bovil | So we survived FurCon 2008...

...and seeing that it's a week later and I'm finally writing it up should give you an idea what it was like.

We checked in on Wednesday night. Yep, Wednesday. Back a few months ago I was re-reading some old journal entries, and found one in particular that said we needed to check in on Wednesday instead of Thursday, so I added the extra night.

It was worth it. We got two car-loads in (with the help of

lobolance), had a nice sushi dinner, and caught up with a bunch of folks who were already there. On the downside, we were checked into a handicap-accessible room that the front desk didn't know was accessible. This was a bit inconvenient; if you don't need the large bathroom to maneuver or the low closet bar to reach, an ADA room is sub-optimal. Unfortunately, it was really too late to sort out and get moved. Still, as problems go, it was pretty low on the scale.

It did show up a real problem: people bogarting the ADA rooms to get on the first floor. When we said we wanted to change rooms, all sorts of interested parties popped up. Then we said "It's on the 8th floor" and interest evaporated. Nobody needed the accessible room, they just wanted first floor.

Thursday morning I went to work. K took the day off, hauled in another carload and worked on the CC26 website. When I got back to the con, there were more folks to visit with. We stopped by opening ceremonies (short and sweet, thank you

bosn and

melchar) before going to the sushi bar again.

Friday morning we had to open the fan table. I brought a bunch of Japanese costume books to display. We kept the table until

lisa_marli showed up to take over. Friday was also party day. We got checked in, set up (with the help of Carole,

danjite,

khaybee,

iamradar and

britgeekgrrl) and actually had a few hours between finishing and opening. The gang all went to the Coffee Garden for a nice dinner before we went back up, cleaned up and got ready to open.

The party itself went well. We had a bottle of St. George Absinthe Verte hidden behind the table, and

britgeekgrrl brought a bottle of Kübler, so we made "Death in the Afternoon" cocktails for folks we knew. The red bottle of Shochu was a rather popular "experimental substance," and better than most people expected.

There was, unfortunately, a bad case of the stupids going around at the convention, though. The police showed up around 2:00 am to deal with a problem in the middle of the party floor. We had most of the awake convention exec staff hanging out in our party already, and FLARE used our room to get people trapped at the far end who were coming back via the patio and back in to the hotel and to the elevators. We closed not long after this. It was nice, though, getting to sleep before 3:00 am.

Saturday morning we had a 10:00 am panel on masquerade presentation. It was lightly attended (two attendees, the fursuit track programming lead and

foofers who was masquerade second). It went well, and we were able to finish cleaning up the party room afterwards.

The afternoon was spent mostly sitting the fan table.

lobolance and

ted_e_lthrgirl showed up fairly late in the afternoon to take over the party room and set up for the

sccla "Kinky Kawa Sake Den."

After getting some dinner, we got dressed in our Edo-period Japanese and went over to judge the masquerade. The FC masquerade is a little odd; they're reinventing the wheel in some ways, and I'm not entirely thrilled with some of their traditions. Fortunately, nothing worked out in a way that resulted in folks who didn't deserve awards getting them, although it would have been nice to be able to give a few more awards.

After the masquerade, we headed back to the SCCLA party. We weren't planning to spend so much time helping out there, but since it was just

lobolance and

ted_e_lthrgirl (with

britgeekgrrl and

iamradar helping again), we stayed most of the night. I spent about an hour hooked up to a violet wand, carrying a pretty strong charge. We closed somewhere around 1:00 am.

Sunday morning I had "Japanese Costume for Fursuiters." It's a good thing I could do that panel in my sleep, because I almost did. K was starting to feel crappy, so he slept most of the afternoon, and I fit a nap in there somewhere myself.

We also got the remains of the parties moved up to our room. Getting it home wasn't in the cards.

K skipped "Furry Night Live" but I went. San Jose Taiko opened the show with a 1/2 hour performance, and then the sketches started. The MC's were hysterical, the pacing was solid, and even the weak sketches were pretty good. Best FNL ever, although the producers were pretty burned out by the end of it.

Parties were pretty thin on Sunday night, but since K was feeling off, it wasn't a big deal. We had a late snack at the coffee garden and chatted with some volunteers who will remain nameless to protect them. One asked if we were going to limit the number of stupid people allowed to come to Costume-Con, because she was still doing stupid-people paperwork. Another wanted to be kicked out of the convention so he could get away from the stupid for good.

Monday morning we got up, visited with folks and hauled two car-loads home. We just kept enough stuff to overnight one more time. I checked out the "hiss-and-purr." There weren't many complaints overall, most folks were very happy with the convention. K stopped by at the job fair to see if we could poach some volunteers for Costume-Con. We spent some time at the dead dog, and then went up to the room with a guy we had met earlier in the weekend to have some sake and chat for a few hours. It was a good wind-down.

Tuesday morning was work, and final check-out. For the most part, a very good convention. Very few of the problems were things the committee had any control over, and almost everybody had a good time.