Tasty Eagle's Journal

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I fail at listening to music
Ok, I seem to be hopelessly and perpetually behind at good music. I hear some really cool song somewhere. Some time later I find it and it's now considered a 'classic'. Stuff I just learn about now came out 6 or more years ago. This happens frequently. So now the stuff that I want to listen to is already way out of date and now cliche among everyone else.

I am seriously out of the loop on new music.

Current Mood: frustrated

More proper AC report
Now that I've regained some of my senses after flying in a cramped seat the entire day yesterday, I have an opportunity to describe my convention experience with a clearer mind.

Oomphness

I enjoyed my time at Anthrocon. A lot of it could be described as 'same con, different year'. It lacked a bit of 'oomph' that I seem to remember from last year. It is mostly just a personal perspective. There were a lot of little things that when added together didn't really make it quite 'as' good as the past year, but it's still plenty good enough that I would love to go again next year.

What are these little items? Well, most are really out of the convention's control. While the convention can put together a venue, it's the attendees that bring the spirit and the vibe along with them. There were many times when I simply couldn't connect with that vibe. It just happens.

The extra hundreds of people started to make life cramped in the Westin portion of the con. At times even the enormous zoo, the spleen of Anthrocon, was unable to contain enough furries. It was frequently too loud and too full of people.

For even more lack of oomph, there weren't even any protesters this year to laugh at.

Pittsburgh

Once again the city of Pittsburgh leaves me happy. Every year I explore a little more of the city I left a long time ago and each time I wonder why I never came back to stay. This year, the Strip a few blocks east of the convention center was neat to walk through, and parts of Mt. Lebanon were visited by light rail.

Fursuiting

Caspian was out a lot. I could only take him along. Alone he takes up an entire suitcase, and bringing along the osprey would have taken up another entire suitcase 'at least'. I really pared down the stuff I took with me to almost the bare minimum, and I can leave behind a few other things next time, for sure. But I still had 2 checked bags with 87 pounds of 'stuff' to haul back and forth. I wonder how Anthrocon's setup for package delivery worked this year for anyone who used it.

Many hours from Thursday to Sunday night. I was a bit worried that everyone would have said, "Oh yeah, that's the bird from last year. *yawn*" No, no they didn't. I am surprised at all the attention that Caspian got, and all the hugs he gave out, even when soaked all the way through. Believe me, Caspian is humbled by all the attention he received and appreciates all the smiles and hugs given his way.

Drip, drip, drip. Fursuiting in Pittsburgh is wet business. It seems that even when not intended, Anthrocon competes with other furry conventions, this time in wetness. It rained a good amount, with quite a few really nice thunderstorms. But the humidity of the rain on top of the general humidity of the area made it impossible for Caspian to ever get dry. Even now, he's still somewhat damp under the fans at home. He is certainly now due for another bath.

Oh, and birds in general. There were a bunch of new birdy suits flapping around. I was pleased to see a number of new suits from brand new and from more experienced builders. Clint the shoebill, Breakspire, Silvy's Raven, Kootenay, Kiyo, another green parrot, all wonderful to see.

And there were a bundle of other fursuits that were quite nice to see, too. I will have photos of some, but much of the time I saw them while I was in fursuit myself, and thus, no camera. Man I need some talent to make stuff of my own.

I did lose my fursuit sandals. I accidentally left them overnight in the headless lounge in the convention center, and con ops didn't have them in lost and found. Hopefully someone else has them. But if not, no big loss. I can make another pair.

Dances

I danced a heck of a lot on Thursday, though I was a bit disappointed to see that the chairs had already been put in place in the ballroom before the dance had started. I was accustomed to having the 'entire ballroom' available to really spread my wings for Thursday night.

For some reason I couldn't really get into the music, though. While last year I connected really well with the music being played, this year I could not get the music to move me. Eh, it happens. Except for a few songs here and there that had me really jumping around, only Rory's special brand of cheeze consistently had me moving because I'm pretty familiar with his playlists. And the dance floors were always so freaking packed, that I usually guided myself into a corner to dance on my own without having to worry about smacking someone in the face with my wings.

Friends

Some friends who were always there consistently were not there this year. Or I just never found them. I feel a bit sad that I couldn't catch up with them because it's the only time of the year I have an opportunity to see them.

