Last week, the USA Tubi added the classic Looney Tunes cartoons to their FAST channel an impressive library of 786 Warner Bros. cartoon shorts from 1931 to 2004! Even more than what Boomerang and HBO Max had to offer! This even includes numerous black-and-white Merrie Melodies, the Speedy Gonzales shorts, the DePatie-Freleng and Seven Arts eras, and even the 2003 Sander Schwartz LT shorts! Color me impressed!
It's pretty much the same package of cartoons Warner sent to Weigel Broadcasting for airing on MeTV and MeTV Toons, but with a few omissions. And as if that werent enough, several the cartoons in this package that had since been restored for the Warner Archive Looney Tunes Blu-rays are ALSO restored on Tubi such as Beanstalk Bunny", "A Day At The Zoo" and "Of Fox And Hounds".
These cartoons are put together in 262 half-hour compilations by year. Each one generally houses three shorts, until near the end where they can hold four or more cartoons the last one is made up of the remaining five Sander Schwartz LT cartoons.This is a very exciting development for us Looney Tunes fans. I actually had a wild hunch this would happen, and go into details on it as my private toon detective fursona Sam Valentino...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUEvqs693b8

I had previously teased this in another vlog where I discuss Tubi picking up more Warner Bros. -owned cartoons that HBO Max keeps purging (since that platform is redirecting more towards mature audiences, hence their phasing out content aimed at kids and families), from earlier in the month, guest-starring Scooby-Doo (played by my friend  lirie)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkl28qwELaI

So go check out Looney Tunes on Tubi, if you can! It's free (though of course it's ad-supported), and not only does it show how much Warner still cares about the classic Looney Tunes, but that WE care about them and are more than willing to watch them streaming!

Well, a long four months after Anthro New England, I went to my next convention I usually go to: Anime Boston! But this year, I noticed there seemed to be more furries attending than usual! At times it felt close to being like an actual furry con, especially since there's a fairly large LGBTQ crowd here. At one point yesterday I even accidentally referred to this con as "Anthro New England!" But this year, it's been ten years since I started attending Anime Boston, having been bitten by the Boston convention bug at the first Anthro New England in 2015 led to me wanting to fursuit at another con there and being pleasantly surprised by having a great time there. And I'm glad I am keeping it going...
Coming off the heels of solving Copley's disappearance at Anthro New England 2025's Staggering Case, I still went here in the role of Sam Valentino, Private Toon Detective, just in case I run into another mystery! Plus, given Sam Valentino is kind of my "breakout character" on my YouTube channel and my social media, why not?
Also, this was the first con I attended where I brought my iPhone 14, and as such, it was a lot easier to use when wearing Sam Valentino's handpaws compared to my 2nd-gen iPhone SE with its haptic-touch home button being incompatible with said paws and the screen also overall being better-responsive to gloves.

You can see my full con report here, with some more pics I haven't uploaded here!
https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/283665.html

So overall, I had a pretty fun time capering around Anime Boston, and its being on Memorial Day Weekend this year meant I could attend on Sunday as well (since on Easter Sunday my dad and brother want us to do our annual family portrait that day). Next year it's back on Easter weekend, and also a week before Furcationland in Maine! Once I have a good-paying computer tech job again, I should be going to that convention as well! (Anime Boston is actually my least-expensive con I go to, as I don't stay at the con's hotel or park anywhere, and I rarely buy anything from their Artist's Alley and Dealer's Room.)

Today, I went to the movies for the first time in nearly three years to see the latest animated feature film being released... "The Day the Earth Blew Up" - a feature-length "Looney Tunes Cartoons" movie! It was originally slated for airing on Cartoon Network and streaming on Max. Unfortunately, Cartoon Network is running out of gas, and Max doesn't really care for animated stuff made for kids and families anymore (today they also removed all the remaining "Looney Tunes" shorts as well as several Scooby-Doo movies, but that's for another post!) But it did pretty well at animation festivals, and Pete Browngardt and his crew at Warner Bros. Animation just had to make sure the American public sees it, so it ended up getting released theatrically... by Ketchup Entertainment! But since it's an indie distributor, it's a semi-limited release that's barely been promoted, so it looks like it may not be making a lot of money (so far this opening weekend it made $5 million), but it was produced on a $15 million budget, which is considered pretty low nowadays. So I'm hoping at least domestically it can make around $30 million. Then it'd prove the public wants to see traditional hand-drawn animation in cinemas, and maybe, just maybe, we can see "Coyote vs. ACME" finally see the light of day!
Besides that, this whole movie was fun! In a way, this is like "Looney Tunes Cartoons"'s equivalent to "Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation". And it shows when done right, "Looney Tunes" characters CAN carry a feature-length plot. There were a lot of funny jokes (even a classic medium awareness gag with a silhouetted audience member!) some really good animation (they got WB Animation's A-list subcontractors like Tonic DNA and Snipple Animation to work on this!), great music, and more! Not all of it was perfect though, such as a few unneeded butt jokes, some occasional jerky rigged moments to the animation, and the "Rocko's Modern Life"-esque sound effects, but I can overlook those.
I even brought my Daffy Duck plushie I've featured in me and my friend's "Golden Book Video Killers" web series to the movie! Especially since after the movie ended, I made this on the way out:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QOANY59xtnc
And a couple days ago, among some other animation updates, I had Sam Valentino talk a bit about the movie as well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOJmeCXIGyM
So I urge all you "Looney Tunes" fans to go see this in the theater, if you can!

My pal  tomblappy could use a bit of financial assistance...
https://gofund.me/741a00ea

Well, this weekend I got my first big thing of the year of 2025 done: this year's Anthro New England! I was especially excited, because of the con's theme: a Staggering Case. Yep, a mystery theme! This will definitely go down as one of the best ANEs I've attended in the ten years this con has been running. I can't believe it's been that long already, and we've really GROWN. This year, we had 5,769 attendees, over a thousand more from last year, and we raised $40,000 for our charities!
I had a lot of fun as Sam Valentino, Private Toon Detective, solving the case of Copley's disappearance! And because my friend  anthrocoon died a couple weeks ago (R.I.P.), I hosted the Classic Furry Cartoons panel in his place. I know he would have wanted that, and I'm glad I can keep his legacy alive. Then after that,  galefrostbane and I hosted a small remembrance event in memory of Anthrocoon. We were joined by some other friends to honor him. There were some memories, tears and hugs all around. In a way, his spirit definitely seemed to be here with us!
Then afterward the mood was greatly lifted when I hosted my panel: YouTube Poops 101! I got an amazingly big turnout, and everyone had a great time seeing me present the history of YTPs, editing techniques and tips, and a few samples of my YTP work. After all, given I'm especially known in the furry fandom for YouTube Poops, I can see why this went over so well! I should make this an annual thing!
Read the full con report HERE, with lots of photos, including some not on FA here!
https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/281278.html
And next year, we're going to have a Western theme! I'm looking forward to having Zak Wolf dress up in cowboy gear for that. I'm also reminded the Maltese Fur Con was going to have a Western theme for 2015, but it was cancelled due to low registration numbers. But I don't think Anthro New England will be facing that fate anytime soon!
With this con out of the way, I still have Anime Boston, Fan Expo Boston, and hopefully Furpocalypse to go through next! And in a way, it's good to be back home again...

