I think I'm still on track for BLFC. It's local enough that it shouldn't be a budget buster. On that track though is the reality that we're starting off 2014 in fine fashion. While I didn't have to pop the 5K for a heater replacement at the condo, they did find some leaking plumbing and I still had to deal with the repairs to the heater, so I've not seen any income from the condo it two months. Normally I take a $200 loss or so every month on owning that nightmare. With no rent coming in that balloons up to $900/mo for the last two months that I've basically tossed into a bucket and lit on fire.

Juggle that with incoming insurance renewals which are always a big hit to the budget and I'm left sucking wind again. I've also received bonuses at work that are in limbo because our company hasn't refreshed the budget for that stuff yet. That's money I could really use right now. If I don't see any money from the condo in Feb I'll be in real pain and if nothing comes in by March I'll have to seriously consider whether there's even a point to having renters in there if nothing is coming out of it but a growing negative. I'm keeping things in the black for now because we've hit the leap pay period where I get three checks between big bills thanks to calendar timing, but that'll be going pretty much straight into insurance money.

It just feels like the typical "nut shot" that comes with any feeling of forward progress. I'm feeling so utterly uninspired by life outside of work that I actually prefer being at work because it's the only place I feel like I have a point in being.

Also on the course of inspiration, Radio Shack get's props for basically constructing a 1 minute long refresher course on the 80's for those going to BLFC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUwwZHdx6SU

I was poking around to see if anything good will be in town the same weekend as Biggest Little Fur Con (it is only about three months away if you can take off the FC/FWA/Furry Fiesta blinders!). Turns out Jeff Dunham will be performing in Reno Saturday that weekend. I caught his show in San Jose a few years ago, well worth the admission. I might just have to add that to the things to do that weekend!

http://www.eldoradoreno.com/reno-en.....Dunham%282%29/

No room! No plans! Sit around at home probably? Yeah Looking that way! >.>

Have fun folks!

Also ordered a stripe kit for the Fiesta, consider that the first bite from the mod bug. Gotta be worth an extra 50 horsepower adding those! :)

Well we're still officially on 2013 out here so I can do this I suppose.

The highlights:

-Got the house and condo refis done to lower the payments and get mom off the loans/titles.
-Got the max raise at work and saved their butts on so many projects that it's pretty clear they want to keep me at all costs, keep pushing me higher.
-Actually managed to make it to four cons this year (FWA, BLFC, Rainfurrest, MFF) which is very unusual for me. Some of you might've actually seen me twice in the same year for once!
-Swapping the Mazda 2 for the Fiesta ST.
-Got my first crown out of the way!
-Stressing over waking up in the morning to the phone with my property manager telling me I need to spend 5K on a forced air unit replacement.
-Just got back from Disneyland!

The lowlights:

-Struggled to get the condo refi done because the bank confused the HOA with that of the neighboring complex which cause the loan to drop, then have to be refiled before getting it right. Luckily the rate didn't change between the loan attempts.
-Saved their butts on projects to the point of working through several weekends and getting a reputation as a go to guy that never leaves, hence why everything gets done. Someday maybe I need to have a life outside of work.
-Most of the cons were a surprise decision. Including the whole on again, off again mess with MFF and work mucking up my plans and then leaving me salvaging the trip last minute.
-I have a car payment again after being payment free for two years.
-Got my first crown (of many) out of the way after fracturing a tooth during Rainfurrest.
-Property manager calls to tell me that they can fix instead of replacing after letting me stress over it for a week.
-They ruined Disneyland and wiped out my childhood in the name of Merchandising. The huanted mansion is the Nightmare Before Christmas now! C'mon man!

Going into 2014 the focus is on getting the house on the market. Hopefully it'll sell quickly and empower me to clear the loan on that and the loan on the condo. Once I'm debt free I'll have control of the money I'm earning and maybe be able to actually direct my own life instead of being chained down to someone else's *cough*mom's*cough*.

I'm lined up to hit BLFC again, outside of that no promises, but I'd like to make a return to Megaplex in FL.

Assuming the IRS doesn't come up with bullchit gift tax for mom signing over her share of the debt on the properties, I have something I'd like to get commissioned this year, and have discussed as much with certain sources.

The rest of it I'll take as it comes, same as always. I just wish the pitfalls would stop coming so much like body shots. It's getting hard to stomach critical hits and feel like things aren't just falling in all around me.

