Here is a brief note of appreciation for all you furs:

You are appreciated....

... for being yourself.
... for embracing others despite their differences in a world that has forgotten how.
... for helping one another.
... for encouraging one another.
... for sharing your gifts and talents.
... for finding the best in others.
... for being friendly.
... for striving for peace.
... for being furry.

That is all.

Have a good day and a Merry Christmas!

I love the way writing immerses you in an alternate reality so totally....

Oh, I wish I had the skills ....

http://www.faithtap.com/4890/man-tu.....ful-sculpture/

but there are more than a few things he is doing that I've barely touched on in my life ....

So, I sometimes remember my dreams. And sometimes the dreams I remember sport a furry theme (which is not surprising, really). But last night was the first time I can recall dreaming about fursuiting. In my dream, someone loaned me a fuzzy green dragon fursuit and I had a blast romping around in it, but I kept having trouble with the tail. Regardless, I woke up feeling just plain happy!

And for those interested:
- I finished enough of the Capt. Recker head to fake the rest for Halloween, so I whipped up a tail and hand paws and borrowed my fox partial's foot paws, donned a costume pirate coat and a sword and he was looking pretty sharp.
- I helped my 2nd-oldest son crank out a Baymax (movie version) costume at the last moment. He was hilarious! Had to fit sideways through narrow doors.
- My 12-year-old did a fantastic job of constructing a Steve from Minecraft costume all on his own.
- My 15-year-old was a very pretty female version of Legend of Zelda's Link ("because," she said, "there's no way I can pass for a male" and she is correct about that)
- My oldest daughter put together an absolutely stunning, if simple, Mad Hatter outfit. She refused to follow my suggestions regarding construction of the hat, to my delight, because it turned out great and she gets ALL the credit!
- My oldest son had this surplus Russian gas mask and trench coat. I wired up some red LEDs in the eyes with like an hour to go before we hit the streets. He was just plain creepy.
- My youngest three were other movie/book characters that were more or less plain clothes outfits. They certainly looked their parts, but didn't require any special costume construction.
- I'll post a few costume photos someday if I can get some from someone who was taking pictures. We had more than a few families meet up at our house and pillage the neighborhood as a group: 40 kids, 17 adults. Then followed with a little Halloween party back at our house.

- and finally: Chapter 12 of "The Last Tanuki" is nearing completion.

As of today, though opposites in many ways, my mate and I have been happily married 19 years. Our first-born just turned 18 earlier this month. We have also thus successfully made an adult together. Not bad for less than two decades of work, if I do say so myself ....

Great time had by all, and blessed with safe and swift travels .... Now, how do I do my job again?

Finally, as the summer wanes into fall, a real family vacation! After today, I'll be off by the seaside for a week and a couple days with most of my pack and also my mother and grandmother (who at 93 is still plucking right along). Unfortunately, my mate and the eldest of my pups have to drive down later, if they can make it at all: my son is working diligently to finish up the last of his Eagle Scout requirements, and my wife graciously volunteered to be the parent to remain behind with him, though it isn't a terrible sacrifice for her, because she doesn't like the beach.

I also discovered last night that my wife is not going crazy after all, which is quite a relief.

I just used the pun "appaws", as in "big round of appaws", in a comment. ^v^

Brad Paisley's "Country Nation" video is full of furry mascots (as well as the other kind) ....

http://www.vevo.com/watch/brad-pais.....n/USAV61500087

^v^

The gifted  FeiOna took my silly two-sentence story and worked her magic with this pic: https://twitter.com/feiaddams/statu.....483716/photo/1

I'm back from my little trip to my in-laws in Indiana. No Internet and no outings, but the kids had plenty to entertain themselves that didn't involve me and we, the adults, were not at all demanding on one another, so I found myself spending a lot of time writing happily.

Anyway, we didn't break down on the way through the mountains in the August heat and get eaten by thirsty bears hiking out of nowhere. I missed all you furs and looking forward to seeing what everyone uploaded when I get a chance!

I'll be out of town for the next week with meager Internet access, if any, traveling deep into the Indiana corn to visit my in-laws for their 50th wedding anniversary.

Have a fine, furry week!

So, I started Aria's Story some time ago, inspired by a picture drawn by  skisharp and I've been steadily working it. It was supposed to be a short story, but I set it in a world I'd been toying with in other stories and Aria quickly got herself tangled up with the political and religious authorities of her planet, Tereathon. It actually wasn't her fault. She was just sort of born into the midst of it.

Anyway, the short story took on a life of its own and demanded more attention, so that now it's at like, I don't know, 120+ pages.