I just found out from one of my friends that Bob "Anthrocoon" Nelson  anthrocoon had just passed away, from complications from heart surgery. He was 62 years old. A Massachusetts-native furry and radio DJ, he had attended every Anthro New England (as have I), and has also gone to other big cons, like when we were at Furpocalypse 2023.

I have co-hosted Anthrocoon's "Classic Cartoons" panels at Anthro New England 2023 and 2024, and Furpocalypse 2023. I was actually hoping in the future to co-host an ANE or Furpoc panel about the Kroffts with Anthrocoon, but now I'll probably have to do it alone...

Anthrocoon was really looking forward to attending Anthro New England 2025 in two weeks. The "Classic Cartoons" panel will still happen, but I will host it in his honor and with his memory in my heart, and we will also likely have a silent prayer for him. He won't be at the con, but I'm sure his spirit will still be with us, and we will still have a great time at ANE. He definitely would have wanted that...

Well, the year of 2024 is almost over. And in some ways, I am glad. Me and my brother seemed to have more bad luck than usual this year! But now it's time for my annual recap...

JANUARY
I go to Anthro New England 2024 and have fun, not just as Zak Wolf and Sam Valentino, but also as my new scaly 'sona Dawson Dragon to celebrate my Zodiac animal's year!

FEBRUARY
A good chunk of my "Arthur" YTPs get blocked by PBS Distribution during one of their tirades, including the very first one I made over 16 years ago, and so I have to offload them onto my Google Drive folder for ex-YouTube Poops.
I have to say goodbye to my old BMW 528i after its steering mechanism starts failing, and I buy a nice little Toyota Camry LE as my next set of wheels. I still have more than a year of loan payments left to make on it, but at least fueling it up costs much less than it did with the Beamer! AND it's got 4-wheel drive!

MARCH
I start to get in some promotional work as K-O of the Brockton Rox.
Near the end of the month, I go to Anime Boston 2024 as Sam Valentino, Private Toon Detective.

APRIL
I get to see that solar eclipse visible in our area.

MAY
The New England Knockouts season begins, but due to behind-the-scenes problems, we do not debut the team's bulldog mascot Marv that I am set to train and escort once we do introduce him.
The Brockton Rox season begins, kind of on the back burner this year compared to the Knockouts, but it gives me as K-O the Kangaroo all the time I want to meet and greet my adoring fans!

JUNE
I go to Fan Expo Boston 2024, being temporarily held at the Hynes Convention Center due to the BCEC undergoing renovations. A little helter-skelter, but still fun!
MeTV Toons starts up, and since we don't use an antenna in my house, I sign up to FrndlyTV and have fun watching classic animation from the 30s to the 90s!

JULY
The Rox plays a game on the Fourth of July, and so I get to gussy up K-O in an Uncle Sam hat and with American flags, despite him being an Australian kangaroo!
I celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Jim Carrey classic "The Mask!"

AUGUST
The Rox season ends on a bitter loss. But my good furry friend Cyan comes to the next-to-last game!
I begin a side gig with my college's TV studio, digitizing their old analog master tape library for future preservation!

SEPTEMBER
I commission a new fursuit head of Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, in time for the character's 75th birthday!
Because of financial problems that electronics recycling/reselling company faces, I get laid off from my tech job. (They even ended up closing the facilities I worked at shortly afterward, consolidating all their operations to a single location.) Since then, I've been applying left and right for computer-related jobs and have had a few interviews, but no luck so far.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER
I celebrate 20 years of officially being a furry!
I have a great Hallow-weekend at Furpocalypse 2024, now at the Hilton Stamford Hotel & Executive Meeting Center in Stamford, CT! I even host a panel there about making YTPs!

DECEMBER
I end up going back on Social Security income to help pay my bills!
We have a great Christmas, our best one in years!

And that brings us up to now. As you might have seen, I've been having more bad luck than usual this year. In addition to the BMW, and getting laid off from that computer tech job, there is also my not getting hired for any of the jobs I've applied to and/or been interviewed at so far. The day right before Halloween, I got into a really minor car accident, but still had to pay a little money for it. And the therapist I had been seeing for 21 years, he had to move to another company that doesn't accept the health insurance plan I use, so I haven't been able to talk with him for a while, but I am currently arranging to start meeting with a new therapist for kicking off the next year. Near the end of November, at my college the U-Matic tape deck I had been using in digitizing those master tapes broke down and we've yet to get it fixed, so I haven't been able to work with them for a while (in addition to getting it repaired, we're also going to need to get ready to "bake" those U-Matic tapes suffering from Sticky Shed Syndrome so we can save the footage from them, and get a working DVCPro deck again). I've also been ending up coming across more fire alarms going off than usual! A pretty humiliating one was a couple weeks before I got laid off, at my former job. All these alarms have been really hard on my anxiety and ears, and soon I began to get pretty jumpy about them after a while! I even made a couple of videos to show what the sensory overload is like in the ways I usually do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19sYK9tHspk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcNtGLGtS5g
At least aside from my former job, these fire alarms are largely not like the older and LOUDER ones my public schools had that really terrified me and made me the butt of other students' jokes. (The high school will soon be undergoing an expansion and renovation, so they're going to need to get a new alarm system as part of it anyways!)

It's not just me having all this bad luck this year; my brother has as well. In February his Google phone got broken while he was at work and had to spend money on a new one (he decided to go to the Apple side like me and get an iPhone, and I was really glad to help him!) The day I had to say goodbye to my old Beamer, my brother injured his knee during a workout and needed crutches for a while. Last month, my brother's car engine had to be replaced (I've told him many times he should often check the oil!), and that was really expensive for him. And he underwent at least a couple other mishaps as well that I was able to sympathize with him.

Also regarding YouTube videos, this is my most-viewed video I've uploaded this year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC5xvMhlhhY
A demonstration of the old "The Simpsons Cartoon Studio" PC game from 1996, showing off some animated segments I made starring Our Favorite Family, including a few recreations of ones I made playing this game as a kid in the late 1990s. Even the thumbnail here, that was the very first animation I made on it when I was nine years old, with Marge slipping on a banana peel planted by Bart when going to answer the door. A simple start, but hey, the jokes in the Golden age of the Simpsons TV show were often simple but really funny! For this, I ran the game on my 2005 PowerBook G4, running the game via Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's "Classic" mode.

So, what will 2025 bring? I really hope I get another computer tech job, maybe one that pays better than my old one did. Then after I had been working that for a while, me and my brother can get started in looking for an apartment so we don't have to live with our parents, because they're not going to be around forever. And 2025 will also likely be when the New England Knockouts' bulldog mascot will be ready to make his debut (I won't be performing him, but I'll still get to train him and be his escort at several games and events, being the stadium's veteran mascot performer and still working for them as K-O!) I'm also really looking forward to Anthro New England in less than three weeks, with its' mystery theme that would be right up Sam Valentino's alley! Change can be a little scary at times, but with all the changes I've faced, I've gotten used to several of them. So I guess I may as well go with my family tradition of just "wait and see!"