But I sure met a whole slew of new friends, especially a group of guys from the Milwaukee area who are definitely new to me. I saw people I already knew, and many I never had a chance until now to meet. I don't want to list out single individuals here, as I will certainly forget to list some of them here. But I'll track them down over the next few days and make my feelings known to them about how much I appreciated the time we did get to spend together at the con.

And yeah, the only way to make sure you'll see someone at a con this size these days is to contact them via cell phone and make plans in advance. It's just hard to do when situations are fluid like they are at any furry con, where there's a billion things to do and see 'at' the con, and a billion things to do and see right outside the convention as well.

Though there's a couple people I saw and will never be able to remember their names. It drives me crazy I won't remember them and I'll feel terrible when I see them again and won't recognize them. It happened a few times this year and I felt awful.

Other stuff

Despite the growth, I was pleased that the security at this year's convention was toned down a bit to restoring order when it was necessary, following the spirit of a mass meeting of people rather than just throwing their weight around because they could.

Lasers at dances are good.

Headless lounge PVC pipe drying fan contraption rocked. I blame Panzier for that.

Parade was huge. What will they do next year when they won't be able to fit everyone even in the main ballroom?

Wireless hotel room internet 'sucked'. I'm not sure if it was just my room or the entire hotel, but the Westin was incapable of providing me with a consistent signal just so I could check email.

I drank alcohol only one night. Perhaps that does indeed contribute to some amount of 'oomphness' I experience from the con.

Ah well, I need to read through 300 LJ entries from friends over the past week. Lots to do.

Current Mood: content

AC Quick review
AC was big, really big. In many ways, too big. Not enough time to be social with enough people. Not enough time to even 'see' some people. Barely any time to just goof around.

It's getting to the point where one can't even get to all the things one really wants to go to. At least, not without some kind of super strength, which I don't have.

I'll have more later. I need sleep.

Current Mood: exhausted

Here at AC
I'm finally in my room at AC. Took them long enough to get it ready. 811. I'm taking a nap now. *snooze*

Current Mood: exhausted

Pre-AC post
Many of the things I need are now packed and ready to go. I just need a few other things to shove into the suitcases.

I'm sorry to all those who were expecting to see Flotsam and Jetsam at AC. That simply isn't possible. The suit, she's too big! The body suit is just so incredibly fluffy that there's no way I can fit it into any size container, along with the head and the feet, especially due to the draconian luggage policies these days. So they're birds who don't get to fly. They will be local birds. Darn shame, tho. Still, Caspian will make the trip, once I shove him in airtight plastic and suck all the air out. Birds are so much trouble to take on a trip. I need a half-suit solution for that. Or just go slumming as a reptile. ;> <drool>LiMiNOP</drool>

I'll be there, and I'll be dancing mostly. Expect me to show up for most of the each night's dance and the Fursuit Meet and Greet, and whatever they have for a Dead Dog Dance. Yes, me = dance whore.

I've been a bit lax in preparation. Every time I say I'll do certain things that would be really cool, and then never get around to doing them. Oh well. There are usually some room parties that I usually hear about but I haven't kept up with the usual suspects so I don't know if such parties are happening at all. And I don't expect anything in terms of open room parties. Maybe I was never in the right place at the right time, but I don't recall the Westin being a big party area anyway.

I don't expect to spend much in the dealer's area. My big problem is that when the selection gets so immense, my eyes start to bleed and my brain shuts off. There's so much to choose from that it's hard to make any kind of choice. The only saving grace is that I have certain preferences that allow me to leave the vast majority of dealers to other paying customers.

Oh, and if you're going to Anthrocon, and want some Greek food, walk a couple more blocks to Christo's Mediterranean Grill. It's a few blocks to walk there, but the guy who runs it is a saint.

Current Mood: bouncy

Tern Island
Last week I took the bike out for a spin and I came across a colony of birds on a nearby island that I have decided to name Tern Island. The reason is that almost all the birds nesting there happen to be terns. There's a couple skimmers on there, too. Skimmers are strange looking birds to begin with, but I guess they look similar enough to the other terns there that they allow them some space on the island.

So this past Sunday, I biked back up there packing a 500mm lens for the still camera, and my video camera to get some footage. I managed to get...some footage. I expected to need all 500mm of the lens, but it seemed that I didn't need quite that much telephoto.

You see, as I set things up, the terns got pretty pissed off by the fact I was there. They started flying at me from the island. I swear it looked like it was some kind of video game. They were all spawning from the island. Then they flew towards me low on the water and then just flared up as they were almost upon me, squawking and squeaking and chattering at me to stay away from their eggs! They were also trying to crap on me as a number of them did unload when they were right on top of me. But the wind carried it away.