I'm well enough into it that the first chapters are not likely to get another rewrite, so I figured I'd start posting it. I'll post the first four chapters today and then about one per week (more or less) after that until it's done.

I hope someone enjoys reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. My 16-year-old daughter has been my test subject -- I read it out loud to her to hear it back and get her input on it. She keeps asking me "have you written any more of your story yet?" so it can't be all bad, I guess

Here's chapter 1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/17300363/

My mate makes homemade granola cereal. This morning's exchange between her and my 5-year-old:

"Mom, I like all cereals except the kind that you make."

"You don't like it, huh?"

"No, 'cause it has craisins in it. Craisins make my heart burst full of tears."

The building I work in had to close for several days because of paint fumes due to construction. Fortunately, I got sick the morning after it closed (unrelated to the fumes), so I could take sick leave rather than vacation time to cover it -- no, they would not just give us the time.

So, then I was sick with this mean little ... virus, I guess ... that just made me to tired to do much.

Meanwhile, my mother is visiting, which was good, because she's a big hit around the house.

So, I start getting over whatever-I-had on Monday afternoon and Tuesday go back to work for one day, but then was off yesterday for my youngest's 5th birthday. He was excited about his birthday, but dreading turning 5 because he thought he'd suddenly be different. Naturally, when he woke up on his birthday he was delighted to find he was the same, so much so that he went and woke his 13-year-old brother (why he skipped 3 chronological siblings and a bedroom and headed straight for the 13-year-old I'll never know) by whispering in his ear "I'm 5 and I'm just the same."

That is all.

Had a fine long weekend, if anyfur is interested. Pups finally all back home: one from week-long Boy Scout camp, another from a mission trip to Washington, DC.

I'd hoped for a personal camping retreat alone for a couple days to get myself grounded again and my wife was all supportive about giving me the time. However, rain, rain, rain had me concerned about my car (which is NOT for off road use) getting stuck in this particular patch of earth that turns to a muddy slop when it rains a lot out at the vacant acreage we own where camping trips usually take place. So, I focused on cleaning up my little corner workspace at home and moving a couple of projects forward.

I learned my way around the sewing machine a little better and made some progress on the custom-design base for my raccoon suit head. Incidentally, several of the kids pitched in and bought a "pirate" sword for father's day for me to go with the costume -- Capt. Recker is a kind of steampunk pirate raccoon character. Anyway, I can pull off a decent hem and french seam now, at least. Woooooooh! I'm on my way to greatness....

Got all my various scraps of paper and margin notes for Aria's Story all organized and keyed in. Most importantly, though, I was watching Fellowship of the Ring for the umpteenth time with the family last night when it dawned on me that Sauron inspired the manufacture of all the Rings of Power as part of his plot for power (why it hadn't before is beyond me -- not paying attention at all I guess: I've read the books more than once and seen various movie adaptations numerous times and its practically spelled out for you). But the important thing that hit me was that, when it came to Aria's Story, I hadn't quite grasped yet exactly what the REAL motivation is behind the bad guys' centuries of schemes that has led to the events unfolding in Aria's life. I had it outlined in a history of the planet (Tereathon), but something seemed to be missing, and while I was watching Fellowship, I figured it out: I didn't understand the global, epic conflict that was behind it all. So, I left the Hobbits and Strider in Bree and went in the other room to figure out Tereathon's global conflict, and as I focused on it, it shone bright and clear and suddenly the bad guys' bad behavior began to take on clarity and purpose. It was a tremendous relief because I've just hit a point in the story where understanding them really becomes necessary to continue it. I've been struggling with every page because the reasons I was seeing just weren't convincing and their motivation seemed contrived.

I'm always amazed: you take some roughly sketched characters and drop them into a setting and then all of a sudden it is like they begin creating worlds and events all on their own. Dorothy Sayers has a lot on this in her book "Mind of the Maker", which I am coincidentally reading right now. It's really a fantastic book.

Anyway, characters have true natures and regardless of where I as a writer might think they or the story will go, they do have wills of their own and I've discovered they must be allowed to shape their world according to who they are, not who I desire them to be or what I want the world to turn out like. I have to discover who they are as much as I make them who they are. I have to allow them their freedom to choose and work within the context of what they give me to go on. Yes, I'm the deity while composing the story, but I must love and respect the creatures I am bringing to and holding in existence enough to allow them the freedom to be more than mere puppets. They must be allowed to choose and the world allowed to reverberate with their choices. All I can do is offer choices, incentives, and guidance in the form of material elements within their universe. This is true in our lives as well: as parents, children, employers, employees, etc., etc. And even cosmologically. Fortunately, God is much better at this than I am.

