oh, mama raised me well

saturday was FURREST CITY MINI CON!!!!!





it was extremely successful - 192 attendees in total!! we had a small space at sears think[box] on the case western reserve university campus (a staff member used to work there and had organized a small meet there previously and discussed that it might be a good option for a larger than a meetup, con-like event). and that's something we worked on over the last year or so (definitely moreso others on staff than myself, especially our finances person)!

i spent all day running around, mingling, doing whatever was needed in the moment - hanging out up by the parking garage to be a wayfinding point to make sure people could navigate their way to the venue (love what a maze college campuses can be), going along to help with the west side market excursion (and also acquire lots of goodies!!), meeting lots of folks for the first time, watching in on panels, poking around the little dealer's room, watching people play video games, etc., etc.

i'm honestly so happy this came together so well and went off without a hitch - folks who know me know i've historically been kind of a debbie downer (and sort of an aggressive realist when asking pointed questions to the people who'd claim it would be 'so easy' to get a con going here) when it would come to establishing a furry convention in cleveland. lots of factors are already kind of 'against' it - we're sandwiched between anthrocon and midwest furfest, two of the biggest 3-4 conventions in the states. it costs money, it needs people willing to do the thankless work of running a convention (and events in general!), and it needs people willing to simply show up. and i think it really just needed the right combination of people to get the gears moving - we have an amazing board and staff that are really committed to cultivating a real, living community and that's so deeply, deeply awesome and i'm so very happy to be proven wrong about my prior feelings on the matter X3

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after we closed up and cleaned out the space, the remaining staff walked up to little italy and had coffee/food at a little tea shop called algebra and i finally got off my feet lol

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also, rode the rail for the first time in cleveland! i never, like, bothered with it previously, but we were able to take it directly from the corner by think[box] out to the intersection at west side market, which was really cool!

i also reeeeeeally wanted to be able to take photos of the graffiti along the rail lines, so much of it was SO good

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ANDDD!!!! webri found me and was like 'hey did u ever check artfight??' (they had messaged me back during artfight if they could draw something for me and then i forgot about it b/c i never got back around to doing artfight) and i was like 'NO I DIDN'T LEMME DO THAT NOW' and was greeted with this masterpiece

july was A LOT. anthrocon, long walks, county fair, tony's surgery. where tf did the summer go???

holy shit was anthrocon a good, chaotic time. this was our first year helping out on staff and it was a pretty good time!! also the longest we've stayed (wed-mon)!

before wednesday, i worked two days with andrew for some final extra cash. i took off from, like, the 29th (our wedding anniversary) to, uhhhh, today (the 9th), so i didn't really have any downtime between work and the con lol

( holy shit this post is at least 3k words i'll put most of it behind a cut )

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i ended up coming home with a lot more stuff than i expected!



this is just stuff that i bought, traded, or was gifted to me by friends! there's a whole bunch of freebie stickers and things we acquired throughout the weekend, as well, but i don't have a table big enough for EVERYTHING. animal art crimes had a box to drop stuff in and take a free sticker, so i put a handful of zines in. also got to see divi again! and finally met katusedcharm!



zines i traded for!
animorphs zines, werewolves of austin - https://www.liamgarnerportfolio.com/
two bite comics - https://whatatinybug.storenvy.com/
gender is so fake, sketchbook - https://catboyriot.net/#books
lauren ipsum - https://laurenipsum.thecomicstrip.org/
cryptids - https://korybing.com/

goals for next year: zine trading panel, destiny furs meetup!

