Planetfurry BBS

[hikaru]

Post MFM report.

MFM was a blast.

End of report

Oh, you want details? OK. Heh… Actually, the odyssey is a bit more involved than that. Wed evening, RC Rabitsfoot came by around Midnight and picked me up. After a frantic job of loading his Suburban, we headed off… About four hours or so later, we arrived in St Louis at the big blue house (Tyger & Spike’s home) where we met up with the rest of the convoy. After a brief delay while folks got their assorted furry butts in gear, we rolled out. The ramp we needed to get onto 55 South was blocked, so we wound up running around on a bunch of side streets for about fifteen minutes until we came to an alternate ramp that wasn’t under construction. Thanks to our FRS (Family Radio Service) walkie-talkies in conjunction with the 2 ham radios that BJ and I have, we all stayed in communications range and avoided loosing anyone.

We stopped off briefly at a McDonalds where everyone grabbed some breakfast. RC was getting tired and wanted to swap, however his truck just didn’t work for me as a driver so Kodian did us the favor of switching off and letting me ride with Innerwolf (in his air conditioning) down to MFM. The entire brigade arrived at the hotel around 11:30 and got unloaded in fairly quick order. The rest of Thursday was a bit of a blur. I remember getting my yellow staff badge, the initial staff meeting and spending some time with friends. Saw Jim Lane around noon and got his room number and said he and James were going to take a nape. Sounded good so after the staff meeting I took a nap too. Around 5:30 I got up and banged on their door. After a bit, Jim opened it. They were both still out. He said they were planning on sleeping some more, but I wasn’t one to let sleeping dogs lie. Argued that if they slept straight through, they would wake up at 3AM not be able to get back to sleep. Dono about James, but I saw Jim running around a little later, so I guess he either couldn’t sleep or took my advice. I was pretty toasty when I went to sleep at about 10:30pm.

Friday morning I slept in a little late as I didn’t sleep well. Drinking 6 liters of Mt Dew the prior day can be detrimental to your ability to relax. I love the AC in those rooms as they’re like sleeping in a refrigerator. My only complaint is that the damn vents point DIRECTLY at the bed closest to the window. BJ and I both like to keep the room COLD when we sleep. Problem was that it felt like an arctic blizzard. I wound up using the top covers to build a wall to block the air some.

I got up and grabbed a quick shower then hit the restaurant for some breakfast. I wasn’t too impressed with the buffet that they had. Just some scrambled eggs, sausage patties and grits. Blech. Give me a break. I could get better than that at a Shonie’s.

Afterwards I wandered back up to the dealer’s room. About the time I got there, I spotted MaxBR looking for a place to setup. Rather than relegating him to the limited seats in our impromptu Artists Alley, I got him tagged as a dealer and let him have half of my 3rd table. (I didn’t need all three). As I unpacked all my stuff, I grabbed Nikon’s sketchbook as well as my own and passed them over to Max who agreed to do a drawing in each of them. I hadn’t been behind the table for more than ten minutes before people started wandering by and asking if this was where they could drop off stuff for the auction. I brought about 20 items with me and picked up another 30 before the dealers room closed. That night I hung out in various places around the con. Eventually had dinner in the restaurant. They had a buffet set up for us that was OK. Not the greatest in the world, but OK, however they didn’t plan on being assaulted by 400 people at the same time and the food bar looked like a swarm of locusts had rolled through. Service in the dining area wasn’t very good either. If I hadn’t brought a 64 oz QuickTrip cup, I would have been hard up for something to drink. Once dinner was over, I went to look up Jim, James and Malcolm, but there was no sign of them. Instead I went to the lobby with the intent of finding something to do. Someone tagged me as a “grey muzzle” and called me over. He had a newbie who was attending his first con and had questions. Since I’m apparently an old timer (that or just old lookin’ with my cane and all) they decided I should educate him. It was an interesting night. Best part is the guy who called me over is an artist. On e of the “it’s all crap” crowd that don’t think they can draw for shit. I would up calling Odus over (the con guest of honor who’s a art GOD!) to look at his work and even Odus said that it was very nice work. Guy understood shadows, highlights, textures AND had a clue about anatomy. From Odus, that’s a high compliment. Guy gave me half a dozen pictures for the auction that wound up bringing in $150. I wound up going to bed around 11:30 or so.

