tigertoy

So I am safely home from MFF. It was a fun weekend, but a lot less fun than it could have been for me. The convention has just gotten too big. It started sometime last Spring when I learned that the Hyatt was already sold out, before I'd learned that the room block was open. So it was the first year that I've been in someone else's room, and because they didn't want to stay over Sunday night, I didn't either. We ended up in the Hyatt Thursday night and then at the Hilton Friday and Saturday, which meant (a) having to move hotels, (b) having to figure out where to park for Friday and Saturday, and (c) having the room very inconveniently far from the con.

We left town on Thursday at 4, picking up the fourth passenger at Parkland on the way out of town. The trip to the hotel was uneventful. I went to make myself a sandwich and discovered that I'd forgotten my mustard, which made my dinner much less appealing. I picked up my badge and signed up as a gopher. I went to the Art Show, thinking I would be helping to set up, to find that they were packing up for the evening. So I went back to ops and asked where I could help set up, and they sent me to Con Suite, where I did things for 15 minutes, and then spent most of the rest of an hour waiting for someone in charge to tell me what I needed to do, and then they said they were done for the evening. I decided I was through volunteering for the evening and went to the game room, where I played a couple of games of magic before they closed the room at midnight.

Friday, we managed to check in early at the Hilton, so we were able to move our stuff directly from one room to the other. We went to the Fashion Mall food court for lunch, and I snagged a handful of mustard packets from the pretzel stand (I bought some cinnamon pretzel bits, so I wasn't just mooching) so I could make edible sandwiches. I moved the car into the convention center parking across the driveway from the Hyatt parking. I hit the dealer's and got a couple of books and a couple of shirts. Went to the concert, which was headlined by Amadhia, backed up by Fox Amoore and Pepper Coyote. I liked the music, despite the make-your-ears-bleed volume which was not appropriate to their music. Other than that, I hung around in the game room a lot.

Saturday, I watched the fursuit parade, checked out the art show, which is shrinking in size and awesomeness even as the rest of the con grows -- it seems like art shows are just not working as ways for artists to reach their audience, even in the furry fandom where art is huge. I texted a few people about dinner but couldn't find any takers. Was planning to hit the Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind show, when Sci texted me that he was planning to see the Pepper Coyote and Fox Amoore concert at the same time which I'd missed on the schedule. I'm glad I went, because Pepper hadn't impressed me in the Friday concert, but Saturday he got to show off some beatboxing and looping skills. I wandered around the convention area a lot, wondering why I found so few people I knew, and spent some more hours in the game room. Ended the night by stopping by the dance to see what it was like -- the light show was impressive and and the big ballroom was moderately full of furs, mostly at least kind of dancing, but I was weighed down by my backpack and not much in the mood to do what dancing I do.

Sunday, got up in time to shower and leave the room at noon, then watched the dance competition, and we headed home.

The combination of my room being a half-mile walk from the con and my having packed much more than I should in the backpack I wanted to carry with me really weighed me down. I definitely shouldn't have brought Dominion with me -- it's just too much of an anchor. Of course, even if I'd been in the main hotel, if I'd been stuck on a high floor, my room would have been almost as inaccessible, because they were running elevator control -- MFF attendees could only get on the elevator on the main floor, which meant that the traffic jam around the escalators was even more phenomenal than last year -- and you had to line up and wait to get on. If I go next year -- which, for the first time ever I'm not completely sure I will -- I will really want to have a room in the Hyatt on a walkable floor. And I want to tell myself now that having a good con experience will depend on having some things planned in advance, because the con has gotten too big to just bump into people I know and tag along with them.

It's been the main topic of discussion in furry fandom lately, but the rest of my readers (all 3 of you) may not have heard about it.  In downtown Pittsburgh, there's an independent business called Fernando's Cafe, that got hit hard by the recession and was about to close.  It's right next to the Anthrocon venue, and they made a point of welcoming the furries in, and a bunch of people had good memories of eating there.  So Uncle Kage decided to see if he could round up the $4000 Fernando needed to stay in business until June.  Furries all over the world, including many who'd never been to Anthrocon and Fernando's, chipped in, and raised over $21,000 to help Fernando retire his debts and stay in business.  A bunch of folks get to keep their jobs, Anthrocon gets to keep Furnando's, and pretty much everybody wins except for the corporate fast food outlets where people would have to eat instead.  But how many special interest groups would bother to try to pass the hat to keep a business that catered to their convention open, much less succeed?

Furries and the kindest and most generous bunch of people I've ever run across, and I'm delighted that they let me hang around with them.

(Go look at Kage's journal if you want more details.)

