Getting in early to help with the load-in let me really re-focus myself, finding my way if you will... but the rest of the con, just went so flawlessly I was able to relax with friends, but even more importantly make some new friendships and reinforce existing ones quite heavilly.
I left work on Friday at midnight, and immediately drove to Oklahoma. And got stuck in the mud of a friend's driveway. Upside: Learned my car has a full set of four recovery points hard-mounted to the unibody frame stock, seperate from the tow-hook point available for heavy-recovery situations
and seperate from the dingy-towing mounts and tow-hitch mounts the car comes with as well. That's better than most Jeeps.
=O.o= Upside: Took the tow-truck driver all of 6 seconds to pull the car free when he had all those options to work with so easilly.
So... Saturday I spend there, enjoy a wonderful meal and conversation with friends, and then headed west to New Mexico. That was remarkably uneventful, though I gave my hosts a bit of a surprise when they needed us to go down a dirt road and I didn't go all namby-pamby but just hauled ass and skittering gravel the whole way up and down their driveway each time. *laughs*
Sunday spent with them, I headed off again, and caught wind of a truck that goes by Sandman that I'd seen off-and-on every since Oklahoma City in a yellow-cabbed truck with two GIANT green machines on his flatbed. Thanks to him and his routing, we made some EXCELLENT time through New Mexico, Arizona, and all the way to California where he dropped down to 55 while I could keep going 70. Yay! First sign of stupid California laws encountered! Oh, how I
missed loathed thee...
Anyways, that burned Monday along with picking up
batnwolf and
whyrl, and Tuesday I managed to get us up between the storms. My mom drove most of the way as I'd racked up the last 2200 miles. Got up to the bay area, and found crash space thanks to my friends up there before we could check into the hotel on Wednesday morning and sleep s'more!
Now... the con itself was an outright BLUR! A wonderful, excstatic, hyper blur of labor at first, then some bit of time that just didn't seem to really exist... I managed to bump into
jurann finally, along with
Skant and
jaelyn during the con, which was nice to touch bases/catch up/etc with all of them. Saw drama-bombs land around me, but none really impacted me directly thank the Goddesses. Quite a few folks, I will say, I both wish I knew better so I could have been there for them, but admittedly a shard of myself was glad I didn't so I at least knew the drama didn't involve me.
Then the part I will never forget which began at the fursuit parade. I'd encountered the 'elevator hell' of heavy loads and the fursuiters not combining well so I went to the parade in
Lumi Kelluke as a partial instead of a fullsuit, my usual gray gryphon-emblazoned sports-coat ensemble. Met up with pretty much all the other Soki suits at the con:
Kahlua,
Malibu,
Serpy,
Silver R. Wolfe,
tdiwolf, and
Tuxedo Kitty all in the parade. Someone suggested we get together and do a Soki TwoPaws photoshoot, so texts went out, etc.
Gunnar, and
Balto Woof both joined us, though Serpy couldn't make it, and a deer I can't find on the Fursuit Database that was also by Soki joined us. So we had 9 suits total, ended up in a really awesome 3x3 pose showing everyone off.
After that, de-suited, ran around like a loon on Sunday, then got into suit at about 18:00 as Dealer's Den closed with the recurring tradition of a Dealers Free Pizza Feed I enjoy helping fund each year. While that was going on, I ran into Serpy, Vex,
Clementine, and a small additional herd of suiters whose names didn't stick very much I'll admit.
=-.-= Serpy had had their phone off so missed the reminder/text about the photoshoot, so me, her, Clementine, Vex, and company all headed over to the photoshoot area. Along the way, we all became sheep! BaaaAAAaaaAAAaaa...
And once we get to the photoshoot area, even more sillyness ensued between the photoshoot area, piano outside the headless lounge, and in the headless lounge itself. Good grief, I'm sure dozens of photos and videos will pop up of the lot of us, including TDiWolf when he joined up with us in suit as well. We gave the photographer full reign over posing us, and ended up with some really marvelous shots as a result. We also got a good video of me carting Clementine around on my back like a horse, which was fun if tiring. Also carried her on my shoulders to the dance, but I don't think anyone caught any proof of that unfortunately. Need to work on that more for next year, so I can maybe lug someone on my shoulders for the fursiut parade itself.
=^.^=But after that, danced a little bit but the music just wasn't catching any of us, so we all ended up back in the headless lounge for a'while until the rest of the herd decided to de-suit, but I was still feeling good so I went off again... It all became a blur again of hanging with TDiWolf for quite a'while until... gah, around 4am when I finally fell over and passed the fuck out after de-suiting and gorging on what became my daily ritual meal for FC: Ultimate Cheeseburger w/ Cheesecake and a Large Dr. Pepper from Jack-in-the-Box.
Monday... actually ended up much the same, amusingly. There was remarkably little to be done on Monday, as the bottleneck wasn't people to move stuff or carts to move stuff, but places to move stuff to. So most of the rooms were closed by compacting them into other rooms... then waiting for the final staging space to clear for the final shuffle. So for a good chunk of the day I spent time with friends, snuggling closer ones I knew or want to know better and impact-hugging everyone I could. At 18:00 again, I pulled on Lumi and headed down to the Dead Dog party, and kept up much the same, the night turning into a very sweaty, wonderful, hyper-chaotic blur of dancing, panting, and finally using a taxi-cab as a boom-box for half an hour and running around the streets outside the hotel with a horde of other fursuiters getting random photos taken of the mob of us being lunatics but never quite breaking any laws or being too stupid or dangerous thanks to the handlers keeping an eye on things. Oh, and I was able to offload that bag of firecracker-ultra-hyper orange glow sticks on Clementine, I don't think I've ever heard such a perfect 'schoolgirl on helium' squeal in my life before she saw one get lit off in front of her, nor have I had the air crushed out of my for a change before that either.
=^.^=After that... well, it's Tuesday Morning, I have to check out of the hotel in a few hours, and
whyrl is in the shower now. I'll hop in next, we have a nice late checkout of 14:00, then a bit of driving ahead of us today once we pack up the car and what-not.