This year's Halloween was a different one for me than before. I didn't give out candy to the trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood this year. But that was because I went to Furpocalypse 2024! Even after getting laid off from that computer tech job when the company began suffering financially, I managed to save up more than enough needed to pay for my hotel room and other con-related expenses! So I didnt't have to worry so much about money during the weekend.
Because Halloween fell on a Thursday this year, this meant Furpocalypse kicked off their events late that afternoon, being a Halloween-themed furry convention.
So I left at 9 AM after doing my final packing and made the 3 1/2 - hour drive to Stamford, Connecticut (including a couple of pitstops to use the restroom, give my driving pedal foot and my fingers a rest for a bit, and grab a quick lunch on the second pitstop), arriving around 12:45 PM.
But this year, Furpocalypse had relocated to a bigger hotel than before, now right in downtown Stamford! The Hilton Stamford Hotel and Executive Meeting Center. It was built in the 1980s and has had some renovations and upgrades since. At times it reminded me of the first hotel Anthro New England was at: the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, MA. While the Armon was five stories high, this one was ten stories, and had a huge parking garage in the basement that also covered a few adjacent office buildings! Parking was less difficult than last year, sometimes having to take a long walk in-between a parking space and the hotel lobby elevator and stairs, but it was worth it, even if my initial trip from the car to the hotel with all my luggage was really tricky. Being our first year at this hotel, things were kind of helter-skelter, as expected, but it worked out really well! Also with this location, when I'd go to get breakfast or dinner, I'd initially get lost a bit due to a sense of misdirection from viewing a map, but by Saturday morning I knew my way around pretty well.
Among arriving, I was able to check into my hotel room, drop off all my baggage, suit up as Zak Wolf, and join the pre-registration badge pickup line! Conveniently, the end of the line was right outside the second floor conference level elevators when I got off there!

You can read a more detailed recap with the same pictures as here and a few not on FA...
https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/279875.html

This year, we managed to reach 2,845 attendees, and we raised $17,091.98 for the charity! And next year, the con will be having a "Twilight Zone"-related theme! This could be pretty fun!

And then this morning I checked out from the hotel and left with my luggage for the long drive back home, even stopping by my aunt's house for a quick lunch visit!
Overall, I'm glad this con went very well, and was definitely one of my best Halloweens yet, only 20 years after officially becoming a furry! And then my birthday will be in a few days, and in more than two months it'll be time for Anthro New England with its mystery theme!

As of this month, I have been a furry for 20 years! It all began in October 2004 when I was almost 16 years old and I bought that old licensed Wile E. Coyote latex Halloween mask made by Illusive Concepts to wear for that Halloween.
(That mask, along with the rest of the Looney Tunes masks made by Illusive Concepts, first hit the market over 30 years ago!) The body to go with the mask was very rudimentary, but this was the first time I REALLY had fun wearing a Halloween costume. I attended a friend's Halloween party wearing it, and I gave out candy to the trick-or-treaters in that getup. I've always loved the Looney Tunes, and among entering adolescence I began to think about what it'd be like to become such an anthropomorphic "funny animal" character.

Flash forward to 20 years later... some things just don't change! My new Wile E. Coyote costume went over very well at a little Halloween party me and my brother threw last weekend.
And in those 20 years that've since passed, I now have three fursonas: Zak Wolf, Sam Valentino the Private Toon Detective, and Dawson Dragon! And in addition to Wile E. Coyote, I also have cosplays of Scooby-Doo, the Disney Big Bad Wolf, and am even working on one of Legoshi!

Of course in the 2000s, the furry fandom still didn't have as much widespread acceptance as they do now, since they still had that reputation (and that darn "CSI" episode didn't help at all!) Fortunately when I finally mustered up the courage to tell my parents about my being a furry in 2009, they didn't mind very much. Then I was able to prove to them the furry fandom was largely not like what they might have heard when I started going to furry cons ten years ago with the Maltese Fur Con.

Speaking of cons, I have saved up enough to be able to afford going to Furpocalypse in a couple of days! But my GoFundMe goal hasn't been fully met yet for paying for some future expensives if you still want to donate and help me out!
https://gofund.me/242e5cb8
I will also be hosting two panels at Furpoc this year! Stay tuned once the con ends after this weekend for further details...

I had just gotten laid off from my job I had been working at for nearly four years due to budget cuts, and like said company, I am now in a financial pickle, especially after a huge car insurance payment and with upcoming bills to pay for this and next month (car loan, car insurance, and room and board) and an expo I am traveling to at the end of October where I need to pay for my hotel room. Since I've made quite the following online, I was hoping some of you could help me out of this temporary setback while I'm out of a regular-paying job (but I am still looking for a new one!)

https://gofund.me/242e5cb8

Whew, I can't believe I went through this again! But it seems after going to Furpocalypse for the first time, Anthro New England 2024 felt a little like "just another furry con" to me, but that was fine. This year was kind of mid-key for me compared to past years, for reasons I will mention later, but I had a good time anyways. You can read about it here, with photos (including a few not on here) and a YouTube link...

https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/275593.html

I can't believe how fast 2023 went! They say the years go by faster as you get older, and it definitely seems that way to me, especially now that I'm 35 years old *shivers a bit*. But while some thing stayed the same this year, there were also a few achievements I went through and a few other pleasant surprises. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has been over for a while (but nowadays it's not so bad anymore, with the vaccines being updated every year and me getting a COVID booster every autumn alongside my flu shot), it's nice that life has practically returned to normal, even though I usually never leave home without a mask in my pocket, just in case. And now it's time to look back at how this year went...

JANUARY
A rough start for Looney Tunes fans like me, when HBO Max purges the 1951-2004 Looney Tunes cartoon shorts, and initially lies that it was just a "maintenance check" before it's revealed it was a tax write-off due to the service's streaming rights expiring.
I go to Anthro New England 2023, the first one held at the Westin Boston Seaport District hotel, and the first con where I also go as my private toon detective foxsona Sam Valentino (though of course I also bring Zak Wolf!) I even finally meet my good friend SquirrellyJ in person.

FEBRUARY
Not much out of the ordinary happens.

MARCH
I take my first "spring break" from my computer tech job, taking a week off in the middle of the month to recharge so I don't burn myself out, and I return to work refreshed.

APRIL
I attend Anime Boston 2023 as Sam Valentino.

MAY
The Brockton Rox season opens again, with me as K-O the Kangaroo.
I celebrate the 90th anniversary of Disney's Oscar-winning "Three Little Pigs" cartoon with a new fursuit head I made of the Big Bad Wolf! He looks so much better than the old one.

JUNE
I have Sam Valentino celebrate the 35th anniversary of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"!
Campanelli Stadium gets a new scoreboard and Jumbotron screen as part of their renovations and upgrades!

JULY
I develop another new fursona of sorts; more details on him later in this post.

AUGUST
I go to Fan Expo Boston 2023 as Sam Valentino, accompanied by my friend coming to visit from North Carolina!
The Brockton Rox season ends on a high note with one of my furry friends coming to the game, and they manage to win with a tie-breaker!
I take a week-long vacation from my workplace, using the time to get my car's oil checked and a new inspection sticker, having owned it under my name for a whole year by that point!