Happy New Year folks. I'm spending mine home alone like pretty much every year/ holiday these days.

Watching "Walk The Line" has me thinking about the condition of personal demons and the way they shape things.

I've never been so keen on the valuation of worth being based in what you "have". By most measure I'd be considered a success because I do own a house, a condo and a few cars with a solid job that's paying me about 70K a year lots of potential for OT on top of that and upward trend through the company. That's the tagline most folks see and would kill for.

The grim reality is I'm saddled with more debt that what I know what to do with as "owning" both properties means I'm making payments on them with one of them being so far upside down I should've just walked away from it. Mom lives in the house, I rent the condo out and I rent an apartment to live in. That's two mortgages and a rent every month that I'm stuck with because of the soft housing market. The cars I own are "projects" to tinker on that maybe would rank a combined value of 10K if I tried to sell them despite the fact I've probably put twice that much into them in parts and labor to keep restoring them. I've got enough debt chipping away at me every month that what I pull in is just about enough to make it from one paycheck to the next without much room to stash anything away. There have been times I find myself yelling/crying to an empty room about how frustrating that cycle has become.

I got word last week that the forced air unit in my condo went out. I have renters in there so I have to replace/repair it right away. I set a modest goal this year to put 5K into savings because I usually can't scratch that much together for such things. And despite me fracturing a tooth last month and spending about $1,500 on dental repairs, I made that goal... for two weeks, until word of that heater came down. I've been working overtime like crazy at work to beat a deadline and cover the gap on funds. As such it felt good to finally hit that goal, and then word came in about a 5K replacement heater on a place I'm losing money on every month already and sucks away all I stashed away all year? Yeah, I cried about that, when I could find the time since I was working 10-12 hour days.

Mom offered to help absorb the cost of the heater replacement, but I hate having that help. I never feel like I have any excuse for taking that kind of help when I have all the tools at my disposal to make it all work out without outside help. It chips away at me making me feel like a failure when anyone rides in on a white horse to save my butt. Being your own harshest critic is tough like that.

I've garnered a reputation at work for being super reliable on projects and pushing all the right buttons. They know I'm a workaholic and they seem to be feeding me more than enough to keep that impression going. I'm not sure I'm against it either at this point as the work keeps me focused and productive but I'll admit I've got zilch for a social life. I've been out of hockey for a while and I'm not doing nearly as much car related stuff these days. There are days it feels like I'm just standing in a field somewhere whacking at weeds with a golf club looking for a ball that isn't even mine.

On the flipside of it, my property manager managed to find someone to repair the heater in the condo instead of replacing it, so that saved me about $4,500, I'm told I've had at least two bonuses coming to me for this project, probably more, but they're waiting for the bonus fund budget to renew next year to get the money to me. And sometime in the middle of all of that I worked a ton of OT again. I know I push myself harder than I probably have to, but that just feels like that's all there is for me to do these days. If I can make it out of this year with the savings goal I set for myself intact, I'll be pretty happy.

I did manage to get out and pick up a bunch of toys to drop off with Toys For Tots today too, so at least I did that this year.

Merry Christmas folks.

Still no real plan for FC. It wasn't even on my radar but I could certainly sneak down there for a couple of days without too much headache. The Sharks are playing the Flames Monday, which happen to be the two team jerseys Crossfox wears (what a conflict of interest!) and apparently the tickets are discounted as part of the con, so that's a pretty good reason to be down there for the day at least if I goooo. I do not have room space squared away, and the lack thereof kind of is sapping interest in pushing for it.

I registered for BLFC ( http://biggestlittlefurcon.org ), jumped up to the full like uber sponsor tier this time because it was a good venue/con (even if I had a so-so time). Seriously it's like only $90 for uber sponsor, do it. Hell the rooms aren't even expensive enough to demand that you split the room with anyone. That being said I have a room reserved and I'm not against splitting if someone's looking for crash space. So far I've got the room Thursday night and leaving Sunday, I'm not against sliding that reservation out some too as the con approaches depending on the vibe around work. We should be wrapping this big project in April so I don't think I'll be crazy busy in the lead up to the con, but you never know.

