advantage of that, going back like four times with different iterations of myself.
But let's go back to the beginning. I arrived in Houston at around 2 pm on Friday after a 3 hour or so drive. I checked in and grabbed my gear to my room. I had the whole thing to myself as I didn't find a roommate. It was a 400 sq. ft. room so I had tons of space. I threw some of the luggage at the gap in the front and spread my suit parts and other stuff on the spare bed. Then it was off to get something to bite. Not a huge number of restaurants nearby excepts a few fast food joints. I picked Popeye's Chicken as the best of the lot and got some nuggies with some Cajun fries. No drink as I brought my own cold brew tea bags.
The ice maker on my floor wasn't working so I had to use plain tap water. I did notice the water taste a lot different than in San Antonio. In SA, the water comes from a natural aquifer that is filtered through limestone. It is pretty pure but has a lot of calcium in it. I heard people out of town complained it has a slight chlorine flavor but I think it comes through easier due to it being filtered so much.
Houston, on the other paw, taste a lot different. It is kinda earthy with like a woody eage to it like it had been in a wooken vessile for a long long time. I don't know if it is due to the hotel's plumbing or that is how it is in the Houston area. I think it is the later as I notice a similar smell when I pass by a river or other body of water there. Oh well, it wasn't super bad or anything, just a bit different. Thankfully the tea masks pretty much all of it.
After downing the chicken, I suited up and went down to roam the open con floor area. I finally wore my newly made dragon tail. It is quite heavy as I had to stuff the living daylights out of it to get out the wrinkles (I am sure my sewing (lack of) skill didn't help). The solid 3D printed base did help a lot, holding the tail tighter to my body than if I just used a fabric pad. Plus I didn't want my tail to look like a teardrop shaped wet noodle dangling off my back. I did manage to be quite successful in that endeavor (more on that later).
The hotel has this open space below the lobby with a few walk bridges spanning over it. The hotel itself is a triangle shape with the room along two sides and the triangle "base" full of glass panes. There are also some skylights too. But anyway, I was the only suiter downstairs along of a few other furs. Some suiters started to filter in but the activity was kinda light. Then again, the con didn't officially started although there were some events later in the evening.
I walked around as much as I could then ate some dinner with some fuzzy friends at the hotel's restaurant. I didn't want anything heavy so a chicken (starting a trend here it would seem) salad for me. I missed the soft opening but was able to roam the floor as my dragon self a few time, going back to my room here and there.
Then it was time for the Friday night rave. I help my wolf friend get in suit. He normally goes in full but when partial this time with wearing a tux, being a dapper wolf. I suited up as well and we went to the dance. The music was okish. There was thankfully little of that dubstep (heh, my dictionary wants to correct it to dumpster, it knows something) stop-n-no-go buzzing crap. But too much slow and mid-pace parts. There did had some parts that got me going. At one point, one of my horns when flying. Luckily the place wasn't crowded. But those parts were good, just way too little of it. I hoped the dance of Friday was going to be better (spoiler alert, it was worse). I went to the headless lounge to recover. Toward the end, it got so hot suddenly in there that I had to go and cool down. Maybe on of the blower style fans went down. I came back but everything was too sluggish for me to go wild (I need the energy from the fast pounding beats to get me going). The dance was ending anyway.
A note of the headless lounge, the room had a good amount of space with ice water stations. One of those fursuit head trees was blowing away at one side. I only used it once though. The box fan, however, I used lots. Sitting in front of one feels so nice. I did add a small fan in my head and while it made a difference than having none before, it was nothing compared to the box fans.
I was still a bit restless after doing my so called dance gyrations. I hooked up my laptop to the TV in the room but the "free" internet in the hotel as just awful, beyond useless. I didn;t want to watch TV as I find most shows boring especially compared to a properly working internet. So I munched on some leftovers and went to bed. So that closes Friday night. I'll post more con stuff in the upcoming days or so.
Anyhoot, I arrived back to my lair safely enough after attending StratosFur furcon last weekend. It was their first year and had to limit the attendance due to the "thing" but it went well all in all. Wished they had more panels and not stacked the few they had on top of each other. Hopefully it'll improve as they start to grow and gain experience. These things take time to iron out.
Speaking of missing events, there was no fursuit parade this year. Too bad as I love to go to those. There was fursuit group photos but it was broken up into separate groups. I did get a bunch of individual photos taken in the photo room. I hope to get them send shortly. I did a few different poses while wearing different accessories throughout the weekend. The allow anyone to come back for multiple photo sessions so I took advantage of that, going back like four times with different iterations of myself.
