Another summer and another year that I was fortunate enough to attend Anthrocon, despite many worries about being able to go. First, I spent nearly all of 2016 unemployed and money was getting tight. Then, when I did get employment, wasn't 100% sure I'd be able to take the time off.

I consider myself blessed by the Goddess that I was hired by a company that is pretty decent to work for, and cool enough to let me take a week off only a few months after joining them.

The roomshare was arranged months in advance. Staggard reserved a room in the Omni and looked for roommates. Knowing she'd need help bringing heavy supplies to the Dealer's Table, her candidates must be the strongest furs she knew. Wanting roommates who'd be good company, they would also have to be charming and witty. And wanting to protect her feminine innocence and purity, only the most rainbow-flaming queers would make the cut.

But...everyone on that list already had plans so she settled for TheCraftyCanine, Novarlynx, eclipsethewolf and myself.

For the rideshare I took Eclipse in my car. On a long drive it's nice to have a companion to help pass the time and keep the driver occupied with idle chatter. In this Eclipse succeeded. He is affable and I recommend him to any lonely long-haul truckers.

I forgot that my GPS has a weird definition of "fastest" and sent us through New York City traffic and New Jersey. Not places I'd normally visit; and with good reason, the first time we stopped, Eclipse noticed I was missing a hubcap. In my defense, on prior trips to AC it was usually with someone who didn't mind driving the whole way, or one time where we had to detour to JFK to pick up someone. Lesson hammered home, make note of the route before leaving.

We stayed overnight in a Super 8, checking in with the others via Telegram. Tag, whose from a part of Maine so far north that she can borrow a cup of sugar from Mrs Claus, said "Sleep is for the weak" and just drove all night.

We made it safely to Pittsburgh and any rumors that we saw drug dealers with a duffel bag full of coke at a truck stop on the I-76 and were weaving in and out of traffic to evade them until they rear-ended a Dodge Ram with a Trump bumper sticker are completely untrue and unconfirmable.

My experience at the convention was full of highs and lows. There is stuff I wish had happened differently, jerks I wish I'd avoided, but also experiences that will bring a smile to my face when I remember them.

I was looking forward to Radar's fursuit photoshoot and even brought some of Ben's novelty inflatables, but the whole thing got cancelled at the last minute.

I was also looking forward to NightEyes' Readings in Terrible Fiction panel. It was scheduled for Friday night and I forgot about it until Saturday afternoon. THEN on Sunday I ran into Night in the Dealer's Den, apologized for missing it and he said the panel was moved from Friday to Saturday. This was after the schedule book was printed but it was on the website. I uttered some choice profanities that briefly turned me into RunningBlue. I mentioned that the LED lanyard I got from his boyfriend the prior year was kinda short, he said they got longer ones in, and even though I don't have a fursuit or go to raves, convinced me to buy one. I think he's secretly Jessie Custer. Since the lanyard cost $30 I got a free LED fidget spinner. Ooh, shiny.

One panel I did not miss was ElrondDrakendil's reading. She's a remarkable woman and her books are fun reads. She also wears some cool outfits when I see her at the cons. Her reading this year was set in the Odd-verse and was about uplifted rats. I bought more of her Odd and Driving Arcana books, to find out she had omnibuses with bonus stories. Sigh, can't afford them this year, but something to budget for in 2018.

On the topic of rats, one fellow I did not see enough of was Scriber. He's an artist and a fan of rodents, and one of those I only ever see at Anthrocon. We hung out a bit on Sunday and unfortunately our paths didn't cross again that weekend. I'll have to recommend Ogawa's story to him, I think he'd dig it.