Still thinking of trying for Confuzzled but the whole flight to the UK and vacation slotting in right with budget and all while expecting something not to blow up (which never happens) leaves me distrustful of trying for that one. Plus spending money on that would put me behind on a commission idea I'd like to go for later in the year AND that's right about the time we should be getting the house on the market, so I might need to be around to make sure that goes over well.

Otherwise busybusybusy like usual.

Also need to not totally ignore my dental issues going into next year as I've still got to deal with another root canal and crown before I fracture the other bad tooth. Funfun!

Holy jeeze what a good con.

After all the crap I had to go through between Rainfurrest and the 50-60 hour work weeks since then I needed that con to not suck.

Things didn't start off quite as I'd hoped. I didn't bring my hockey gear because I had heard the hockey skate was going to occur before I could get to the hotel, as it was they were delayed some and I probably could've made it for the hockey skate. I wasn't expecting to be able to do that though as part of the cost of having the trip derailed by a day, so it wasn't a huge issue for me.

I also expected to be spending most of my time checking out the car show next door, but damned if folks didn't find a way to suck me back into the fandom for a few days like old times (sorta). I haven't suited so much at a con in years! After a while I even let the fox go naked most of the time because it occurs to me that the hockey jerseys hide so much of the bodysuit you can't really tell that there even *is* a body. Along those lines I finally also broke down and talked with folks while in suit. Normally I've stuck to the code of not speaking in suit, but frankly folks just don't seem that interested if you're not talking to them and just trying to pantomime your way through a convo. Still not popping the head in public places though CAUSE I STILL BELIEVE IN MAGIC :P

Shout outs to the usual MFF sorta crowd: Thanks to Blueneko and Kryphos for always (having booze) being there when I need it. Holy chite it's still a stupid idea to get *that* drunk before you have to fly out in the morning AND stay up till 4am. Someday I'll be too old for that... maybe. Thanks to Aaron8181 and s1berianhusky for the room space. It was great getting to spend time, albeit briefly with folks I just see every few years now. That goes for Quasiskunk, Aragon, Wildfox, Lomax, KC, Synthwolf, Nevermint, Rosco, ellllLVeeeee, Theome, BBF and um...umm... well just a lot of other folks that feck it all if I remember that well anymore since I'm old and allowed to forget things (that's my excuse anyway). Ip and Pacer for introducing me to the eeeeevil of the meat fountain as well... good lord I didn't need to eat for like a whole day after that!

The flight home was a bit neat as we landed at SFO. We passed Air Force One while we were landing, and per the news I see Obama was in the bay area so neat and such. Otherwise we got in too early and had to wait for the gate to clear to park, then overparked and had to wait for a tug to push the plane back to the gangway. After all that it dropped me right in the bay area commute window which meant my 4.5 hour drive home became an 8 hour drive home. And *that's* why I never visit the bay area anymore. :P

Future cons are looking like BLFC and maaaybe Confuzzled. Not planning on FC but it's close enough I could be talked into it provided I can come up with crash space. If I go and the weather is decent I'll probably dash out to the coast for breakfast and go beat on the Fiesta some like I used to do with the Mustang when we ran what we affectionately called the "Black Sheep Loop". BLFC is close enough drive I can make that con. If I do the UK con though, it'll be hard on my PTO count, so I need to block out everything well ahead. We'll see on that one.

Take care everyone. Again, awesome - fecking - con.

Ugh - looooong day. Bay area traffic sucks balls and makes a 4.5 hour trip into an 8 hour trip.

Home safe, Awesome-Fucking-Con.

A couple of keywords thus far.

Mrs. Stanwick!
Ferment

(there were some others in there too but I may have been a weee bit too drunk to really remember what they were).

Tired. Sooooo tired. I need to sleep now *collapses*

Fine, I'll do one of these cause I don't usually do them! *huffs*

How do you want to be addressed?
Cross is fine... CC also works, Frysco gets to keep XCheque because that one was weird enough he gets to keep using it.

Where will you be?
Probably at the car show drooling on things that are in better shape than my classic!

Where are you staying?
Main Hotel

Who will you be rooming with?
Strangers... they sooooo strange.

What is your gender?
Dude, dude.

How old are you?
36... but don't pay attention to that until something falls off... if it does, just stick it back on... no staples though.

How tall are you?
6' or so, although the way people seem to be scared when they open doors and I'm right there, I must be like 8 foot tall at least.