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a very happy finn, happy that we are home

ANTHROCON IS NEXT WEEK

TONY'S SURGERY IS END OF JULY

I'M GETTING MY THYROID YEETED IN AUGUST??

ac is mostly sorted, just some packing to do and leaving instructions for my mom b/c she'll be pet/housesitting over the weekend. hopefully finn will not be too stressed by this, i'm always anxious about other people watching them b/c he's so stupid and finicky. if stupid beans didn't require wet food now, i could leave them with kibble and just have someone pop in once every other day and make sure they had water/whatever b/c mostly all they do is lay around the house. but! beans and his stupid we food and refusal to eat kibble 99% of the time means they need a babysitter

i've got a follow up appointment this afternoon about my thyroid. i already got the results of my biopsy: 'a small touch of cancer', as my pcp put it. so i've already been referred to a surgeon and i've already set up appointments so idk what even needs to be said at this appointment but it's scheduled so i'm gonna go to it. plus i get out of work at 1:30 and have the rest of the day. we're gonna run errands - need to get keys made for the house and snacks and stuff

i was gonna write more here but i got distracted doing something else lol

i completely forgot about posting this around the first of the month!

i meant to write this post,,,,, uuhhhhhh last week?????

but this last week was a s l o g, so i'm writing it today!

zipcon was on the 10th! and i took over the furry panel for another local furry (thegothbear) i know (they had a mascot thing in pittsburgh that came up), so i was Required to be in attendance lol

got there early, ran into other furry folks i know (including jeff, who i recruited to help out) and ran around to get my panel attendee badge from staff before i got stuff set up/organized. i made new furmeet brochures and thegothbear made some cute panel badges for folks attending. when i helped with the meet in, uhhhh, 2020?? there were about ~25-30 people in attendance and a handful of suiters?? 'after' covid (loosely speaking - when the con started up again, at least) in 2023, there wasn't a panel/planned meet, but a bunch of folks gathered in the eating area and got a pic. so we figured - probably at least double. i made 40~ brochures and panel badges.............

NINETY-TWO PEOPLE
(give or take a couple)


when we had left the room to take a photo (b/c there was NOT enough room in the panel room they put us in lkghdflkghd) our door counter had clicked off 85 people. which means we gained almost 10!!! between taking the photo and returning to the room lol


click thru for bigger!



a blurry before/during and after - i was fuckin' beat lol. the meet was only an hour, but afterwards i just vegged out on the couches on the 3rd floor and ate lol. kovrick eventually found me and hung out/chatted for awhile before we parted ways and i went to browse the dealer's room and also ran into tutone and jeff again



i left early before the con to go to sweet mary's b/c i wanted a little treat for after the panel. i ended up standing in line for 20!! MINUTES b/c folks were picking up pączki x_x and the lady in front of me bought the last three red velvet macarons :( so i tried the grapefruit+honey and got a meyer lemon one instead

also had a little spending money b/c the irs actually gave me my federal tax return this year! so i bought some snackies (some of which i still haven't tried) and some stickers for my work planner and some pins lol (i'm scoping out tortie pins now, since snickers' passing). also traded some of my zines for a vampire zine!! the artist is vampyrbites

kitkats i got are:
- strawberry shortcake
- strawberry chocolate cake
- milk tea
- wholewheat flour biscuit (graham cracker-ish, apparently)

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sunday, i returned to pathfinder (missed the previous week's session b/c i was replacing the alternator) to this scene



we survived, no one died, but one of the kobolds got cursed??? we're dealing with the aftermath of that now. it's A Lot!!

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other than that, not a ton of anything monumental going on. i lost one of my nice gloves while running errands on friday. had d&d on saturday and had some tasty food and made everyone valentine's treat bags. sort of zoned out for a lot of sunday between pathfinder and stuff. it was too cold to go out and do anything (we got a layer of snow friday night), so i just putzed around the house instead

it's supposed to be nice!!! this week - in the 50's. we had our first false spring a week or two ago, but i'm grabbing on to any bit of warmth and thoughts of spring i can get

thinking about starting seeds indoors way earlier this year. i need to sort out the porch, as well. a lot of stuff has accumulated and i want to get things organized/start seeing what stuff is necessary/brings joy/want to keep and stuff we don't really need b/c it feels like the house is starting to get claustrophobic after five years here. if nothing else, organize stuff in totes if it's not getting used, i suppose

but! looking forward to spring! it, at least, gives me more things to distract myself from [gestures broadly]

did something almost every weeken in august - punk rock flea market, porchrokr, pride. plus had some cool weather and a lot of blimp sightings lol

february's pics!
links go to my insta, but i also crosspost these to twitter and tumblr

okay so otherwise, what's been going on this last month?