SEPTEMBER
I celebrate the 40th anniversary of "Inspector Gadget," and the 30th anniversaries of "Animaniacs" and "Rocko's Modern Life!"
My parents go on a cruise to Alaska with a couple of their friends, leaving me and my brother in charge of the house for ten days. We do an exceedingly well job in minding the house and caring for our dog, giving us a taste of what it'll be like for when we eventually move out of our parents' house.

OCTOBER
I take my first solo road trip to Furpocalypse 2023, my first out-of-state furry convention! It goes very well, as expected.
Among returning home, I spend Halloween as Sam Valentino, going to work in suit and then giving out candy to the trick-or-treaters as the private toon detective fox.

NOVEMBER
I turn 35 years old.
I celebrate the 50th anniversary of Disney's furry classic, "Robin Hood," the movie that spawned my popular YTP "Disney Buys Out Hanna-Barbera" (that turned ten years old this year!)

DECEMBER
Another non-traditional Christmas, but I give lots of presents to my family!


And that pretty much sums it up. This year I also made what ended up becoming a new viral Simpsons mashup video of sorts...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDxdIU4AK3I
What I did was I took this scene from Season 12's "HOMR" where Our Favorite Family goes to an animation festival and Bart watches a generic anime parody he calls "Japanimation," and edited it so Bart's dialogue is in his original English, but the anime parody's audio is from the Japanese dub, with subtitles added so it looks like Bart's watching an English sub rather than an English dub. The Japanese voices combined with Alf Clausen's stereotypical "1990s anime" music go together surprisingly well, and I like how the Japanese dub actors even had their lines match up with the characters' lip movements, as if they were in on the joke. (The original English version had the lip movements intentionally not match up with their dialogue, which is common in American anime parodies.)
Six months after uploading it, the video has now had over a million views! Have I created a new Simpsons meme?!

Also, since 2024 is to be the Year of the Dragon, and it just so happens the Dragon is my Zodiac animal, I came up with my own dragon 'sona: Dawson Dragon! Since his mask is pretty old, it's kind of a placeholder, until I can eventually come up with a new head for him (maybe custom-order a silicone dragon mask from Smitzen in the same colors). Since this costume does take a bit more effort to put on and take off, and the robe doesn't have any pockets, I don't plan to wear him to many conventions, but I WILL be bringing him to Anthro New England 2024 in three weeks for a bit of walking around, especially since I know a few other fellow dragons that will be there. Hope I will be able to fit him in with the rest of my luggage!

A big achievement this year was when me and my brother minded the house when our parents went on that cruise. We ended up putting off the apartment hunting because of that, knowing we would need to house-sit for our parents anyway. I'm still not certain if 2024 will be the year we finally move out, but my brother is still looking, and I may be able to help him out.
Another big step was my going to Furpocalypse in Stamford, Connecticut two months ago. It's still in New England, but still out of state (a 3 1/2 hour drive), and it was an overall fun experience! I'm definitely planning to go back to Furpoc next year! (Rumors are afloat that Furpocalypse is looking to move to a new hotel for next year.) This means I will now have four regular cons to go to, with one for each season: Anthro New England in winter, Anime Boston in spring, Fan Expo Boston in summer, and Furpocalypse in autumn. I already know that Fan Expo Boston 2024 is going to be in June, because the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center will be undergoing an expansion and renovation project, and so they will be temporarily housing the con at the Hynes Convention Center, the current home of Anime Boston, so at least it's still a familiar location.
I wonder what life or furry achievments 2024 will bring? Doug Funnie once said change is a lot like the ocean; you can't stop or control it, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride!

Here is my con report blog post on Furpocalypse 2023, my first out-of-state furry convention!

https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/274029.html

I haven't brought it up here yet, but all of last week and early this week, me and my brother were able to prove ourselves even more responsible and adult than before, in practice for when we eventually get our own place. You see, our parents went on a Norwegian Cruise to Alaska with a couple of their friends, and they were gone for a whopping ten days! That's the longest me and my brother have been home without them, and so this really gave us an excellent opportunity to practice living on our own together. And we managed to succeed, making our parents very proud.

First off, Friday September 8th, our parents left very later into the night and early morning at 3 AM, to go with said friends to Logan Airport and fly to Seattle, Washington, where they would board their ship the next day. So when my brother and I woke up that morning, our parents had already left, so it was just us in having breakfast and leaving for work. (Autumn began that Wednesday, meaning my brother is working at the local high school as a paraprofessional, and I'm still getting in a good amount of work at that electronics recycling/reselling company.) In advance, our parents left us simple notes on how we should feed the family dog and give her her proper medicine at the right times, how to run the dishwasher, and the phone numbers to contact a couple of our aunts just in case of an emergency. Me and my brother even compiled a little meal schedule so we'd know what to prepare for dinner on certain days they were out; we'd go shopping and pick up stuff like dry spaghetti, chicken pot pies, chicken cutlets, frozen vegetables, and other stuff we've learned to cook so far.
I did feel a lot more adult, coming home from work when it was just me and my brother. But in some ways, it was also a little more work compared to when our parents are around. At night before going to bed, we'd make sure all the doors are locked, the lights out through most of the house, the front porch light on, and the fans or air conditioners off if applicable. The dishwasher we only had to run maybe four times during that ten-day period, as since it was just us, the dirty dishes took longer to fill the dishwasher compared to when the whole family is home each evening. On the night before trash collection day that week, I only had to empty out a few of the trash recepticles in the house (the kitchen, the main bathroom, and me and my brother's bedrooms), and all of it amounted to be enough to fit in our black city trash barrel; no need to use a city trash bag for extra rubbish! Though I suspect that once my brother and I have our own apartment, it will be slightly easier to do all that compared to our parents' house.
And of course, there was caring for our dog, but that wasn't so hard; on Wednesday the 13th, since I didn't have work that day (more on that in a bit), I took her with me to Dunkies so I can have my iced coffee and we can split a plain donut! (They were out of plain Munchkin donut holes like they usually give dogs.) She enjoyed that.
Now for the reason why I had that Wednesday off. Since late July, the keyboard on my M1 MacBook Air began acting funny, with a few keys requiring they be pressed a bunch of times to register a keystroke. At one point I even tried to clean one of the keys myself, but that just made it worse, with one key now often causing false positives! For some time, I could get by using the MacBook Air in clamshell/desktop mode, but that pretty much defeated the purpose of it being a laptop! Plus, it could be risky for the battery. It would be nice to work with the big screen, though. For a while I also got by with using a small Apple Magic Keyboard hooked up via Bluetooth and the Karabiner-Elements open-source utility that disables the built-in keyboard when an external one is in use.
This month I set up an appointment with the Apple Store at the South Shore Plaza mall in Braintree for that Wednesday morning, and I went there and had it dropped off. Initially they warned me it could come to around $450 and estimated it'd be ready by Monday. During the time it was being repaired I managed to also get by with my older Mac laptops, even using my 2012 unibody 13" MacBook Pro as a bit of a fun throwback at one point! Ultimately, the MacBook Air was ready for pickup only three days later, on Saturday the 16th! AND it only came to $362, with tax! So I was pretty pleased with how it came out.
But now I am still in a bit of a financial pickle, with this MacBook repair. Since I'm going to Furpocalypse in late October, and the hotel stay will be close to $700... but right now I'm more than halfway up to the intended goal on my GoFundMe fundraiser I set up for my fellow online followers to help me. If you want to donate a bit (you can even donate more than once), it'd be greatly appreciated. Every little bit helps!
https://gofund.me/53d3af6a

And there you have it! Despite the financial issue right now, me and my brother took a big step forward in getting a taste of independence and full adulthood. And when our parents returned from their vacation, they were so pleased by our job well done, and were also pleasantly surprised by the cake my brother got for us to celebrate their return!