Oh, yeah, and there were fireworks to celebrate July 4, of course, being in the USA, but I'm not a big fan of fireworks -- to me they pale in comparison to a good, rowdy thunderstorm and I'm left wanting. But, it was a good weekend to be reflecting on freedom (and its constraints) in all its forms ....

Have a fine, furry day!

I got tagged by  0ops

Far be it from me not to play along and with the fun. I am, after all, a middle-aged dad who still gets down on the floor with his preschooler and plays with Little People (after 8 kids they have a whole fantastic milieu of their own that Fisher-Price, I am certain, never imagined).....

Graowf would have been kind of hard to do: FA Graowf is largely auto-biographical while story world Graowf is entirely different, so I would have been placed in a weird predicament answering some of the questions. Thus, I chose Proxy for this, which was fun, because I haven't really delved into his character very deeply and some of these questions forced me to -- in fact, I may add those few to my character profile template

RULES :
1. Pick a character you've created.
2. Fill in the questions/statements as if you were that character.
3. Tag at least four people to do this meme
4. Tell people that they been tagged with a link from your journal



Character picked: Prox

1. What is your name?
Prox Edward "Proxy" Fox

2. Do you know why you were named that?
No. My dear mother said it was a family name, but no one in the family has ever been named that as far back as I can trace, though on my grandfather's side on my mother's side of the family there are certain .... ambiguities .... that leave the names and exact identities of certain branches of my ancestry open to question.

3. Single or taken?
Single

4. Have any abilities or powers?
Well, we all have abilities, of course. Mine are rather ordinary, I'm afraid, though I'm told I make a particularly proper Cricket-in-the-Grass shake. I have no special powers.

5. Stop being a Mary Sue!
Well, I ... what? Not hardly!

6. What's your eye color?
Brown

7. How about hair color?
Most of my fur is a shade of auburn, black paws, white around the lower muzzle, neck, and front of my body: very much the usual colors of a true red fox.

8. Have you any family members?
Yes. Well, we all do, but I assume you mean living. Of my imediate family my father, two brothers, and three sisters are still living.

9. Oh? How about pets?
Oh, no, that wouldn't do.

10. That's cool, I guess. Now tell me something you don't like.
I abhor senseless violence, though I am helpless to come up with a case, in general, where violence IS sensible.

11. Do you have any activities/hobbies that you like to do?
I tend to get a great deal of enjoyment from helping Graowf with his, primarily in order to give him a hard time and vainly try to keep him out of trouble.

12. Have you ever hurt anyone in any way before?
Well, we all have, haven't we? I've never hurt anyone intentionally .... well, except once, but it was in self-defense.

13. Ever… killed anyone before?
Once. In self-defense. It was horrifying and I still reel from it.

14. What kind of animal are you?
Well, I'm not, purely an animal of any kind, but I highly favor the fox hybrid sub-genon of Canian animalians. It is, however, said that my family line is not pure in the fox lineage and that there are possibly other canian sub-genons represented. Most likely that is from my mother's side through my grandfather. His ancestors were allegedly a wild and unruly skulk.

15. Name your worst habits.
I'm not sure that I have any particularly bad habits. Graowf claims I'm much to much of a homebody.

16. Do you look up to anyone at all?
I admire Graowf quite a bit, but it might be a stretch to say I look up to him.

17. Are you gay, straight, or bisexual?
Oh, goodness, straight. That's getting a bit personal, isn't it? I mean, what is this about anyway?

18. Do you go to school?
Oh, that was many years ago.

19. Ever want to marry and have kids one day?
Ah. Yes, well, I would, though unless I marry some vixen much younger than my peers, I'm afraid that cubs are in all probability out of the question. I actually almost did once -- marry that is.

20. Do you have fangirls/fanboys?
What? Fans? As in animalians who revere me for some special skill or quality? No, not of which I am aware, anyway.

21. What are you most afraid of?
I most fear losing my dearest friends.

22. What do you usually wear?
What an odd question. Generally, out in public a comfortable double-breasted suit; at home I replace the coat, vest, and tie with a reading jacket.

23. What's one food that tempts you?
Cricket-in-the-Grass ice cream.

24. Am I annoying you?
What? You are a questionnaire. You are all annoying in some respect.

25. Well, it's still not over!
I didn't think it was. This is not a question or request for information. Now I'm definitely annoyed.

26. What class are you (low class, middle class, high class)?
Well, now ... my income falls primarily in the middle class range, but my housemate and dear friend, Graowf, with whom I share all expenses, is inherited aristocracy, so I would have to place my current arrangement in a higher class than middle.