i'm trying to weasel my way onto anthrocon staff (fingers crossed!) b/c, honestly, i DO love staffing cons and helping out, but it also makes ATTENDING easier for me and will save me a little money, which is always appreciated. i've been wanting to staff at ac for awhile now and just haven't actually put my feelers out there to see about making it reality b/c [gestures broadly] and then pandemic and everything

might be also doing some game/ttrpg stuff at matsuricon?? maybe???? that one's kinda up in the air atm

DID reach out to andy, who runs oddmall, about furry stuff and he's on board. so i gotta find time to get up with him and have a chat about what i'd like to see happen. can't do it at the event downtown due to how the knight center rents the space out (by room), but CAN do it at the two events they have in richfield (hotel, rents the whole space out together for him). and then it's a matter of lighting a fire under local folks to get them wanting to help out/be involved/present panels/whatever. i WANT it to be a COMMUNITY thing, not a 'oh ally organizes that' and everything be on me. aiming for sort of something between a meetup and, like, a mini con??? so, yeah, like folks running panels about furry stuff and maybe a section for furry vendors/artists/whatever and, like, maybe a fursuit photo area or something?? vague ideas currently, nothing set in stone, but fingers crossed for something cool to come of this!

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sketch (and whatever) dump!!


playing around with destiny!poe. first one is a variant on the cryptarch robes, b/c that was her profession before becoming a guardian (and she only JUST became a guardian lol - so she's got, like, people IN the tower and IN the city who, like, she was buddies/acquaintances/friends/family with only a few months to a year ago and now she's trying to piece together journals and things she left behind to play catchup with the whole guardian blank slate).

second is some kind of casual wear. third is a drawover of her in game character selection screen


oekaki!! done on rainbowmancer/freakphone's drawing room. this is all the bigger it is lol. i think 300x300


still trying to get down ancyn's design. like, it's half-formed in my head currently. but stuff bounces around, which is suppose works anyhow b/c she's been around a couple hundred years, so you'd def change your appearance now and then. short hair looks cute, long hair looks cute, etc., etc.

i rambled a bit about her on twit, so i'll paste that shit here, too

she's been.....interesting to roll around across my brainmeats b/c her origin is my old self-insert vtm char (angel) who ate her sire during her embrace so, like, There's That. and angel's well past all that shit. but i put ancyn like, IN that shit

something Very Bad got into her partner and she had to put him down (for the time being), so she's returning to the last city after a couple hundred years (left when the tower was being built) carrying this simultaneous grief and relief and Still Processing what happened

so she spends a lot of her time with distractions to keep her mind off of whatever happened (and prolonging the Processing part) - running gambit, playing cards, gambling, helping an old friend with eliksni quarter stuff, etc., etc)

it's also been interesting re-creating her partner b/c BACK IN THE DAYYYY when i was a god awful high schooler, angel's vampire bf/sire was based on a guy i dated briefly and had Complicated Teenage Feelings about for a very long time

and i'm, like, weirdly all about not retconning a lot of dumb shit i've done for/to my characters lol, but i'm 20yrs on now. so for ancyn i kept his initials and dark hair, but i've been making something new of him

(mostly this version is getting based on rivers/lakes and selkie vibes b/c i fuckin love selkies)

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other stuff has been about the same. money sucks. work is fine. every day is closer to nice weather and green trees.

i sent some of my inktober zines out for a zine exchange for a server i'm in and i realized i'm almost completely out of them now! think i'll use this as an excuse to finish up the in progress 2019 one, as well, and get some more copies printed. maybe play around with doing some hand binding or something for them for funsies

and, finally, books i read this last month!

CREMA
Reckless #5: Follow Me Down
House of Slaughter, Vol. 2
Who Owns the Clouds?