It's kinda hard to focus a 500mm manual-focus lens on a moving target that is quickly closing range. I did get a couple shots and you can see them over on my Flickr page.

I also took some video of the strafing. It's a little discombobulated at times as the autofocus on the videocamera had a hard time focusing on tiny specks in a huge field of sky. That one is over on my Youtube page.

I guess they were all pissed off for the same reason you'd be pissed off if some stranger started to take pictures of you while you were in the shower. Or if you thought he was after your eggs.

I didn't stay around long. Just maybe about 20 minutes near the island. Thankfully no one came down the trail during that time because any greenie environmentalist would have been horrified by what they saw. And yeah, I didn't really want to disturb them very much, either. Maybe next time I should wear my tern suit and I'll be more accepted by the group.

Current Mood: busy

Back on the bike
I'm back to biking to work. Now I'm hot and sweaty and my butt hurts. Am I doing it wrong?

Current Mood: sore

Arcata photos
I have uploaded photos from my trip to Arcata.

I think I have removed all the incriminating photos, leaving behind mostly squeaky clean images.

Photos were sporadic. Sometimes the battery died, sometimes the moment wasn't right, sometimes I just didn't have that damn big camera with me at the time.

Current Mood: mellow

Don't talk shit about Total!
And that's the lesson I have retained after this long 3-day weekend.

After scrubbing the flight to Arcata due to extremely unusual, unstable, turbulent, foggy, icy, and tumultuous weather en route, we drove. The ride up was miserable up to Santa Rosa. 3 hours for 60 miles in Friday rush hour traffic. But it loosened up north of that and I zoomed away and made up a little of lost time. The ride back was mostly uneventful. Lots and lots of CHP making sure everyone was doing the speed limit. And except for a couple traffic pockets, it was smooth sailing all the way back down.

I brought Caspian up to see his creators during a long weekend of fun and mayhem. Well, there wasn't much mayhem. I've heard stories of mayhem in years past, but I am not sure of the veracity of those stories. There was much meat and alcohol, however, and a really neat time where a couple of people jammed on a couple musical instruments around the house.

I did have a fantastic and very mellow time getting to know the folks up in the Arcata area. It's quite a furry hotbed of activity. I would not have expected it from a small town like that. Also hit up a small community forest and the beach for a couple hours to get some fresh air and exercise. And I drank way, 'way' too many espresso drinks while there.

I got to chat with a bunch of people I've been meaning to get to know for a long time now. There is never enough time to do any of that thoroughly, but I got a good taste of it all. It'll keep me satisfied for now until my next chance.

But now I'm sleepy and grumpy about being back at work. Gotta pay the bills somehow, though.

I'll have some photos at some point.

Current Mood: sleepy

So much for that. Weather aways sucks whenever I want to fly somewhere.

We'll get into town hopefully by midnight at this rate.

As if it wasn't bad enough...
On top of all the major airlines stating they will charge $25 for the second checked bag, American Airlines has announced that next month they will start charging $15 for the 'first' checked bag, too.

Nickels and dimes, soon turn to quarters and dollars.

Current Mood: frustrated

Strange things that happened at Califur
My views on Califur continue to be rather schizophrenic, though really the logistic and technical staff of Califur did their job well. I just keep getting really cheezed off at whoever let a Swank Magazine photographer wander around the con. I swear someone was paid off handsomely for that one. Hope they feel good selling out the fandom and their attendees for a few bucks.

Anyway, there were a couple strange things that happened to me at the con that I should relate.

First, Friday afternoon an older gentleman asks me just outside the elevator what the convention was about. I said my standard answer that it had to do with art of all kinds relating to animals. So for instance, comic books, costumes, mascots, animated movies, that sorta thing. Then he asks me, "So, you mean like Usagi Yojimbo?" I just sorta glanced and said, "Yeah, kinda exactly like that." He tells me he has a full collection of Usagi Yojimbo comic books and goes to San Diego Comic Con once in a while. I told him Stan Sakai regularly goes to another furry convention, Anthrocon, so this is the sort of stuff we're talking about. I encouraged him to look around the con on Saturday, but not to expect anything spectacular. I said it's a local convention, rather than something national in scope, so the emphasis is more on socialization rather than promotion of the art. He seemed pleased with the explanation and we went our separate ways.