But let's go back to the beginning. I arrived in Houston at around 2 pm on Friday after a 3 hour or so drive. I checked in and grabbed my gear to my room. I had the whole thing to myself as I didn't find a roommate. It was a 400 sq. ft. room so I had tons of space. I threw some of the luggage at the gap in the front and spread my suit parts and other stuff on the spare bed. Then it was off to get something to bite. Not a huge number of restaurants nearby excepts a few fast food joints. I picked Popeye's Chicken as the best of the lot and got some nuggies with some Cajun fries. No drink as I brought my own cold brew tea bags.
The ice maker on my floor wasn't working so I had to use plain tap water. I did notice the water taste a lot different than in San Antonio. In SA, the water comes from a natural aquifer that is filtered through limestone. It is pretty pure but has a lot of calcium in it. I heard people out of town complained it has a slight chlorine flavor but I think it comes through easier due to it being filtered so much.
Houston, on the other paw, taste a lot different. It is kinda earthy with like a woody eage to it like it had been in a wooken vessile for a long long time. I don't know if it is due to the hotel's plumbing or that is how it is in the Houston area. I think it is the later as I notice a similar smell when I pass by a river or other body of water there. Oh well, it wasn't super bad or anything, just a bit different. Thankfully the tea masks pretty much all of it.
After downing the chicken, I suited up and went down to roam the open con floor area. I finally wore my newly made dragon tail. It is quite heavy as I had to stuff the living daylights out of it to get out the wrinkles (I am sure my sewing (lack of) skill didn't help). The solid 3D printed base did help a lot, holding the tail tighter to my body than if I just used a fabric pad. Plus I didn't want my tail to look like a teardrop shaped wet noodle dangling off my back. I did manage to be quite successful in that endeavor (more on that later).
The hotel has this open space below the lobby with a few walk bridges spanning over it. The hotel itself is a triangle shape with the room along two sides and the triangle "base" full of glass panes. There are also some skylights too. But anyway, I was the only suiter downstairs along of a few other furs. Some suiters started to filter in but the activity was kinda light. Then again, the con didn't officially started although there were some events later in the evening.
I walked around as much as I could then ate some dinner with some fuzzy friends at the hotel's restaurant. I didn't want anything heavy so a chicken (starting a trend here it would seem) salad for me. I missed the soft opening but was able to roam the floor as my dragon self a few time, going back to my room here and there.
Then it was time for the Friday night rave. I help my wolf friend get in suit. He normally goes in full but when partial this time with wearing a tux, being a dapper wolf. I suited up as well and we went to the dance. The music was okish. There was thankfully little of that dubstep (heh, my dictionary wants to correct it to dumpster, it knows something) stop-n-no-go buzzing crap. But too much slow and mid-pace parts. There did had some parts that got me going. At one point, one of my horns when flying. Luckily the place wasn't crowded. But those parts were good, just way too little of it. I hoped the dance of Friday was going to be better (spoiler alert, it was worse). I went to the headless lounge to recover. Toward the end, it got so hot suddenly in there that I had to go and cool down. Maybe on of the blower style fans went down. I came back but everything was too sluggish for me to go wild (I need the energy from the fast pounding beats to get me going). The dance was ending anyway.
A note of the headless lounge, the room had a good amount of space with ice water stations. One of those fursuit head trees was blowing away at one side. I only used it once though. The box fan, however, I used lots. Sitting in front of one feels so nice. I did add a small fan in my head and while it made a difference than having none before, it was nothing compared to the box fans.
I was still a bit restless after doing my so called dance gyrations. I hooked up my laptop to the TV in the room but the "free" internet in the hotel as just awful, beyond useless. I didn;t want to watch TV as I find most shows boring especially compared to a properly working internet. So I munched on some leftovers and went to bed. So that closes Friday night. I'll post more con stuff in the upcoming days or so.
Yeah, I understand that the rave music might be a bit odd for those with heavy metal tastes but hopefully it was pretty sweet to have your dragon suit on the dancefloor with other fursuiters. Must be pretty cool to have an event like that within driving distance!
It was mainly the ratio of fast and slow parts on Friday with nothing going above mid-pace on Saturday despite doing those "teaser" bits with that gets a little faster and faster and when it should hit hard, drops back down to the same beats again. Just frustrating to get so close to the top of the mountain but only to slide back down again.
Anyhoot, I did what i could with what I had to work with. That solid tail base I printed performed extremely well. I was able to whip my tail side to side and instead of swinging like a stiff board, it wiggles quite nicely despite me overstuffing it. I was quite pleased with the results. It undulated nicely. One of my friends at the con took a quick video of me doing some wagging and I'll see if i can post it once I get my grubby paws on it.
As for driving distance, we now have three cons going in TeXaS and just might get a fourth. Damn, that would be awesome.