I'd always wanted to help out at Anthrocon, be a part of the process and not just a participant. Two friends of mine, Trianine and Kalleo are staff and every year for almost a decade now I've promised that I'd volunteer. But I suffer from Chronic NeverGotAroundToIt and LazyAssitis. So when Tag asked if I'd be her Dealer's Minion, I was thrilled. Some of you may scoff. "I go to a convention to have fun, not work," you say. I'd reply that I did have fun. Sure after waiting in the Pre-registration line to get a badge I had to wait a long time in a second line to have it swapped for one that said Dealer on it, but I am a naturally helpful person and enjoyed assisting Tag at her table. I am also curious. I like to peek behind the scenes and see how things are put together, and I did learn a lot of things I never knew before about how the Dealer's Den is organized. And there were some perks, like having a safe place to keep swag as I made trips around the Den spending way, way more money than I should have. As to whether having a Dealer's badge helps one get laid...eh, a gentleman doesn't [REDACTED] and tell.

I was worried that I might have been a little annoying, always checking in with Tag to see if she needed anything. I'm sure many people wouldn't care, but I considered it a sign of trust and responsibility. I chalk it up to a Yankee Work Ethic, same attitude when I was head cashier or agent assist. I was going to show I earned it.

I did spend quite a bit of time in the Den and it was cool meeting so many creators. I had to stop by and say hi to The_Gneech, after archive-binging his Suburban Jungle and Rough Housing webcomics, I promised him I'd buy the dead-tree versions (does anyone even use that term any more?). And he was nice enough to sign everything for me. The Gneech is a cool guy who's been in the fandom a long time. I still have two of the old-style Suburban Jungle books he signed for me back at Anthrocon 2003. Between him and Goldeen, a decent chunk of my purchases are books I can log on Goodreads. Which makes me wonder if I can log the adult comics on there as well. :-)

I also visited Seward Studios to get some more vinyl stickers for my iphone to go with the ones on my ipad and ipod touch, and some for the HP laptop I got a while back. I showed one of the ladies there the paw print sticker on the back of my ipod. She remarked on how old it was, they didn't even have the template anymore. She explained that while the pad and toes were basic circles and ovals, what was important was the proportions and relative distances between them, and with my consent took a photo of my ipod for reference. They have an awesome selection and help show that a lot of dealers who sell at Anthrocon aren't just "artists" but also craftspeople. Something rare in an over-commercialized brand-conscious world.

There were some people I'd known online that I wanted to meet in person, unfortunately a lot of them turned out to be jerks. Most of the people I did bump into were cool.

I ran into Negger and his friends on the first day, looking for a store to get a SIM card. My brain hadn't yet brought up my mental map of Pittsburgh from longterm storage so I flailed a little trying to recall how I got there with Deejaydragon the year before. To my regret, I forgot the registration packets included local maps. In hindsight I'm going to recommend to the staff there could be a small guide for international visitors. Not just on SIM cards, but weird US customs like tipping.

I joined a CAH game with people from an online chat I was a member of, and one of them recognized me from last year when we played Cards in the Westin lobby until like...6am.He's a pretty cool guy and good artist. The next night he joined me and a few others in a game of Exploding Kittens where I got to try out the Imploding Kittens expansion pack. Pandora, another MaineFur joined us. She proved to be a formidable adversary with a hitherto unknown streak of evil. For those who are familiar with the game, she defused an Exploding card. Rules say you can shuffle it back anywhere in the deck. She calmly put the Exploding Kitten back on the top of the deck, knowing it was my turn next and that I had no Defuse cards. I commended her on a well played move and said I'd name it after her.

My furry getup consists of a hat with fuzzy ears and a huge-ass tail. Next to full-body or partial fursuits I'm pretty much invisible, but I forget that away from those fellows I'm likely to stick out. I'm walking from the Omni towards the convention, passing a van parked on the side while the father rearranges stuff in the back. He stopped me to ask some questions about the furry fandom. I answered as best I could and like to think I represented my fandom well (the way his son was holding his phone I think he was taking video of me, but I'm not sure and it didn't occur to me to ask). There's a panel called "Furry and the Media" for how to interact with reporters, but I think our fandom could use a more general one for helping people interact with non-furs in general. A bit of prep so you're not standing there going "umm...err" to general questions.