The second was Friday night. Just before the dance started, I suited up in Caspian and went to the lobby. As I was going to the dance, a group of 4 high school aged boys 'interacted' with me. They were in dress shirts and ties. They were just screwing around being pretty jocular. Not a big deal. They flapped their arms a lot; I responded by flapping my wings. They asked me if I 'was going to get my freak on'. Well, I was, so I nodded. After some more joking around, one of them says, "Hey, give him a love tap." Then one of them grabs me between my legs and gropes me. Then they ran off. So yeah, I was felt up by a possibly 17-year old boy while dressed up in costume. Does that make me a sex offender?

The third was another guy who asked me about the convention while walking into Boudin SF, a bakery cafe. I gave him the standard explanation like the first guy. He asked, "So, you guys get into any sort of MMO?" I started to formulate something about WoW and Second Life, but then he continued, "Like Eve?" I was kinda stunned. I've been playing Eve for 4 years and never in my life expected to find some guy in a random cafe to just up and ask me if I played Eve. Kysh and that guy bs'ed for a while about the game and everyone seemed rather pleased with it all. As Kysh says, Eve is really a stealth game. There really is no stereotypical player look. That guy looked like any regular Joe off the street, and here he is asking a stranger about going PvP on a game based out of Iceland.

That's about it, I think. You can go about your daily business now.

Current Mood: surprised

Califur report
I flew back from Califur yesterday and boy are my wings tired. Well, ok, actually, Kysh flew us down in a fancy Cessna 172 that you can see here. I took a bunch of photos during the trip there and back. Feel free to peruse that photo set if you want to see what the middle of California looks like from about 10000 feet in the air.

I also turned on my GPS receiver on the way there somewhere around Salinas. And I kept it on all the way for the trip back. So if you're intensely curious about the route, I have provided a link to a Google Maps path.

Rather than land at John Wayne Airport, we landed 13 miles away in Fullerton Municipal Airport. The costs were much, MUCH lower there. The savings was much more than the cost of the cab to and from the airport.

( So how was the con anyway? Tell us how you really feel. )

Current Mood: hopeful

At Califur
Made it to Califur in one piece. Staying in room 905. Internet costs $11 a day in the $125/night hotel, so I'm typing this from the nearby 'Boudin SF' bakery cafe that offers free Internet access.

Only here until tomorrow noon or so. Then I gotta fly back home. If you happen to see it and haven't seen me yet, then you aren't looking. The con isn't 'that' big.

Current Mood: chipper

TMI: Ugly things
Maybe it's TMI, I dunno. It's not a bad thing, actually it's a good thing in that the bad thing is going away.

I've had small warts a couple times in my life. Back when I was in grad school, I found small warts every so often on my fingers. The school clinic was always there to freeze them off with liquid nitrogen for free with little fuss.

After grad school, I was wart free until a few years ago when I found one on the bottom of my foot. I went to a dermatologist for a totally different reason that I'm sure I wrote about years ago in a different TMI entry. It was about the size of a pencil eraser. She froze it as best she could but said that it would probably need more treatments, but to try over the counter methods, too.

Cheap bastard that I was back then, I didn't want to keep paying multiple co-pays just for a wart. It didn't bother me and it was on the bottom of my foot. Big deal. Well, I tried the OTC stuff. I tried using just duct tape. The wart grew bigger. What the hell. It never bothered me. There was only the slightest of pain and only when I really paid attention to it or if I stepped on something else by mistake.

After spending cash on a couple sets of OTC salicylic acid treatments, it had grown to the size of a dime. So much for OTC stuff. In fact, I had even gotten another small wart on one of my fingers a few months ago, almost a pinpoint in size, but there it was.

So tonight, over 3 years later, I notice that my foot feels different. I look underneath and the wart is...receding. It's almost all gone. The one on my finger is pretty much gone, too. All by itself. It'll probably be all healed in the next few days at this rate.

It's a miracle. I wonder what happened to finally convince these things to just go away on their own.

Yeah, my life is boring. I'll try to make it up with a few explosions or something next time.

Current Mood: confused

New Jersey and me
I made a highly irregular trip to New Jersey this past weekend. I typically go there only to see my family and only during Christmas time. But this time I went there to attend my high school's 20 year reunion. I had not kept up with any of my friends from high school except for one, and that's only because I went to the same grad school as one of them. So I was looking forward to seeing how many of my former classmates would show up.

