oh, mama raised me well

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]

this week has been...whew

the bad thing, first

snickers took a nosedive health-wise. she deteriorated really quickly. she slept on my chest for hours in the evening after work, barely moving. i made her a nice little cozy nest in a tote and parked it by my side of the bed so i could check on her periodically. she didn't try to escape. she ended up passing in her sleep (thank goodness)

Born in Akron, adopted some 14~ years ago from a home she wasn't thriving in due to a small dog and a toddler, Snickers took a long time (years!) to warm up to us, but once she did she was the most personable, cat-like cat of all the cats we had. Full of textbook torti-tude and a love of shouting really loudly about things at all hours of the day.

She loved napping in sunbeams on the porch, eating spider plants and wheatgrass, holding hands and incessantly tapping at people for their attention, and perching in windows and the front door to observe her kingdom.

it's less hard than when sammy died - i know she was old and she had a good, long life. i wish she would've lived longer, but i don't get to make those decisions

she liked coming with me into the basement - the only one of the cats brave enough to - and wandering around shouting or trying to hunt the big-ass cave crickets. she was demanding about water, always wanting the dish freshly filled and god forbid if one of the other cats got to it before she did. she liked to wrassle with finnick and i AM worried about him from here on out (beans doesn't care for him AND he got super cat depressed after jem died and hid and lost a lot of weight)

her favorite toys were things she'd scavenged from around the house - blow pops (she was front declawed - not our choice) because they clattered around and she could grab them, piece of hay from a broom, milk rings, etc., etc. she wasn't a big cuddler, only on her terms, but she liked to lay between me and the keyboard on my desk and use my arm as a pillow

she'd been more cuddly this last year and i tried my best to be real mindful of it to kind of cement those memories. she was so personable and charming and was very CAT cat-like. she had a little far-off thunderstorm purr, but a real loud, raspy voice that we always joked was like a pack-a-day truck stop waitress. she had a 'pale foot' that we always teased and when she'd fight us for poking at it her little front paws were SO strong

(also absolutely unsurprising that she passed a few days after i spent TWENTY FOUR DOLLARS on some critical care food for her)

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now, other stuff, including the good things

i called off friday to focus on the snickers situation. friday evening both tony and i went to chris' surprise birthday shenanigans at dave & buster's in canton. we DID manage to pull off actually surprising him, which was a TASK for all of us lol - we had a good time. ate good food, had good chatter. played a bunch of games, including playing DDR for the first time since the early/mid 00's!!! (at least, on an actual arcade machine) i would've blown all my credits on it, tbh

DDR WIPED tony out, tho. he ended up playing three rounds and had to take a solid half hour break before we went back out and played some midway games to blow the rest of the credits on our card. he ended up winning 500 tickets from the little jurassic park car game and got a cute raptor (i think) plush from the prize place and a mystery egg. i got two spiky light up balls lol - chris got a whole bag of squishy squids and made everyone pick one out. it was a good night with friends, and a welcome distraction

i squeeze in ONE more round of DDR for myself and had a pretty good play!

drug my ass out of bed saturday morning for work (which was pretty chill overall) and was only minorly sore from the four rounds of DDR the previous night. spent most of the day cutting and folding some more matchbook zines



after work, went to D&D. which was............whoo, boy. the vibes. not great. not much got accomplished, but we DID try malort, which was absolutely vile - like gasoline and furniture polish

today, have pathfinder. kailani got revived last session! she gets a cool physical change and some other +1 bonuses for the next week since the priests got a crit success on her resurrections. i gave her a cool new tail and a little update to her clothing since heroforge has some more options and updated some model pieces. i also bought two tattoos for her - 'navigator's star' and 'triangular teeth' - i gotta figure out where to put the latter


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