27. How many friends do you have?
Since I only relatively recently moved to Havensedge, I only have a few. In any case, I tend to have numerous acquaintences, but only about 2 or 3 that I feel honored to call friends. "Friend" requires a level of mutual personal investment that is defeated by spreading it too thin.

28. What are your thoughts on pie?
Pie. Another pointlessly odd question. I tend not to think much about pie. I do like a good minced true mouse pie now and then -- not because I particularly like it more than other foods, but simply because it brings back sweet feelings of the few memories I have of my mother, who made a most delicious mouse pie when I was a cub.

30. Favorite drink?
Cricket-in-the-Grass shakes.

31. What's your favorite place?
Home, or a stroll on familiar walks in the city visiting the shops and enjoying a mid-day coffee, al fresco.

32. Are you interested in anyone~?
I'm interested in nearly everyone I meet. If the question is intended to explore my romantic interests, no. The vixen who set the bar for me passed away many, many years ago -- though I did recently meet a very young tanuki of whom I find myself very fond. She is much to young for me, however, yet I cannot help but sometimes wonder .... It doesn't matter now, though.

33. That was a stupid question.
Not really. Certainly not nearly as stupid as the pie question. But this is not a question either. Much like #25 it seems to be a lame attempt at comic relief, as if one required comic relief while filling out a questionairre.

34. Would you rather swim in a lake or the ocean?
Oh, a lake, definitely.

35. What's your type?
What? I don't understand. If you mean my genon: canian.

36. Any fetishes?
No, I'm not particularly religious.

37. Seme or uke?
What? That makes no sense: small figures in heraldry versus a ukulele? You must be referring to something in the local vernacular outside of Havensedge, or perhaps even outside of Cania, of which I am unfamiliar.

38. Camping or indoors?
By this I assume you are asking if I prefer to sleep outside or inside, in which case I will say indoors, though what I most likely mean by that is "at home."


By the rules I have obliged myself to follow by playing the game, I am supposed to tag at least four others. However, I won't tag you unless you want to play. SO, if you'd like to play, let me know in the comments and I will tag up to four players at random sometime in the next week.

I haven't posted much lately, but I've been writing up a fury. I have several projects going that will take some time to finish -- not all writing projects. I have two fursuit/costume projects on deck for the summer: I promised a friend I'd attempt an Ewok outfit for her son, and I still have my pirate raccoon to do before Halloween. I want to try some different mask construction techniques I've had in mind for the raccoon.

Aria's Story is at the top of my list. I started using it as an exercise piece as I've been going through a book on plot and structure, because Aria's was what I was writing when I started reading the book. Aria's Story is a story I've come to really care about, and a great learning tool, and has really become a kind of novella. I'm approaching the climax of the story, so I might start re-writing the first parts at the same time and posting them as chapters. We'll see.

I'm also working up an environment description based on the Tereathon story setting.

I'm busy with two projects at work with deadlines as well, so I'm barely keeping up with submissions by the people I watch on FA. For mutual watchers, I'm looking at everything being submitted, just not commenting often for lack of time, but I'm trying to get in a few comments each day at least.

So, professionally I've been a computer programmer for over 20 years, but in all that time, though I've listened to a lot of music while coding, I could not recall ever listening to Bob Dylan while programming. I wasn't sure it was possible. But today I had a yearning for some Dylan, so I tried.

Yes, it is possible to write code to Bob Dylan. However, it generates a creative flux that causes stream of consciousness coding. I ran my C++ program code created under the influence of "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall" and it rippled space-time.

Water poured from the DVD drive, I heard a clown cry, the keyboard started bleeding, and now these goofy tiny monkey people dressed all in black won't stop dancing along the top of the computer monitor with their pets, stealing my snacks, and laughing at me when my stomach growls.

FYI, I finally made a Weasyl account ..... I'm Graowf there, of course.

We'll see how this goes. I'm notoriously bad at being able to keep up with more than one community site at a time consistently ....

If you are looking for a writing prompt,  furriesareepic has graciously agreed to let us write to this photograph:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16251201/

These prompts are for the cathartic release of writing for the fun of writing. You just let the prompt piece inspire you and write through whatever comes to mind in one pass, any genre, any length, and then post it and forget it. It is not meant to bind you up in a full-bore writing project, just give you a chance to stretch your limbs and enjoy playing with words.

Anyway, after you submit your work, post a link in the comments here and in the comments on the inspiration piece.

Have fun!

Anybody interested in an April Challenge Prompt like we did in Feb. and Mar. (like this http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6552921/)?

So, I was sitting outside enjoying the peaceful morning when I noticed a squirrel out on a lonely branch who just sat there for the longest time doing nothing.

"You know," I said to him, "a mossy squirrel gathers no nuts!"

