So I got my holiday bonus last week and while it was fractionally less than the one I received last year (there is a portion of it being paid directly to my 401k account), the fact that I am not in the process of buying a house this year means that I actually have some of it to use for discretionary spending. Which is a nice thing, though, so was being able to buy my first house.

That said, with some of that money, I'm thinking that maybe this is the year I finally work on getting a fursuit made. I'm still not 100% certain, but it's something that I am considering and leaning heavily towards.

That said, I'd greatly appreciate some help from you guys. I've done a fair amount of research, but word of mouth is so much better, in my opinion because so many of you have direct experience that you can share and insight that will no doubt be very useful.

To that end, I'm in the market for a good ref sheet to be able to provide (long overdue on that anyways). Not to mention that I'm likely to do a slight redesign on the character for the sake of ease with the suit. As much as I'd love back mounted wings, I think I'd have a harder time with them, so it's likely to be arm wings for the design.

For the suit, my preferences would be more on the realistic looking side, rather than toony. I may entertain something in the middle of the two styles, but that's a bit harder to meld with an avian. And obviously a fursuit maker who can/will do an avian suit. I've seen plenty of awesome bird suits out there, so I know there are options out there and quite likely ones that I've missed in my research.

So yeah! If any of you could lend a hand and some wisdom and expertise, or point someone you think might have some advice in this direction, I would be most appreciative!

You' all rock!

So my life has been a bit of a vacation whirlwind that has finally touched down again.

Started with Anthrocon, which was a really great time. Got to spend it with my wah,  runtt . It was a bit weird as I am usually a bundle of nerves and running in overdrive any time I go to a con. This time around, I was relaxed and content to just take my time and not stress about whether I was missing something. Met a lot of new folks and made new friends, which makes it totally worthwhile. Got absolutely spoiled by my wah for my birthday and then subsequently made to blush at having the audience at  hali and  runtt 's concert wish me a happy birthday. Not sure I've ever had hundreds of people wish me a happy birthday before. And despite thinking I was going to walk away from con with a pile of artwork, I only got one commission. But DAMN was it a hell of a commission. It's not always easy to find folks who can do avians, so when you find someone who practically specializes in them...WOOHOO!

After a long drive home from AC, I had a day to spend with my wah before heading home. From there, I spent two days at work cleaning up the messes left behind during my week long absence. And then on Thursday, I headed out from work early to crash in Hyannis in advance of taking the ferry out to Nantucket for an extended weekend. It's become a yearly trip for me and some friends. We stay at the hostel on the south side of the island in the co-ed dorm which we fill up, so we pretty much have our own room. The weather was really stellar the whole time we were there. Despite the threat of rain and storms, it never really happened aside from a couple of brief showers on Saturday. I rented a bike and tooled around the island a little bit. I think I only logged about 15 miles. Terribly fat and out of shape, but considering it's been over a decade since I last biked, I'm happy with it. Also did a couple of miles of hiking around a cranberry bog and pond before my lack of insect repellent and my choice of trail turning into an extended romp of shin deep water and mud sent me back. Had some delicious beer and drinks at the Cisco Brewers where we camped out in the shade for about 6 hours. Had the most amazingly delicious lamb burger I have ever had. Enjoyed some swims in the ocean, including a serene bit at 10pm where I had the beach all to myself. All in all, it was a great time.

Which, of course, had to end and bring me back to the mainland to temps in the mid 90s and obscene levels of humidity. #back to work. Bleh.

And I keep eyeballing my camera, knowing I have a couple hundred photos I need to transfer and process through Lightroom. But that feels like work and I am feeling a little allergic to that at the moment. Hopefully by this weekend I'll conquer that.

I'm not going to do the meme.

I'll be there. Staying at the Courtyard by Marriott with my wah  runtt and  hali. Getting there on Thursday and leaving on Monday.

So yeah...I'll be around!

So I've spent the past couple of days trying to figure out how to do FurFright this year. Would be my first time going, despite living a couple of hours away. It just never worked out before. Sadly, it's looking like it won't work out this year either. Every year, I go to Dragon*Con in Atlanta for Labor Day weekend. This is my big trip every year and where all my planning tends to go towards. The fact that FurFright comes just weeks after always makes it difficult as I am barely recovered from Dragon*Con. Of course, it also means I usually have missed out on booking a hotel room for FurFright, though it seems like there's rooms in one of the overflow hotels. I just don't think I'm gonna be in a spot where I can swing the hotel cost and I don't really know anyone well enough who'd be going to ask about crash space.

So the most obvious option would be to drive back and forth every day, which would be painful and probably not much less expensive with gas prices as they are. Haven't given up hope entirely, but it's not looking all that hopeful.

I was already a bit behind on submissions before I left for DragonCon.

A week later, there are two times as many submissions. :(

I need a personal assistant to go through my submissions inbox and handle the faves, saves, and comments. I really do!

Not quite home yet, either. Got another bus trip in 90 minutes. Was a good time and I got lots of loot.

#one want to be my FA personal assistant? :)

Not really, but it might seem that way.