I can't believe I'm doing this, but if anyone here can also help me cover the cost of my computer repairs (my M1 MacBook Air needs its' keyboard replaced), because I will still have bills and services to pay in addition to trying to save up for a future event later next month.
A Zak Wolf vlog on the subject will soon follow.
https://gofund.me/a93d5df1

This St. Patrick's Day morning, I guess I had a little luck of the Irish, because when browsing the web over breakfast and coffee, I was surprised to hear that as part of the Disneyland Resort refreshing the Mickey's Toontown land, a new meetable walkaround character is joining them... one that's never been in meetable park character form before...
https://blogmickey.com/2023/03/firs.....at-disneyland/

PETE! A.K.A. Peg Leg Pete, Black Pete, Big Bad Pete, Peter Pete, etc. Me and several other furries and Disney theme park fans online were really excited about this, as after all these years, Pete is finally a meetable character at the Disney parks! I was often hoping someday Pete would be a Disney theme park character, but of course, since he was originally a villain to Mickey and Minnie Mouse (hence Pete being a cat), they would have to make him look somewhat less intimidating to small kids. I figured they were going to go with his friendly overalls look ala "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and its' follow-up shows, the way they ended up doing.

Hmm, now that Pete is a regular Disneyland character, maybe for a future Disney park castle stage show they can do a live reenactment of "Steamboat Willie!"

Well, the year is almost over, and so it's that time I look back and recall how things went for me. Those twelve months just flew right by; heck, it feels kind of like summer only started a couple of months ago, and now we're transitioning into winter! Overall, things felt pretty much back to normal with the year of 2022, even with COVID-19 still around in some forms, but it's now pretty much just become kind of a nuisance if you get it. The vaccines and boosters have made more and more people resistant to it, and if you do catch the virus when vaccinated with at least one booster, you just get kind of sick as if it were like a chest cold (my dad got it back in autumn, but at least it wasn't too bad, not as bad as when we all apparently got it in January 2020!) I got my second dosage of the Moderna booster back in October, so I'm all good for the coming year until next autumn when it's to get another booster; now it's pretty much like getting an annual flu shot (in fact, I got both my flu shot and that booster dosage on the same appointment!) But let me get on with recalling the notable events of the year...


JANUARY
Not much happens out of the ordinary,

FEBRUARY
Anthro New England 2022, the first one since the pandemic broke out, and I have so much fun with their 1990s theme!
"Arthur" ends after 25 seasons, and I mourn that a bit.

MARCH
I make a mistake filing out my tax return and end up flat-out broke... but thankfully not for long.
Pixar's "Turning Red" comes out on Disney+ and I enjoy that.

APRIL
I get my first employee raise.
I install Windows 11 onto an Intel Retina 15" MacBook Pro and begin to often use that for my Windows needs.
National Record Store Day 2022, where I do some music shopping in Boston.
K-O the Kangaroo gets back into action for some out-of-stadium appearances, after almost 2 1/2 years of being dormant!

MAY
I buy an iPad from work.
"The Bad Guys" comes out and becomes the first DreamWorks Animation movie I actually enjoy.
The Brockton Rox season begins, back in full swing with a new owner, some stadium renovations, and K-O entertaining and greeting the fans again!
Anime Boston 2022, the first one since the pandemic broke out, and the first one I attend as Zak Wolf!

JUNE
K-O gets to meet legendary Red Sox players Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, since their sons are on the Brockton Rox team roster this year!
I begin construction on my newest fursuit project: Sam Valentino, private toon detective fox.

JULY
More fun with the Rox, such as a Fourth of July day game, and an 80s-themed night.

AUGUST
I take my first vacation from my workplace since I got hired there.
My friend that moved to North Carolina four years ago comes back to visit and accompany me to Fan Expo Boston 2022!
I mourn the closure of the In Your Ear! record store in Boston.
My workplace sells that older BMW they've been letting me drive to me for a good deal, leading to the first car I've owned and insured under my name!

SEPTEMBER
Autumn begins, and nothing significant or out of the ordinary happens, save for starting to get in some off-season work as K-O.
I also celebrate the return of Frute Brute cereal, and stock up on a stash of this werewolf-themed breakfast food.

OCTOBER
I get my second dosage of the COVID-19 booster.
Downtown Fest 2022, a fairly small affair, but K-O is glad to be part of it.
Sam Valentino's partial fursuit is completed!
Halloween, where I go into work as Zak Wolf, and then that even dress up Zak in Grandma's Clothing for handing candy to the trick-or-treaters!

NOVEMBER
I visit the old school building I had preschool at one last time before they prepare to demolish it.
A filling Thanksgiving, followed by K-O participating in Brockton's annual holiday parade!

DECEMBER
Another non-traditional Christmas, though I do give a lot of presents to my family!


I gotta say, the "new normal" has really been going smoothly. And I'm glad I was able to finally make the fursuit of my newest 'sona, Sam Valentino.
And my most viewed YouTube video I made this year is this 3D Movie Maker animation I made in response to Nickelodeon doing away with the NickRewind block on their Teennick cable channel, largely due to streaming services like their Paramount+ stealing much of cable TV's thunder recently...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQXnN1vdvUc
And yes, I used UberDuck for some of the characters' dialogue as an experiment. Some of it sounds awkward, but some of it does sound pretty good (I especially like how Ren's "Who cares about STREAMING?!")

On a sadder note, we lost a bunch of celebrities and well-known media figures this year, as if it were 2022. This year brought us the deaths of Bob Saget, Peter Robbins (the original Charlie Brown voice), Emilio Degado (Luis on "Sesame Street"), Estelle Harris, Gilbert Gottfried, Ray Liotta, Larry Storch, Paul Coker Jr. (MAD Magazine and Rankin/Bass designer), Pat Carroll, Carlo Bonomi (the original Pingu voice), Olivia Newton-John, Queen Elizabeth II, Angela Lansbury, Jules Bass (half of Rankin/Bass), Kevin Conroy (the best Batman voice actor), and Bob McGrath (Bob on "Sesame Street"). Some of those shocked/saddened me more than others, and I think it was the deaths of Saget and Gottfried that got to me the most.

Anyways, 2023 should be interesting. Anthro New England's moving to a new location, some changes are in store for the Brockton Rox, and I'm planning to go to Furpocalypse in October (my first out-of-state furry con)... And will 2023 be the year me and my brother finally move out of my parents' house? Well, like I do when every new year begins, I may as well enjoy the ride!

This morning, the citizens of Brockton were allowed to take a tour of the old high school building downtown before they level it in the coming weels, in anticipation of a new public safety building (a new police and fire station). This was part of the city's public high school campus, built in 1916 as the "B" building and connected to the big old "A" building constructed ten years earlier with a small annex. The "B" building was where I went for afternoon preschool 30 years ago! So of course I just had to go. Read it all here...

https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/268528.html

You can either see my Zak Wolf vlog about Anthro New England 2022...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moBmAD-Y1-g

Or you can read my LiveJournal post about it...
https://wile-e2005.livejournal.com/263331.html

Regardless, it was great to be back!