What do you look like?
If you had been playing from the start, you'd know that from back when I used to regularly make it to these things!

What suits will you have?
Same 10 year old fox, who is old!

Can I talk to you?
You can try! I'll be all boring and stuff though unless it's cars or hockey.

Can I buy you a drink?
Duh. And if you don't I'll certainly be buying some for me too!

Are you taken? Are you looking for a 'mate'?
Behold the subject of great *meh*

Can I touch you?
Oh lordy we're so past that question being asked anymore.

Can I touch your friends?
Hah! What friends?!

Can I hug you?
Sure, unless you're sick... in the having a cold way, plenty of you are sick in the head but that's not contagious at least.

Are you nice? Or do you think so (no personal references needed)?
Everyone tells me they think I'm going to beat them up because I look like it, who knows if that's right! >:)

Are you friendly?
Maaayyybe, see the part about buying drinks.

What days will you be attending?
Fri-Mon

Do you do commissions?
Only if you like buildings, bridges and other various technical drawings. :P

Can I talk about/do drugs in front of you?
You can talk about them but I'll lose a good deal of respect for you, and if you do them in front of me, I won't be in front of you. :P

Can I invite you out for food/fun/etc?
Tummy hungry, want more.

Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
If you find me, probably.

Can I take pictures with you?
I am ninja, unable to be captured cause I don't want to be seeeeeen.

If I see you, how should I get your attention?
That's never actually happened!

MFF is back on. very last minute but I've been pulling 50+ hour weeks for about three weeks and will be working through this weekend so I've picked up a farkton of OT pay out of this project and lots of accolades along the way. I suspect they'll be giving me a bonus when this is done too, but I'm not counting on that. Regardless I found crash space and reworked my flight so I should be in Chicago on Friday around noon and flying out Monday around noon. If I seem tightly wound, it's because of this project and all the other fun of the last month.

Speaking of that I get my permanent crown on Monday so that'll end the fractured tooth saga from Rainfurrest. Just in time for MFF. Who's up for pudding and oatmeal?! :)

The good: My insurance on the condo seems to think I overpaid them so they kicked a $400 check back. I put in a 55 hour week last week, and this week I should be close to, if not more than that. I cancelled the out of pocket dental visits (for now) because they aren't critical, which saves me about $800. So with all of that I could actually manage to go do MFF!

The bad. I cancelled the room reservation, cancelled the flight reservation so no chance in hell I'm going to MFF despite the good. I fired up the 89 GT convertible to drive to a car display today where we do a trick or treat kind of thing. I made it about 120 miles from home (160 to where I was going) when my battery gauge dropped into the red (hmmm not good but maybe not critical yet). Right about that time it felt like there were lead weights strapped to the steering wheel (which means power steering is gone). Final nail was the temp gauge shot to full. So with all that I dove into the rest stop by the freeway, popped the hood and found this http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g.....ps9af24dc1.jpg wrapped around the water pump. That used to be the serpentine belt on the front of the motor that drives all the accessories (water pump, alternator, power steering, air conditioning), so I spent a few hours getting towed home by AAA.

The headdesk: This was pretty much my one day off I'll have in two weeks, the car dies, I didn't get to the event I wanted to go to and mom invited herself over all weekend it seems. The whole belt thing could've been easily prevented if I had checked the belt better (I didn't see any fraying in it or cracking, but I know it's an old belt (maybe the original 25 year old one) and it literally takes like a minute to swap belts.

Installed the new belt and everything seems fine with that at least. Also the cancelled airfare goes towards credit on another flight. I just have to decide when and where I would bother to go it seems.

Alright, after talking with the dentist, my benefits are maxed out now. From here on I'm taking out of pocket on my teeth until next year, so I have to cancel my MFF plans. I'm not upset or depressed about it, just used to sort of thing at this point. I simply can't justify the expense.

After shaking the con crud I managed to get to a dentist for basically the first time since sometime in the late 1980s. The good news is the overall damage from 20 years of neglect wasn't as bad as it probably should have been. The bad news is that I've got a long list of things that need to be done and should be done to get me back on track. The most immediate of which was dealing with the tooth I fractured the first night at Rainfurrest. On that course I had my first root canal today, now I just need to get a cap and things will almost be back to normal... for that tooth. I still have another one cracked all the way through apparently that will probably require the same treatment. I'm going to be leaning on my dental insurance to help with all of that over the next few years of course.