Made it back from Furry Connection North in one piece.  The trip to the con was trouble free.  The con was great fun and if there were any disasters they didn't happen to me.  Really impressive tech system at the dances -- amazing laser light show, and speakers that sounded good pumping out rave-level sound.  Watched the dance competition, and really enjoyed it.  I've never been very into dance; watching this made me feel like I've been missing something.  Carried the camera around almost the entire weekend and took around a thousand pictures.  We finally got on the road around 3 today, after lingering over lunch.  The trip home was not quite so trouble free.  First, I caught a rock to the windshield that left a crack, it is small but it will grow, I suspect I'm going to need a new windshield.  Then shortly before the Indiana border, suddenly started getting a lot of noise from the left front wheel well.  The lining of the wheel well, which was pretty torn up, had come loose and was flapping around.  Managed to get it to stop making awful noises, with the help of some duct tape, but I will have to have it looked at to see how it should be repaired in a more lasting, but hopefully not terribly expensive, way.

Seanan says so, and that's plenty good enough for me!

So I say to those who read this: Happy Valentine's Day to each and every
one of you, and if you don't celebrate Valentine's Day, happy Horny
Werewolf Day.

Left EFRC early today so that I could join a few of the local furs to see Lion King.  I'd never seen it before.  It is a good movie.  I generally like Disney animation style, and the animals were particularly appealing.  The story is a bit twee, of course, but still touching, and there were definitely some things for adults to laugh about beyond what the kids would get.  I can see why this movie is so loved by furries; even though I can't rank it among my favorite movies ever, I certainly liked it.  And I thought the 3D was surprisingly well done given that it was grafted onto an pre-existing movie.  Of course, my experience of 3D movies is quite limited -- consisting of Avatar, this, and the previews that accompanied those shows.  Avatar was of course amazing, it was so good that people trying to cash in on it created the whole 3D craze.  But Lion King was much better than any of the 3D trailers.

After the movie, some of us went to Bangkok Thai, more or less next door to the theater.  I had red curry, which was OK, which is kind of disappointing considering how much I like Thai curries.  I asked for very spicy and got food that deserved one hot pepper symbol.  We spent dinner lamenting the lack of really good restaurants in C-U compared to what we get when we visit big cities, and trying to keep me from looking at the TV which was playing some awful movie about talking guinea pigs, because it made my brain hurt every time I couldn't keep my eyes from being attracted to the TV.

I went to IndyFurCon this past weekend.  I had a good time, got to see some folks I knew from the cons I've been to before, played a few games of Magic and Dominion, laughed a lot at Whose Lion Is It Anyway? and at 2 and Kage, spent a little time at the dance Saturday, took some pix, enjoyed Bucktown's concert, bought a couple of things from the dealers.  Didn't find my way to any parties, and got fewer hugs than I hoped for.

I'm only posting this now because when I got home, my phone was dead.  It's OK at the jack on the side of the house, nothing at the phone jacks in the house.  I'm now connected with a 100' extension cord plugged directly into the outside jack, and I have to figure out to get the inside wiring fixed.

I'm back from DucKon.  The short version:  I started the con very tired, and I didn't get much better.  I did get to most of the music I wanted to, but little else, and I had some very good times once I finally got myself into con mode.

( the long version )

I seldom post about my dreams, mostly because I seldom remember enough to post, but I just woke up from one that had an amusing moment.  (I was up way too late last night.)

At the beginning of what I recall, I was in my car, in an unfamiliar town.  I don't know what town it was, but I was driving to a furry con.  I got off a highway onto a main street, and quickly found the sign for the next street I was supposed to be on.  It was very narrow and curved a lot, and I realized as I came around a blind curve that I was completely in the left lane and driving way too fast, but there was no other traffic.  I came to a T and turned left and I knew I was at the hotel, although the parking area was kind of small and it looked like a tennis court.  I parked and started looking for the con, which in some dream way involved finding a hallway where every attendee would be posting a picture on the wall.  I walked into what I thought was the right hallway -- there were some people around and there were sheets posted on the wall.  Only I discovered that these people were playing D&D type games.  The sheets on the walls were characters for these games, not part of the con.  And they were for sale, for prices like $30 or $50 for a character sheet.  I realized I wasn't in the right place and moved on into a place that was more like a hotel lobby.  About this time, I realized that I was not wearing a shirt (I don't usually have, or at least remember, that dream) and it was sort of inappropriate.  Not looking where I was going, I bumped into a woman, a stranger dressed like a businesswoman.  Somehow I knew this was especially a faux pas because I was shirtless.  The woman looked displeased and I did my best at a flowery apology.  (I have no recollection of what I said in the dream, but it was a good apology.)  The woman somewhat archly told me "That is how you apologize to an old lady.  I am a *lawyer*."  With a nasty grin as she said lawyer.  In the way of the dream, I knew that I was in big trouble if she wanted me to be.  I pretended to faint dead away and fall on my back with my limbs in the air as paws.  She reached down to give me a hand up and I knew she was yanking my chain.  I chuffed at her.  And then I woke up.