As part of my gearing up for DragonCon this coming week, I shelled out for a new camera. The one I'd been using was 5 or so years old and it's performance had started to degrade. So I figured I was due for an upgrade. I'd seen an Olympus camera on The Awesomer blog back in July and was waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be released.

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_s.....p?product=1470

It finally got released last week, so I found a site that had it in stock and could get it to me quickly.

And tonight I finally decided to try and get pics of the commissions I'd had done over the past two Anthrocons. Downloaded GIMP to allow me to tweak the sizing and some minor stuff (I can crop, resize, and play with brightness and contrast...anything else terrifies me). And thus, I have submissions! Yay! I accomplished something today and procrastinated on doing laundry. :)

So while the meme is making the rounds once more, I figure I'll skip it as it really doesn't apply too heavily for me. Or rather, most of the answers can be two journals back from my trip last year. Only thing that's changing is that it's not my first year, I'm in the Doubletree this year, and hopefully I'll be less dumbfounded and able to be more social with people this year.

So yeah...I'm going and I want to have fun, dammit! :)

And it should even be rather easy help and not require much exertion on your part. :)

I am looking for suggestions of artists who might be open for a character sheet commission that could be used for a possible fursuit commission. I've seen character sheets out there of varying styles, so I figured I'd ask anyone who might be reading this to offer up any recommendations so I can stop waffling and get off my butt and do something about it.

Thanks in advance!

Yeah, so I don't really do the whole journal thing on here, but figured I'd throw this out.



Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
Most likely wandering around lost and dumbfounded as this is going be my first furry con

Where are you staying?
At the Westin, so I am told

Who will you be with?
 SpykeTyranno

Do you do free art?
Utterly devoid of artistic talent.

Do you do trades?
See above.

Do you do commissions?
See above again. Alternately, I will like shell out for some commissions.

Do you have prints/ CDs?
I'll have my iPod. :) And again, will probably shell out to purchase some.

Do you do badges?
Still no artistic talent, so no.

Will you have Art in the Art Show?
If I do, will someone tell me because I'd really like to know what it is.

What is your gender?
Totally male

Can I talk to you?
Please do. I tend to be shy and not always good at starting conversations, but quite talkative when pulled out from my shell.

Can I touch you?
Well, that's a loaded question. :) The safe answer is "maybe", though I'd lean towards sure. #in any creepy ways or if you weren't able to find a napkin or something like that.


I'm just counting down the days now that I have everything in order. I'm hoping to have a great time and to meet a lot of new people.

So apparently I now am being paid to be verbally abused every 10-15 minutes or so.

We had a year end sale at work. In about 2 weeks time, we got something like 5000 orders. Normally this would be what we would get over the course of a full month. We weren't well prepared for it. For the past 3 weeks, we've been struggling to keep up. For the past two weeks, our customers have been getting more and more irate. This past week I've lost track of how many times I've been yelled at by customers either on the phone or via email. My armor is barely there anymore.

I have to work tomorrow. It's probably just going to be even worse. The workload I have to deal with is obscene. There's enough work for 6 people.

I'll be there by myself.

I think I'm getting drunk tomorrow.

Just clicked up to 30 as of yesterday. For what I was expecting to be a miserable birthday filled with "getting old" angst, it ended up being the best birthday I'd had thanks to friends of mine on SL throwing me a thoroughly awesome party. I'm still tired but feeling the warm glow.

So#now. Not sure it's fully sunk in.

Granted, I'm also a slackass when it comes to updating my LiveJournal, so I can't imagine I'll ever be good about using two journals. And not that there are that many people reading this anyways.

Last week was long and busy as I started work at the newly procured job. It's busy, fun, and pays pretty well. More importantly, it gets me out of the house and earning money. Hopefully I'll see a paycheck this coming week. Now if I can only get them to allow me to use direct deposit since my bank doesn't have any branches near me at all. Mailing the paychecks out to be deposited is a pain in the ass and takes 2-3 days.

The fact that it took me this long to finally get a job means my plans to move out to the city this summer when the lease at this apartment is up are pushed off for a while. It'll be better that way. More time to save money to make the move easier.

This weekend has been pretty boring all told. I've spent today annoyed because of roommate stupidity followed up by a friend being a jackass. This friend had begged me for weeks to install Second Life and come play with him. We met and became friends on a moderated roleplaying chat a few years ago. So I finally relented, figuring it'd be nice to RP with him again, since that's what he wanted to do. So I install the program and go through hell trying to configure it so that my laptop doesn't choke horribly on it. Took forever to finally get the settings JUST right, but I did so. The whole time, my friend is chomping at the bit and bugging me constantly.

So once I finally get things settled and log on to start getting the hang of things#friend pretty much ignores me all day long because he's busy RPing. I think I'm justified in being pissed off as he was the one who wanted me to install SL, made all kinds of promises about helping me get set up with avatars and animations and such. And when the time comes for him to follow through, he doesn't do shit. I'm tempted to uninstall the friggin' thing and be done with it. Instead, I'll go put my laundry in the dryer and chill out some.

I'm just guessing#I don't think you're supposed to hear a repetitve "click-whirr" sound when you try (and fail) to power up your iPod.

Just a guess. :(