This would totally submarine my budget for MFF, except I picked up a big bonus at work for doing a bang up job on the bridge they had me designing. I've also been cleared to work OT on this current project so the teeth repairs shouldn't derail the trip.

I am going to need to find a room for Thursday night at MFF though as my reservation doesn't pick up till Friday, so if anyone's got crash space for the one night, I'd appreciate it.

Ok, made it back from Rainfurrest.

The con itself was fine, hotel was kind of poorly laid out with forcing us into bottleneck points in the hallways by registration. The constant badge check just to get in the doors was kind of annoying too.

I loved the retro dance set, if more cons did that I would actually give a fuck about going to the dances. >.>

It was good getting to meet a few new folks and rehashing things with old connections I haven't seen in a damn long time.

That being said, this was easily the second worst con experience I've had, topped only by the one where I hurled all over the room and had a mental breakdown in front of friends. Started off by spitting out part of a tooth on Thursday at dinner. It's been hurting for a while but holy hell I didn't expect that. So I'll be seeing a dentist about that tomorrow.

Second strike was that I had a room across the street in the Clarion, waaay at the other end of the hotel. Granted I'm not in the best shape anyway, but all that walking along with wandering the con space resulted in blisters the size of a silver dollar on both feet. I toughed it out as much as I could Saturday but it hurt so damn much to walk. At one point I was in the hotel during the fursuit parade feeling downright useless while more or less stuck there. I would've gone home early Saturday, but I couldn't abandon the roomies I had.

And today I woke up with a scratchy throat, which continues with me at the moment, so I'm sure I caught a cold somewhere between the diseased masses or just hobbling between hotels in the pouring rain.

Hell of a con experience like that, but I would've been better off just staying home for this one.

Hitting the road now. See folks when I get there. Huzzah!

Alright, things have fallen into place well enough I shall be up north. I'm headed up Thursday and driving back Sunday. No plans as of yet aside from car geek stuff on Saturday night and at some point catching up with dad to get dinner or catch a hockey game maybe. I'll be staying at the Clarion next door to the hotel by the way. Dad wanted me to stay with him but he's a good 40-50 miles from the hotel and I just didn't want to deal with that kind of drive.

Putting out one more feeler for crash space during Rainfurest. I'm looking at driving up Thursday and heading home early Sunday, if someone needs the Thurs-Mon split, I don't mind splitting on the extra night even if I don't stay around for Monday. If I don't scrounge up something I'll look at doing a hotel myself in the area or just staying with my dad, but that's a bit of a drive to get to where there hotel is. And if nothing kicks up I can always just skip it and save the time for MFF!

Rainfurrest update: I have enough PTO to cover taking a couple of days for the con, and still cover my PTO for MFF. My workload is crazy nuts pretty much going into next year so I don't see work putting me in a situation where I'm going to burn through that PTO prematurely. If I can find crash space for Thurs/Fri/Sat night, then I'll make a go of it.

In other news...

I'm considering doing something mildly stupid but fun. I've been car payment free for a couple of years now while I stabilized everything after the move. Between cutting payments on the house/condo mess down and gearing up to sell those along with raises/OT/bonuses, things have turned up pretty good this year. Now... traditionally I'm way behind on doing something stupid like getting into a new Mustang. The problem with that is, Ford is retarded and thinks that GT Mustangs are now a 35-40K car. For that kind of money I could get a used Shelby GT500 or easily another Terminator. Regardless, I've no interest in getting hung up in that kind of debt on a car.

Now, instead of that I could try the *other* angle. I've been poking around and have my eyes on a 03 Mach 1 with 36K miles on it. I've yet to see the car, but looking at the carfax on it there's a black mark so to speak. Somewhere around 25K miles it shows on record that Ford replaced the main computer, some wiring harnesses, the clutch and the transmission... which is a pretty significant failure. Having owned one of those before though, I know that's not exactly an uncommon area of failure on the Mach 1s. My other concern would be with the head tick issue that buried the motor in my Mach and my Cobra. It's simply a piss poor design by Ford, and unless this car was either very lucky or someone did the coolant bypass mod to it, the head is probably going to be an issue with that car. Also it's black on black like I actually wanted when I bought mine new.