And I really liked that, and thought, "Wow, that sounds like some proverb they might quote on Tereathon" (Tereathon is the world where a lot of my animal/human hybrid stories take place).

So I spent the next hour or so coming up with pithy Tereathian phrases. "A mossy squirrel gathers no nuts" I think is still my favorite, though "Peddles his own musk" runs a close second ....

* finished the Easter Treasure Hunt story and all its decision point puzzles just in time for Easter: approximately 3 PM on Easter eve. Then I broke the story up at the decision points, sealed each in an egg, put together a sheet of location hints, to string them together so that on finding egg N the kids got a hint to the location of egg N+1. I realized as I was finishing up the alternate routes in the story (the "wrong" decisions) that I would have to hide eggs for those as well. The solution ended up as a kind of graph of 30 eggs with several loops on each node.

Anyway, in the end, my four oldest got through the story in about 2 hours with only a couple of wrong solutions at decision point puzzles, one of which was my fault for an error in my puzzle.

* Several of the kids, including my 16-year-old, were sick with a stomach bug and so we kept them at home while the rest of us went to the Easter Vigil Mass the night before Easter Sunday. For those not familiar with it, a great deal of extra effort is poured into making this Mass particularly special. It is the Mass where (in the Roman Catholic Rite at least) adults desiring to be baptized are baptized. The Mass often begins (weather and local ordinances permitting) outside with a bonfire, which is blessed and from which the Easter Candle is lit. The congregation processes inside where the church is dark or only dimly lit. Everyone has a small hand-held candle and they are all lit from the Easter Candle. The first half of the Mass is done mostly lit by the congregation's little lights. Even parishes like ours which (unfortunately) rarely use incense pull out the incense thurible and incense the Easter Candle, altar, etc. At the point the Gloria is sung ("Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will....") the house lights are brought up and the altar candles are lit from the Easter Candle and bells are rung. There is a tradition of people in the congregation bringing their own bells, so there's quite a bit of bell ringing all around. Anyway, the whole thing is done with great care, reverence, and piety, to the honor of God, and it is quite an amazing and humbling celebration of the Resurrection.

A thing that struck me this year, however, was when the Creation account in Genesis was read, the lectors sang the 7 days of the Creation. It got me to think about the universal understanding, power, presence, and effect of music, and that maybe that is because God didn't just speak Creation into being, but brought into being through a kind of Divine Song, and thus music and art are woven into the fabric of the universe and all God's created things ....

Well, this Lent was unusually grueling for me: it seemed a great number of little problems and challenges came to fruition at once to make it particularly penitential. So, I really, really wanted to be sure to get to Mass and felt a little queasy on Saturday. I'm thinking, "No, no, no! I need this closure on Lent!" But things subsided and I shrugged it off as a bit of bad beef or something, and joined the remnant of the family who were still apparently healthy to Mass.

Easter morning I was still OK for hiding the Easter eggs and observing the treasure hunt. But then on Easter afternoon, I was attacked by the miserable little microbes in force and spent the next 48 hours rather ill. But I didn't care at that point: I'd been able to go to Mass.

* I was feeling significantly better yesterday afternoon, so I rigged up a test circuit for the cooling fan relays from my car, as well as the replacements I bought, to see if they are the problem with its occasional running-hot problem since we recently had the engine replaced. This cooling problem is the reason we took the car to the shop where it was discovered it had a blown head gasket, so it pre-dates the engine replacement. Now that the engine is not the issue, I can diagnose it further. The relays are fine. The fans function. I'm down to, I guess, either a sensor or the under-hood power block, or (let it not be!) the on-board computer. In any case, I feel like that issue is coming toward resolution now that I've got those relays out of the way (that was not as simple as it sounds because two of them can be inserted in more than one orientation, so I had to find and analyze the cooling system electrical schematic and the relays themselves to be sure they were pinned out so it doesn't matter which way they are inserted).

* Today I'm back at work for the first time since Friday, and got caught up on things there by 9 AM and I'm not too far behind here on FA. My prompts are caught up for now, and I can figure out what writing tasks I'll set up for myself. Aria's Story is definitely a priority -- I've become really invested in that one.

So, spring is here, He is Risen, and things are looking bright and warm and sunny!

So here's a

HOWL!

of hope and joy!

During lunch today I finished drafting the "you decide" Easter Treasure Hunt story for my kids. It's a sort of murder-mystery involving a secret society of angry clowns. Yes, really.

Now I just have to invent the puzzles for the decision points. 2.5 days left .... I can do this!

But ... hmmm ... maybe I should take tomorrow afternoon off and hole up in the local branch of the county library with it just to be sure .....