With 2021 coming to a close tonight, I almost forgot about posting a look back at how the year went for me. Overall, it was a noticeable improvement over the difficult year of 2020, just as I figured it would be. Things gradually improved over time regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, even with different variants appearing, but the vaccines seem to help a lot. Now for the recap...


JANUARY
Me and some friends celebrate the return of Saturday morning cartoons, on MeTV!

FEBRUARY
Not much, but I do participate in Anthro New England's virtual fursuit parade!

MARCH
I start driving a company car the electronics recycling/reselling company I work for let me use after my old Jeep Liberty's transmission began failing: a BMW 528i from the early 2000s!
The Brockton public schools reopen for in-person learning, and so my brother is able to go back to work!

APRIL
I buy my first new Macintosh computer in the box: a MacBook Air utilizing Apple's then-new M1 silicon chip that proves to be a lot faster and more powerful than its' Intel equivalents! The Air quickly becomes my main computer to use.
April 6th: Plucky Duck and Hamton Pig make it to Happy World Land!
I get my first dosage of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

MAY
I enjoy the newest batch of "Looney Tunes Cartoons," including a very fun title involving Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog playing with disguises!
I get the second dosage of the Pfizer vaccine, and this is when the side effects hit me, otherwise I am pretty well.
Everyone else in the family is fully vaccinated by this time.
I come out with a new fursona: Sam Valentino, private toon detective fox.

JUNE
I go to Boston for National Record Store Day 2021, the first time I've been to the big city in 16 months!
I begin a hobby of collecting older functional Macintosh computers, usually ones I get from work that were to be recycled, but I refurbish back into full working order.

JULY
"Space Jam: A New Legacy" comes out and I enjoy it, though it's not really the best thing the Looney Tunes have done in recent years.

AUGUST
Me and my brother make our first Speakonia "Barney Bunch"-themed gag dub of the new "Rugrats" reboot series that came otu this year!

SEPTEMBER
I attend Fan Expo Boston 2021 as Zak Wolf, the first convention I've gone to since Anthro New England 2020, and I have a great deal of fun!
I celebrate 50 years of the Monster Cereals, with their delicious Monster Mash cereal that even mentions Fruit Brute!

OCTOBER
I come up with my cosplay of the title character from the Warner Bros. cartoon "The Turn-Tale Wolf!"
Brockton gets hit by a nor'easter that leaves me and my family without electricity for 81 hours!
Halloween gets back in full swing, with me as Zak Wolf once again!

NOVEMBER
I celebrate the one-year anniversary of when I started working at the electronics recycling/reselling company.
My 33rd birthday.
I get a COVID-19 booster shot, the one from Moderna.
I go to the first model railroad show I've attended since before the pandemic broke out, driving all the way to Wilmington MA!
Thanksgiving fills us up, where I helped my mom make the dinner, including preparing mashed potatoes and squash and baking a pumpkin pie! Then the day after, since we don't have as much leftovers, my mom teaches me how to combine them into a "Pilgrim Pie" (like a shepherd's pie but made of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers.)

DECEMBER
Yet another non-traditional Christmas here.

And that brings us up to right now. The year started off kind of slowly (again, due to the pandemic), but by the end here we're a lot closer to the "new normal" now than we ever were!
Here's my most-viewed YouTube video I made in 2021:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xthAvHnIweo
A spoof I made in response to PBS Kids removing Caillou from their lineup earlier this year. But now it airs on Cartoon Network's current preschool block, Cartoonito.

2022 should be interesting. I just hope at least things get even better regarding the pandemic. Anthro New England is scheduled to happen in February, and I'm all registered and ready to go. (They require proof of vaccination when you register, and so I was glad to oblige.) I'm even going to be hosting a panel there; since the con's theme is of the 1990s, a decade I grew up in and know about very well, my panel will be about 1990s kids' computer games, since that's when they really boomed as home computing became more common and affordable, and many of the titles starred anthropomorphic characters (such as Reader Rabbit, some of the Living Books titles, TuneLand, Spy Fox, the Mercer Mayer-related games, etc.) This will be the very first panel I've hosted at a convention, and I sure am excited, along with other aspects of the con and its' 1990s theme!
The Brockton Rox should also be going back to normal for their home games in 2022; the staff there said they will probably have me working as K-O the Kangaroo again come spring. Right now they're dormant, especially since the stadium is undergoing a much-needed renovation (it'll be 20 years old next spring!) I also recommended they can use this time to get the costume sent in for some repairs; hope that also goes through!
And speaking of costumes, 2022 will also be when I build my partial fursuit of Sam Valentino; being a partial it will be easy, since it'll be his head, arm sleeves, footpaws and tail (as Sam Valentino typically wears a detective's trenchcoat.) I'll work on making it during the spring. Maybe later on in the year I'll work on my first full-body suit, like maybe make a black furry body to go with my Disney Big Bad Wolf cosplay, so I don't have to keep using that Disney Store Halloween costume! (Though I can salvage the overalls and tail from it, of course.)
Also, with 2022 my brother and I are hoping we'll be making enough money by then so we can move out and get our own apartment together. I definitely want us to move in together, since I do help him out with things a lot, and we can both split the rent pay!

And that wraps up another year on this journal. Happy New Year, everybody!

I've been on FurAffinity for 15 years now! And that's no April Fool's joke!

Wow, is it already that time of year? Geez! Well, despite this being a very difficult year for many, including me and my family, I may as well post a recap on how the year went for me. This should actually be pretty easy!

JANUARY
Not much, just making a few Zak Wolf vlogs about YouTube's new COPPA thing.

FEBRUARY
Got my Associate's Degree in Computer Information: User Support!
Anthro New England 2020; the first convention I go to as Zak Wolf!
My college's production of "Beauty and the Beast" opens up, where I make wolf puppets for the woods scenes! My first theatrical costuming/puppetry gig!

MARCH
Brockton is hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lockdown goes into effect; my dad ends up getting laid off from his new job, and my brother has to start working from home after a while, and I am devastated by the news of the cancellations of Anime Boston and Fan Expo Boston Comic Con. Things get boring and tedious.

APRIL
Not much due to the lockdown, though I did start upping my production of videos for my YouTube channel, including YTPs and fursuit vlogs!

MAY
Still not much, but I get to see "Scoob!" since it is releast directly to VOD services due to the pandemic.
HBO Max starts up with a batch of brand new Looney Tunes cartoons I start watching!

JUNE
Still not much done.

JULY
Because my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 phone had started failing, I get a new iPhone SE!
I get into some YouTube copyright problems with "Arthur" YTPs being blocked by CBS, so I begin uploading said videos on my Google Drive!

AUGUST
I start to get pessimistic, especially after Anthro New England 2021 is cancelled due to the pandemic.

SEPTEMBER
Still not much done.

OCTOBER
Halloween is a quiet affair, but with a nice full moon Zak Wolf enjoys going out in!