One of my favorite panels is also the most random. You never know how it will go from year to year. I'm not talking about Alkali's Whose Lion panel, but SwiftFox's AstronoFur Star Party. Every year he brings his telescope to the roof of the DLCC to show us the sky. Whether we see planets and stars or a closeup of the stadium across the river depends on the capriciousness of the weather. This year the weather gods were kind. We got excellent views of a gibbous moon, Jupiter and several of his moons, and Saturn and his rings. I probably spend more time at this "panel" than at any other activity at Anthrocon. I was up on the roof for hours, taking turns looking through the scope, chatting with others and seeing the reactions of people who were seeing these sights for the first time. It sometimes feels that science is in a losing battle against ignorance and indifference. That people who came to Pittsburgh for furry fun and socializing took some time to come up and get wowed at celestial sights...gave me a bit of hope for the future. There was one gentleman there, after looking through the scope called to his two daughters sitting on a bench to take a look. The girls were wearing ears and tails and oohed and aahed at seeing the Moon and Jupiter. I don't know if the man was a furry himself, but it was clear he was encouraging his kids' interest in furry and science.

Last year Swift brought a solar telescope, one with filters designed to let you look safely at the sun. Unfortunately, every time I went up, the sun was behind clouds. This year I had better luck and got a great view. And new to this year, a fellow named Jorric brought a huge telescope, one that sits on the ground. He wheeled it over on a hotel luggge cart. Its larger size meant we were able to see more distant or faint objects. He showed us the Ring Nebula, about 2300ly away. It looked like a fuzzy spot, but that was the first time I saw something outside our solar system.

A lot of the good feelings I had through the con evaporated Sunday night. For reasons I'd rather not put in a public blog, I spent the night pissed off and in a bit of a funk. A part of my mind was saying "Fuck this. People suck. Furries suck. Leave now and don't come back." Another part of my mind was saying "This is just a small flood of negative emotions. You know the con is great. You have friends who care about you. Don't let a tiny bad experience taint a larger good experience." One of the advantages of being a werewolf is I have experience with being pissed off, controlling it, and the consequences when I do or don't exercise that control. In a way I was overriding a mental shift into a creature of spite.

We've all seen an otherwise good time tainted because someone had a drama moment over a minor thing. It sucks, it's stupid, and I wasn't going to do that to others. So while a part of me wanted to go on Twitter and Telegram and whine like humans do, my inner wolf guided me away from the con and other furries, along the Riverwalk in a direction I hadn't gone before, to restore my mellow. I saw a rabbit scurry through the brush, took photos of the Moon and planets above the convention center and looked to distract myself with curiosity about what else was around the con area that I'd never explored before.

I did make some carefully edited posts, and got a reply from an old friend who invited me to come by his hotel room to talk. AutumnFox is an old friend, a therian I'd known online for many years, but we rarely interacted in person. I think the last time I visited him was not long after I moved to Maine and was the same visit where I first played Sly Cooper and GTA 3 on his PS2. We'd drifted apart and despite seeing his fursuit self in passing at cons, hadn't really reconnected.

Well, I was feeling my mellow returning, enough that I felt ready to interact with others, and made my way to his hotel. We talked for a bit, he helped me regain my mellow and we made plans to stay in touch better after the con.

It was now technically Monday, the epilogue of the con so I returned to our room for some sleep before the long drive home. Tag left hella early, like a ninja. Eclipse and I prepacked the car on Sunday so we were out the door shortly after waking up. Having learned my lesson, we discussed optimal routes back to Maine and I made a list of the highways so we'd know what numbers to look for. It worked pretty well, we didn't get lost or sidetracked by a schizophrenic piece of navigational software. We stopped for lunch at Perkins, one of those simple family restaurants with an uncomplicated menu and a selection of baked goods for sale at the front register for taking home. The rest of the ride home was uncomplicated by trouble, drama, or having to explain what furry porn is to a New York State Trooper. Or how she can set up her own FurAffinity account. I don't need to say hi to Ofc Stevens.

I got Eclipse back to his house, then returned home to say hi to Ben and decompress after a long drive. My office was closed the next day for the 4th so I spent some time sorting my swag and laundry before having to deal with work again, or a small case of con crud that gave me a nagging sore throat and cough for two weeks which delayed this post and my sorting through photos to upload.