I've also got a couple of Mazdaspeed 3s that look promising. One being an 07 in the same color blue I had before, the other being an 09.

In looking at the new stuff that's out there (Focus ST/Fiesta ST/Mustang/Subaru WRX/Mazdaspeed 3), either the styling is just fucking ugly/unimaginative, overloaded with 10K in electronics/navigation I could give a rat's ass about, or gets woefully poor mileage for this day and age. That last one in particular frustrates me with Mazdaspeed. If Ford can get 35mpg out of the Focus ST than Mazda should be getting that out of the Mazdaspeed by now.

Ultimately I'll probably do nothing, just keep driving the Mazda 2. Technically the two Mustangs should be the toys, but the reality is they're both very much projects in need of a lot of work. I enjoy them, but not the way I used to enjoy the Mazdaspeed or the Mach. And of course if I get rid of the Mazda I'll get an earful from mom because even at 36 years old, every decision I make to spend/enjoy my money is a poor one apparently. I was expecting to hold on until after we sell the house. I don't have to, but that's the "smart" and "safe" choice.

Derpy is sold and has moved on! This puts me back to just the one fursuit, which for some reason everyone seems to think I don't have anymore.

As far as mid year goes, all in all it's been an up year I guess. I've managed to hit a con back east, and should be on track to hit MFF again. My job seems stable enough with me loaned to the transportation design side to keep me busy. I've managed to beat two of the three things I set as goals this year, the first being a certain amount to have in savings to prove I could actually get anything stashed away. The second and third being car related so I can have the 89 Mustang in reliable enough shape to make it to the 50th anniversary next year in Vegas. I've got the first milestone parts order out of the way on that end of things.

We should still be on track to put the house on the market next year as well.

Thinking I'll drive up to Rainfurrest next month for a few days too. We shall see as things progress whether or not that happens.

http://mylittleblackhawk.tumblr.com/

Really... hockey... ponies... it all makes sense.... somewhere.

Some of you know I purchased Derpy Hooves ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8179330/ ) from Sophie a while back. I've not really had cause to wear the suit and only worn it once since purchase for the fursuit parade at BLFC in Reno. At this point it's just not been a particularly good/useful fit for me and my schedulre, so I'm thinking of taking offers/auctioning off the suit to fund other projects I'd like to do. So I guess I'll listen to offers, just keep in mind it didn't come cheap... :P

Edit: Added sizes (I spliced in material so I could fit the suit, so it fits a slightly broader range than what Sophie made it to fit)
Sizes:
Height: About 6 Feet, I'm 6'-1" and still manage to fit.
Weight: 250 lbs
Feet: Up to Mens 13
Chest: About 48 inches
Hips: Up to 47 inches
Waist: Up to 42 inches

Hell with it. United was having a sale out of SFO to Chicago with times that work out pretty well for me, so I've got tickets to MFF. If work behaves I should have vacation time to cover. Going to need to work out a room with someone though. I fly in Thursday morning and leave Monday mid-day.

Ah yes, the inevitable is so... inevitable.

While I've stayed very busy at work, everyone else has been light on project work. To the point that we had an unofficial meeting today declaring overhead spending/budgeting dead, and we're not allowed to work OT anymore. Period. Hell hath to have frozen over kinda no. All across the board I'm hearing other offices are coming up short on work and as a production group company wide we're 25% behind our projections for project work on the year which isn't good, at all. Basically if this keeps up I would expect they're going to start to cull the herd a bit. I'm about as close to untouchable as it gets though on that front because I'm cheaper than most of the senior staff and I can work on more projects. I'm also about the only source they have for modelling structural elements at the moment so no worries there. I hit my 2 year anniversary in a couple of days which also frees me from the obligation to pay back my hiring bonus, so if things turn grim I can always explore options because I know of a couple places that would take me if I asked.

I spent the "holiday" stripping the bathroom floor in the house and cutting/hanging all the baseboards and door trim in the kitchen and dining room. That among other fixes mom had lined up anyway.