While I was in the area, before the reunion was to take place, I stopped by The Raptor Trust, an avian rehabilitation facility that I volunteered at back in the summers of 1990 and 1991. I had paid some visits since those days, but the last time I was there was just before I moved to California in 1999. I was curious to see what would have changed in all that time.

The first thing I noticed was that indeed they have joined the 21st century and created a webpage for themselves. For the longest time the director was highly suspicious of the internet and didn't want to maintain a presence there. But I think he relented after giving directiosn to the facility for the millionth caller after 30 years or so.

Visit the webpage, visit them in person, give them money. It's tax-deductible and makes birds very happy.

The next thing I noticed is that I saw that everything else was pretty much the same. The cages were all there. They all appeared to be kept in immaculate condition. There are a few more now, and they all house some birds in various stages of rehabilitation. The people running the show were thankfully still alive and kicking, just as active as they always have been. It was great to meet them, and a number of the present day volunteers who keep the place humming along.

I was surprised that even a few of the birds who were around when I first showed up were 'still' there and still alive. They have many permanent residents who just can't be released due to their injuries so they at least can live out their days at the facility while giving people an opportunity for an up-close look at these birds. They must be treated fairly well to stay alive for over 18 years.

But while most of the birds that a visitor would see are the permanent residents, the vast majority of their business is done rehabbing and releasing any bird they get that can be put back into the wild. So a good number of the cages are there just for that purpose, including a huge flight cage they have set up as the final stop for a group of red-tailed hawks.

That was the highlight of my trip, because the high school reunion was a tremendous disappointment. Out of 600 fellow classmates, I think there was perhaps a 10% turnout. And none of those who showed up were good friends of mine. A few who I recognized were acquaintances and we chatted about life and stuff but it was a far cry from what I was expecting. And I had set my expectations fairly low.

Still, I paid for my ticket, so I ate the food which was pretty darned good, and drank as much alcohol as I could put away before the open bar became a cash bar *grumble*. There was no master of ceremonies or anything. People just mingled, talked, drank, and ate.

After I had my fill of alcohol, I listened to what the DJ was playing. By that point a number of the women were half-assed dancing with each other while holding beer bottles. I walked the perimeter around the dance floor until the DJ played Billy Idol - Dancing with Myself, which is what I started doing. And after all that alcoholic lubrication, I just let myself go. After just a few songs, the DJ said he was going to pack it in, and I was almost livid at the lameness of that. But someone convinced him to stick around and I enjoyed as many 80s songs on the floor as I could. Towards the end he broke out of the 80s and played some more modern and dancey material that I recognized from

thump's FC set which I applauded him for.

But he did eventually stop the music. The lights were turned up and in typical New Jersey fashion, everyone was told to vacate the premises. The dancing ameliorated the disappointment I felt over the poor attendance. At least I got my groove on and I didn't give a damn who saw me because apparently no one there recognized me anyway. So to hell with them all.

Well, at least that gives me a reason to ignore any future calls for reunions.

And to all those who said I should have brought Caspian along to the reunion, there is no way on this Earth that anyone attending that reunion, or anyone I know in the state in general, would understand Caspian. If I had brought him along, I would likely be locked up somewhere right now.

Current Mood: disappointed

CostumeCon
So this past weekend was overbooked. CostumeCon26 was in the San Jose Doubletree this weekend, but the Mountain View Parade was scheduled for Saturday. So I did most of both.

Friday evening, right after work, I went straight to the Doubletree. I was the last person to pick up their registration 'just' before it closed for the night. Armed with a camera, I wandered around a bit. I wasn't too worried about the lack of a crowd like FC.

I hit up the social, which had the feeling of an Opening Ceremonies. I didn't stay for the whole thing, but I had a marvelous time chatting with some other attendees. I knew almost no one there, but I wasn't all sad and emo about it. I quite enjoyed not knowing everyone.

Let me say that people there are serious costumers. While most of the stuff I saw was some embellishment of clothes from some historical period, I have to say that these people knew what they were doing. I felt 'very' out of place wearing just street clothes. In fact, I was asked a few times if I had a costume to wear at all. I did explain that Caspian was to show up the next day because I didn't have a room that night to change in.

I took some photos, but not very many. There were many official con photographers who took many photos and they will be posted somewhere in the future. And I plan on nabbing a number of those photos for personal reference. I did take photos of some outfits that seemed especially 'furry' by nature, but I did not recognize it from the standard furry culture.