NOVEMBER
Things start looking up for me; I get a computer tech job with an electronics reselling/recycling company in Berkley!
My 32nd birthday, on the day Joe Biden wins the Presidental election, no less!

DECEMBER
My old Jeep Liberty from 2004's transmission starts failing, so I have to say goodbye to it...
Another non-traditional Christmas.

Which brings us up to now. This was not a great year for a lot of people due to the coronavirus pandemic, and I can see why. With Anthro New England 2021 cancelled, that year will be off to a slow start. I don't think Anime Boston 2021 will be happening either. But at least news about the COVID-19 vaccine has been greatly moving forward, and if all goes well my family and I should be vaccinated some time during the spring, which is also the time I may finally get a "new" car! ("New" as in a few years old.) There will also be Biden entering office, and it's said during the summer the company I work for will have a nice new facility built so we don't have to work in that old warehouse anymore! So at least there's something good to look forward too! I'm also hoping that Fan Expo Boston 2021 can still happen, and that Halloween will be normal again, as I certainly miss fursuiting outside of home. But at least this year did end on a high note for me with this career of mine, so at least it wasn't a total loss!
Here's to hoping things greatly improve in 2021!

2020 has been a pretty hard year on me and my family. What with the COVID-19 pandemic, my dad has been out of work, save for some occasional gigs with a recycling company, but this may not be enough to support us soon. And my brother, who works as a high school paraprofessional, is currently getting work done, partly on-site at the school campus (even if students aren't allowed back in yet) and partly remote. So generally he's been the breadwinner in our family for some time, even if this summer he got NO work due to the school district's summer programs not operating, and I wasn't getting any work as K-O the Kangaroo.
BUT... since I had gotten my Associate's Degree in Computer Information: User Support earlier this year (BEFORE the pandemic broke out, too!) I had been job-hunting for months, looking for a computer-related job that would fit me. And this week, I had a great stroke of luck! I finally have my first I.T.-related job!
Today was my first day of work. My job is in Berkley, MA, so it's quite a distance away, but since I have a driver's license (that I recently renewed) and my own car, it's not that much of a problem for me, like roughly a 30-minute drive. Plus, I feel even more independent this way, driving to and from such a job, compared to my retail days when I had to get a lift from one of my parents or brother (or take the crosstown bus in some cases.) Also, now having this job gives me more the good reason to have my own car, as once I've made enough I can finally get a couple of the tires replaced (as they are getting pretty worn lately.)
My workplace is in a warehouse of sorts, with a couple of offices and the main warehouse area FULL of electronic devices. They recycle and resell electronics, and today they had me go through a bunch of all-in-one desktops they recently got, including some fairly old PC ones (so old they came with optical disc drives!) and a few iMacs from the last decade. Booting the iMacs from USB was easy for me, but the Windows ones were a little tricky at times due to many of them being made from a variety of manufacturers, but I caught on quickly with the Dells and HPs, given my experience with both comapnies' products. The ones that could work, we'd wipe the hard drives with a special DOS type of software that is both PC and Mac-compatible from a USB thumb drive. Any that were broken in some way (like not powering on or the screen was so cracked you couldn't see a thing) I would disassemble and salvage the hard drives and RAM from (if any), then dump the rest of the parts in a bin for recycling them. What I do will vary each day; tomorrow with the desktops we wiped the hard drives from, we will label the machines with their specifications to prepare for re-selling.
During much of the shift, the supervisor plays podcasts and some music of various types (today it was 90s music that i remember from my elementary school years), which I am sure I will get used to and should most likely not be monotonous the way it was with the limited music playlists from my retail days. One of the employees also brought in his little dog today, and at first said dog was a little intimidated by me but halfway through the shift got used to me enough to let me pet him! He won't be there every day, which I don't mind much, as I did often have to look where I was walking to avoid tripping over him at times!
Punching in and out is also very easy. Generally my shifts will be from 9 AM to 3:30 PM, three days a week (maybe even four if applicable), and I get good pay as well.
I guess I can say I really found my calling with this job! In a way I don't even mind the 2020 Presidental Election as much since I finally have an I.T. job and things should get much better for me over time. I had a hunch this year, where I get my Computer Information degree, would be the year I get my first job relating to said degree, even with the pandemic!

Well, a new decade is coming up. I'm amazed at how this decade of the 2010s (also known online as "the New Tens") went by fairly quickly compared to past decades. Again, it all comes from getting older. I've seen quite a few changes happen during this decade, not just to me, but to other people I know, places and other things as well. Let's look back at some of the noticeable things that happened with me through this past decade...

2010
Not much, except that I graduate college the first time with a Liberal Art Studies degree and start getting in some retail work. Oh, and I started the decade with a stomach bug, but luckily those go away really quickly, compared to the common cold!
I get to go to Six Flags New England for the very first time!
I begin to get more serious with model railroading; instead of just using roadbed-track on a grass mat and often changing the track plans to my liking and moving around buildings, I begin to try out nailing down track and doing permanent landscaping, on a 4x8 layout.

2011
Not a lot of good stuff this year, though. Especially near the end when I made one bad decision that got me grounded for what my dad said was an indeterminate amount of time. I really changed since then, and got more honest and well-meaning and much less of a risk-taker.
Oh, and I began helping out with some minor assistance with the Brockton Rox baseball team.

2012
My hometown of Brockton MA gets their first countdown pedestrian signals, and as the decade goes on they start to appear at more and more intersections across the city, especially now that they've gotten really popular with busy and/or dangerous intersections (I'm especially glad Belmont St. now has them at several intersections, including behind my old high school!)
I go to Six Flags New England for the second time, and haven't again since... but we'll see when I go back! (More on why in a bit.)
I raise three Monarch butterflies from eggs I find in the milkweed in our old garden.
I finally achieve a dream I've had since my teenage years: I become a performer for K-O the Kangaroo, mascot of the Brockton Rox! The staff is really impressed with how good I am, especially with the kids, and my family and friends are all proud of me.

2013
I begin doing Big Bad Wolf vlogs about Disney-related records, and as the years go on I also cover Disney-related cassettes and other wolf-related read-alongs!
I get the Spencer's Wile E. Coyote footed hoodie pajama suit, and it makes a great body costume to go with my Wile E. Coyote latex mask!
I start to really get into vinyl records, just in time for their comeback!
My paternal grandmother dies.
I partake in my first big mascot event, when K-O the Kangaroo visits Gilette Stadium for a New England Revolutions mascot night!
The first Rox season where I play K-O for all the games, and the last season with the old ownership.
I attend Boston Comic Con (now Fan Expo Boston) for the very first time, and have been going every year since!
My brother gets struck down with seizures and is unable to drive for a long time, making it a big strain on the whole family.
The first Downtown Fest in Brockton that I attend as K-O.
I start a job-training program in Boston, marking it the first time I am able to travel to the big city by train all by myself. A BIG step up for me!

2014
I start a maintenance associate job at Sprawlmart.
I get my first "Smart" device, an Apple iPod Touch 5G! Yeah, it took me that long to get one, but getting that job was a big help in being able to afford it.
I build my second model railroad layout of this decade, a 9x8 L-shape, and I start using DCC model train operation.
The Brockton Rox gets their current K-O the Kangaroo suit as part of the new ownership, and I am the first performer to work in it (since I'd be the go-to guy for off-season gigs.)
I start working on an improved cosplay of the Disney Big Bad Wolf, using a modified Disney Store Halloween costume that soon becomes the norm for the Wolf's body when I dress up as him.
I attend my first furry convention, the Maltese Fur Con in Boston! The con does not survive to happen a second year, unfortunately.
We adopt our current rescue dog, Sweetie.