Kicking around the idea of Furfright or MFF. I should be able to do one or the other, but the work situation leaves me wondering if it's even safe to try it. At this point I'm feeling pretty well broken. My holidays are spent working on the house and battling with mom while she doesn't seem to understand how much she's financially handicapping me while I push towards 40 wondering if I'll ever have real retirement savings or even the ability to spend/save my money how I want to spend it without having to carry her plans along the way. I'm battling depression and lack of purpose outside of work while I'm devoid of a social life and spending my "free" time working on other people's (mom) projects. This isn't where I thought I'd be at this point, but it's what it is and I deal with it. *shrugs* I make it work, I wholly believe it's going to push me into an early grave, but I make it work...

With work being kind of slow I've been taking all comers when they throw projects at me. A few weeks ago I hopped onto a project designing a barge for a collection pond at a toxic cleanup site back east. The project seemed to be in some disarray when I got on board and I chased a few problems out of the model to start. As I got into working through the model and the drawings I was picking out some design flaws I saw and making suggestions along the way like I usually do. They started leaning on me more for work and handing me sheets I'm not supposed to be working on. Usually the techs are broken into folks that know one software over the other and one design discipline over the other. So not everyone can hop between designing a building or designing a road, let alone using AutoCAD over Microstaion to do design work.

As they started effectively pulling sheets from the folks that had been working on them I got into more of a groove with the project because more of it was funneling through me. At any rate we were pulling the set together last week and the lead tech on the project was pissing everyone off by not doing a very good job of organizing things or managing the project. The engineer I've been working with floated the idea that I should take over the project, which is something you don't suggest at the 100% submittal stage, the day before printing off the drawings. Next thing I know I'm getting emails from back east agreeing with putting me in charge. By this time the lead tech had gone home, so she was going to come in that morning to find she'd been undermined while out of the office.

By morning she sent out a cryptic email about still being in charge of the project so I assumed that we were staying the course. By noon my time they let me know that they meant to tell me they had a talk with her and had put me in charge of it. So basically that was the eastern time deadline they had set for printing and I *just* found out I was responsible for the prints. So I pulled more OT and bailed them out by getting a set sent out electronically that night as I said I would. By morning I found lots of emails praising the work I did and thanking me and apologizing for dropping it on me like that. That actually happens a lot with this company and the one I was at before...

Anyway the good side of it is that we're aiming at that sort of position for me eventually as a lead design tech, and it's a pretty major coup to pull off that swap from people that we don't even know personally and are clear across the country. It's a pretty big feather in my cap for when review time rolls around.

They're just lucky I have no family, friends, or social life to get in the way of work. Dunno how I feel about that part.

Got home just a while ago. Mt Lassen was absolutely gorgeous to see, and dodged a few deer on the way back too. Kind of glad I tried that trip in daylight for that reason... anyway.

Pictures! --> http://s53.photobucket.com/user/Cro.....rary/BLFC_2013

Thursday I shot trough Sacto and onto Reno. Only event of note was the car in front of me hit ... something... it was shedding feathers as it got kicked up at me and then it went under the wheel. I've got... umm... yeah I need to clean my car now.... was probably an owl from the size of it. Got into my room with no problems and worked a bit on the other suit you don't know I have before I passed out.

Friday there wasn't too much to do since the con was just getting fired up. I did manage to snap some pictures mostly that day because I wasn't suiting yet. Toward the end of the day the fox came out and got a lot of "wow I thought you sold him" comments. Sooo n'yah! I still have me. :P

Saturday was critter games and the parade. I armored up the fox expecting to go to war and instead we pretty much didn't do much for games so the armor went to waste other than surprising some folks for hugs *klonk* As for the parade I suited in something... different for me, some of you know how I Derped up the parade *grins*.

Aaaaand today I was going to hang around a bit later but things got terribly boring, got that creeping feeling of being out of place and started to just nod off in the con space because I was bored out of my skull. So I came home a bit early, but that was probably a good thing given I took the "short" route which leads me through the desert and over Mt Lassen where there were deer aplenty.

Overall it was a nicely done con for being a first year venture. It was very "relax-a-con" in feel which is something I miss getting to do, but yeah the reg numbers/fursuit count still ended up being crazy more than I think they even hoped for. The hotel was cheap, really good food for the price and generally awesome. I should be back next year.

It was an okay con for me, I came in with low expectations and left without feeling like I really really needed to leave any sooner than I did. I even managed to catch up with some folks I haven't seen in a couple of years and have dinner with them. Otherwise lots of alone time this con and didn't get hooked into any room parties. Heck by Reno standards, that was actually a really dull weekend.