The night ended with a 2 hour DJ set, which I danced to in its entirety, along with only about 5 or 6 others who stayed up till midnight to do so. Everyone else had long since gone elsewhere. The average age of attendees is about 15 years older than a standard furry con, so they weren't into staying up late when there's a masquerade the next day to deal with.

Went home, crashed for a few hours, woke up and went to Mountain View Parade. Escorted, took photos, took video, cleaned up, went home. It went without much of a hitch except for Caltrans police getting all uppity about our tent taking up a couple parking spaces, the same spaces we have used for like 10 freaking years! Fine, you can keep your spaces! We moved our tent to a nicer, closer parking lot, which was free and closer to a portapotty.

Weather was warm, but not the hottest on record. And the park was dry. All went well.

I hauled ass to Costumecon and checked into my room. Oh yeah, I got a room for Saturday night at the Doubletree. I booked it on Thursday night. I couldn't get the con rate of $92, but I did get the AAA rate of $95. But there were rooms available. It sorta shocked me that an international convention of this nature would not sell out the Doubletree. Still, they probably came in at about 1000 attendees.

I peeked into the dealers den. Lots and lots of costume wear stuff. If I knew what I was doing, I probably would have dropped some cash just for raw materials and baubles to make stuff with. But I don't know what I'm doing so I just left a short time later.

I got all birded up and flapped around as Caspian. People liked it quite a bit. As one of the few examples of the furries who went out in public before many others showed up, I got the lion's share of attention from everyone around. I bounced around for about an hour before I peeled him off. I took a quick shower and ate at the Coffee Garden. Oh, the service and the food are just as bad for all the cons. It's not just the furries they treat badly.

While eating, I noticed that the whole hotel became a ghost town. Everyone had lined up for the Masquerade. The line had snaked around the ballroom, down the stairs and out the door. The entire con watched the masquerade and it lasted forever. I heard there were about 40-50 acts at this one, the fantasy/SF masquerade.

After food, I checked out the party floor which was just about to be unpackaged. The FC party had opened up and I shot the shit with some of the muckity-mucks of con staff. They had a good setup, with some nice decorations that fit the theme of the upcoming con.

I caught up with

reveille_d, who I hadn't seen live and in color in forever. He had Zi but nowhere to change. I wisely asked for two room keys when I checked in. I gave him one and told him he could go there anytime he needed to.

We checked out some of the parties, met a neat couple running a 1930's style Doctor Who party, complete with dalek cookies, and passed by a party whose hostess was the spitting image of a buzzing bee. She was entirely far too cute.

And of course...the Klingons. Those Klingons are dangerous. I didn't learn my lesson the first time. Oh no! I had to top it, in fact! I went and did the Trifoil, or some such. I can't remember all that much anymore. Combat Cocktail, Revenge, and then the Honorable Death! I knew what I was getting into, right? I had a big meal just before. I drank no alcohol before that. I could surely handle '3' drinks, right?

Hah! I did get into Caspian, but I lasted maybe 30-45 minutes. I can't tell. I'm sure the masquerade let out by the time I walked back to the party floor as a bird, but there was little to be remembered. I did bounce against the walls like a pinball at various times. Everyone was saying, "Oh, poor Caspian." But I did manage after a while to waddle back down to my room and pass out there. This time I do not think any damning photographic evidence was taken.

Yes, next time, I'm staying away from the Klingons and their drinks. Really! Well, maybe just one.

Sunday, after I hauled my ass out of bed and cleaned myself up and checked out, the Critters by the Bay did their gig and 20 fursuiters went on our own fursuit parade and we were all quite well received by most of the other attendees who witnessed it. I'm sure most of them were getting geared up for the Historical Costume masquerade later that evening, or were winding down from the Fashion Show earlier.

With all my energy transformed into sweat that was now soaked into Caspian, I packed up and headed home after a successful weekend. I met and remet a lot a really cool people. I wish that I had the time, the space, the energy, the ambition to create some of the stuff that I saw people wear in the hallways. It was all just so super-cool to see all these incredibly creative people, and also very humbling, too.

Current Mood: calm

Events on the horizon
After a couple months rest after FC, it seems I've got most of my weekends full up for the rest of the year.

This weekend, Mountain View Spring Parade on Saturday and Costumecon for the rest of the weekend--good for flapping around with Caspian as it's in the Doubletree. (Seriously, I just need to ask the Doubletree for their upcoming convention schedule.) Maybe I'll find some Klingons to hang out with Saturday night.