2015
I attend the first Anthro New England, held in Cambridge MA, and have been going to said furry con ever since!
I attend Anime Boston for the first time, and have been going every year since!
I mourn the demise of the first fire alarms I ever heard in my life, when my first elementary school's original fire alarm system starts failing and has to be replaced.
I get fired from Sprawlmart, but re-hired by the Rox (taking advantage of my unfortunate situation!)
My family and I go on vacation to Old Orchard Beach, Maine!
I hit it off with a girl who knows my brother, and by the end of the decade we become good friends.
Rubies Costumes comes out with that neat full-head latex Scooby-Doo mask, and of course I buy one!
My final retail job, a seasonal position as a sales associate at Kohl's. I decide at that point that since I'm into computers, I will go back to college and get an I.T. degree!

2016
I finally get my first Smartphone, after making do with a flip-phone for quite some time.
I buy my current quad-core Mac Mini, which quickly becomes my main computer of choice!
I foray into fursuit construction, building a fursuit head of the Disney Big Bad Wolf, complete with movable jaw! Not bad for my first effort.
I go to DrawnCon in the new fursuit head, and start wearing it to every convention I go to since!
I start playing Pokémon GO! when it comes out.
I finally get my driver's license! I was in no hurry when I turned 16 back in 2004, but when my brother started having seizures and couldn't drive anymore, this prompted me to go for my license myself, and when I did, it was a BIG help for the family, because now I could drive my brother around instead of my parents having to do it all the time.
I start going back to college to go for a Computer Information Degree in User Support.
I go to my first furmeet, at King Richard's Faire.

2017
I begin having the Big Bad Wolf often rant about certain Disney topics on my YouTube channel, such as those live-action remakes.
Fan Expo Boston Comic Con moves from the World Seaport Trade Center to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It is that year I get to meet Jess Harnell and Jim Cummings!
My brother stays in a hospital for a couple weeks and has his final seizure to date.
We move out of the house I grew up in, and move onto a nicer and quieter side street.

2018
I am diagnosed with instigmatism and get prescription eyeglasses.
Because of moving to a new house, I build a new 11x8 L-shaped model railroad layout, my biggest and best to date!
Anthro New England moves to the Park Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston, making for a much easier commute!
I get a guest-spot on a college radio show, in character as the Big Bad Wolf!
The second Rox season where I am K-O for all the games, due to the smaller staff on hand and because I live much closer to the stadium now.
I build actual fursuit footpaws for my Big Bad Wolf cosplay!
I upload my 1,000th YouTube video!
One of my good male friends moves away to North Carolina, but we stay in touch online.
The "This is Life with Lisa Ling" episode about furries comes out, and me and my parents really enjoy it.

2019
The first year I stay overnight at a furry convention, with that year's Anthro New England, but just for one night to get a bit of experience, which proves to be successful.
K-O the Kangaroo visits Fenway Park in Boston for Wally the Green Monster's birthday!
The third Rox season where I am K-O for all the games, again due to the smaller staff.
I get my own first vehicle; a 2004 Jeep Liberty my mom handed down to me after she buys a new car. Then I also start driving on the highways!
I build my second fursuit, the new fursona that me and  blueeyedwolf co-developed: Zak Wolf!
I wrap up my final semester of classes for that I.T. degree, making the Dean's List each semester!


And there you have it. Quite a few accomplishments for me, both furry and non-furry. It will be interesting to see what the New 20s brings. In fact, that's what Anthro New England 2020's theme is going to be: The Roaring 20s! I already got pin-striped suspenders and a wide-brimmed matching fedora for Zak to wear at times to go with the con's theme. It'll also be the first convention I go to as Zak Wolf, and for that one I'm going to stay over two nights instead of one. Plus, now that I have completed my college Associate's Degree for Computer Information: User Support, that should make it easier for me to get a decent computer job that will provide me with an even better source of income, and life should get a whole lot better for me, along with my brother and parents. Then I can even start going to out-of-state furry conventions as well! Let's hope these goals do come into fruition soon!

Wow, it's already that time of year where I do a recap on how my year went? Geez, I'm getting old. Oh well, here it is...

JANUARY
Not much; I start the spring semester at my college going for the I.T. degree.

FEBRUARY
Anthro New England 2019, the first con I stay overnight at! (Just for one night, to dip my feet in.)

MARCH
I start getting in some out-of-stadium K-O the Kangaroo appearances.

APRIL
National Record Store Day 2019 with a K-O gig on the same day!
Anime Boston 2019!
I finally get "A Goofy Movie" on Blu-Ray!

MAY
I wrap up the spring semester with the usual As and Bs.
K-O visits Fenway Park for Wally the Green Monster's birthday!
The Brockton Rox season begins, off to a good start, with some new features at the stadium!
I start construction on my second fursuit, Zak Wolf, beginning with the head.

JUNE
I get my own first vehicle; a 2004 Jeep Liberty that belonged to my mother but still works great.
The Rox gets their highest fan attendence yet with the school day game, with close to 6,000 fans!
Wally visits the Rox for K-O's 16th birthday!
Zak Wolf's head is finished.
I finally begin driving on the highways on my own; a big step up in my driving experience.

JULY
More Brockton Rox fun; Slyde of the New England Revolutions visits!
I build Zak Wolf's upper body (as he wears pants.)

AUGUST
The Rox season ends, with the team as FCBL Regular Series Champions!
My friend who moved away to North Carolina comes to visit!
Fan Expo Boston 2019, where my brother accompanies me, and I get to meet Frank Welker and Grey DeLisle-Griffin while dressed as Scooby-Doo!
I finally complete Zak Wolf, building his footpaws!
K-O visits the Boston Cannons in Quincy for Boomer's birthday!

SEPTEMBER
I start my last semester of classes for my I.T. degree.
I celebrate Scooby-Doo's 50th anniversary and Wile E. Coyote's 70th anniversary, along with 15 years of my being a furry!

OCTOBER
Downtown Fest/Shoe City Festival with K-O!
Zak Wolf's first Halloween, with a false fire alarm as well.

NOVEMBER
ANOTHER fire alarm on my birthday! I begin to get paranoid.
I celebrate the 50th anniversary of "Sesame Street."
Our family has a nice Thanksgiving feast.
K-O marches in Brockton's annual holiday parade!

DECEMBER
K-O volunteers for a special holiday party and is reunited with Pat Patriot!
Another non-traditional Christmas.

And my most-viewed YouTube video upload this year is this no-commentary playthrough of an old PC CD-ROM game of my childhood. (I guess it's not that surprising, since my Let's Play commentary of this game is currently my most-viewed Let's Play video since I made it almost six years ago!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqGHEPwvzUg

I think my biggest furry accomplishment this year was building Zak Wolf, my second fursuit.
Stay tuned for my recap and accomplishments for this decade, since soon we'll be going into the New 20s!