Following weekend is my 20 year high school reunion back in New Jersey. Hmmm, should I take Caspian or not? Too bad I will miss Maker Faire here locally for the third year running.

Then there's Califur for more drunken fursuit flappage. And Memorial Day Weekend where I have a smorgasbord of events to choose from. If nothing else pans out, I could always hit up Baycon (space pirates? What a freaking lame theme. There really needs to be a moratorium on 'Pirates' as a convention theme).

Then Anthrocon in Pittsbugh where yes...more fursuit flappage.

Sometime late in Summer will almost certainly be the FC Summer Picnic for more fun. Though fursuiting is limited. Too much dust gets into my feathers at that picnic and it's always a billion degrees that day.

Looking further out, I'm also planning on Silicon for further fursuit flappery. Then whatever will happen the weekend before and the day of Halloween.

Beyond that, there's MFF in November, followed by the SJ Holiday Parade with the other fursuiters in the area. Then my trip back to see the family for Christmas as always. Then standard New Years drunken flappery somewhere.

Damn, I hope Caspian can take all this partying.

And just around the corner, FC2009, a mere 9 months away which will pass in the mere blink of an eye. Are you ready for it?

Current Mood: rushed

Taxes
Finally got my freaking taxes done. As the years zoomed by, the time I got around to filling out all the forms crept later and later. I finished and sent off my return last week. Kysh's return was sent out today. This is pretty much as late as I 'can' do it, so next year I will really have to set aside some time to deal with it.

In the end, it was pretty much, "Same shit, different year." Just add another couple percent to most of the numbers. Kysh had additional complications that I had small headaches resolving. Very small refunds this time around.

I pray for no audits. I don't want to have to deal with any questions. I just want to forget about it until next year. But since nothing changed drastically this year from the previous one, I should not expect any problems.

It's funny looking at tax returns for Hillary Clinton, George Bush, and Dick Cheney. It must be quite a thrill to put as your occupation 'US President' on the bottom of the return. Though Luara Bush had 'First Lady' as her occupation. Does she get paid for that or something?

Anyway, I'm shocked by the number of digits on every line in each of their returns. I'd be happy to have to fill out a return with such a numerical magnitude one day.

Current Mood: tired

Tooth work is done
Now that all my fillings have been changed and teeth have been cleaned, the one tooth remaining has been finally taken care of today.

This tooth has a long and annoying history. I had a root canal done on it back in 1989 or so. Then I lost the crown 2 years later and accidentally swallowed it. I went to the biggest quack of a dentist who installed a new crown that for the next 18 years left me with one tooth looking slightly different from the rest.

So, after my general dentist hounded me for 2 years, showing me on x-rays that there is an infection slowly building at the root of that tooth, I followed her suggestion to have the crown removed and have the tooth retreated.

I didn't even know they could remove permanent crowns. They're permanent, aren't they? Miracle of modern medicine, I tell you. The dentist removed the crown last month but couldn't remove the post. She recommended that I leave the post in and have oral surgery to get at the tooth root from the other end. The endodontist disagreed and said he would work to remove the post and redo the root canal in the conventional direction. Mind you, the post is essentially an 20 year old rusted steel screw cemented in place and surrounded by actual tooth.

So after waiting for a month for an appointment, I went in this morning and had an incredibly wonderful experience, for dentistry at least. The specialist really showed his talent. If I wasn't paying attention, I would never have known he gave me an anesthetic injection. Then he clamped on some kind of dental dam around the tooth and I just relaxed. Absolutely no trouble at all. Towards the end I was falling asleep. There were some quite interesting sounds of various kinds of drills, but those were mostly to destroy the post. I imagine the procedure is similar to drilling out a screw with a stripped head. After drilling the core, the sides of the post just caved in.

After he finished the whole procedure, he said that the original root canal failed because the canal near the tip of my tooth had a 'ledge' which couldn't be cleaned out with the file unless you knew what you were doing. He clearly knew what he was doing and provided me with a view of his work with an x-ray, clearly outlining the ledge as long as you took the x-ray from the right angle.

Then off to the dentist. Remarkably enough I had an appointment to fit my crown that very day. So just 2 hours after the first appointment, I sat down at my regular dentist's chair and had the new permanent crown cemented.

That's enough tooth work. No more insurance left. They all have to stay in place until the start of next year.

Beaks are better.

Current Mood: relieved