Saturday morning I got up early. BJ wanted the alarm set for 7:30AM. No problem. I have an alarm clock my brother gave me that has a rooster crowing. It’s hilarious (an annoying). I set it, set the volume to max and put it right next to BJ’s bed. It almost didn’t work. That guy sleeps HARD! (Lord knows my snoring didn’t faze him). Rolled out of bed and headed over to the Grey Muzzle get together in the lobby. Met a gent by the handle of Commander Kitsune. He’s a commander in the US Navy. Very nice guy who’s also into Anime as well as video editing, two of my favorite hobbies. I predict that we’ll become good friends over time. Panel went well except for the lack of coffee. There was supposed to be coffee provided by the hotel, but we never saw it. I had to leave around 11AM to open the auction donation table in the dealer’s room. I quickly became swamped as items rolled in and hollered over to Quasi Skunk for some help. He sent one of his volunteers over to lend a paw with the inventory.

Question: Why the HELL are all furries UNABLE TO WRITE!!!! Nobody who came to lend a hand could write! I’m like DAMN. I need you to write up cards as I put the data in the laptop. Instead wound up doing most of that myself while my helper put items back by the wall where they’d be safe until the auction. Around noon he asked to go to lunch and I let him go. He never came back that day. Closer it got to 1PM, the more people came to donate items. I couldn’t close the donations at 1PM because people KEPT COMING! As it got closer and closer to 3PM (auction starts at 4) I started yelling more and more at Quasi that I needed HELP!!! Finally, half the staff came running to help lend a hand. They all grabbed the items for the auction as I finished up the database and saved it on the laptop. Unplugged the power, closed the lid and walked around the table. As I went to pick it up, Quasi grabbed it saying “I’ll get that for you.” We got into the auction area and he set it down on the table for me. I noticed the light out and growled a little. I figured he’d hit the power button on the side by accident, however no great loss since I’d already saved the data. Hit the power switch and nothing happened. The battery had gone poof between the dealer’s room and the auction area next door. I plugged in the power supply and rather than get a green light, I got flashing yellow FAULT indicator for the battery. Played around with the battery for a few minutes to make sure it hadn’t jarred loose but to no avail. The battery was deader than a doorknob. Oh well, I booted up with the power supply, got the database open and had the table setup to input the buyer’s badge #, optional name and the amount they’d paid for each object. We were ready to rock well before the Tiger Haven video presentation was over.

And so the auction started. Tiger got things rolling rather quickly and items were going smoothly. We instigated a system were people could run tabs. It was a little rough at first, but soon the entire process just flew along. Soon we got close to the $6K mark. I had a couple of items I wanted to put up when we got to the 6K mark, both because they were from someone who I wasn’t sure would bring in much money for their donation, and the fact that I wanted to give one of ‘em a bozner surprise when his item went for a BIG chunk of money. Unfortunately, Tyger mentioned that they were within a couple hundred dollars of the 6K mark, and whoever pushed the auction over $6K would also get Odus’s March Hair suit. The next bid pushed it right up over $6K. Guy bid like $300 or some such. ARRRRrrrgggghhh… So much for my nefarious plans. Teach me to tell them how well the auction’s doing. BEFORE I make sure he’s got the item I want up for sale at the right time. Oh well… Both items I wanted to go well went well anyway, and we raised almost $7K for the kitties with the auction alone. Counting the money that Tiger Haven took in at the dealers table and other donations (Jugular Jaguar’s collection included) pushed the total over $9K. All in all it was an impressive sum of money considering there were only 400 people at the con and less than 1/3 were at the auction. Unfortunately, the auction was supposed to run 2 hours and wound up running 3. We also had over 120 items, mostly because people kept bringing them in even DURING the auction!

Afterwards was the pizza feed. The hotel people brought out pizza after pizza and generally kept up with the pace. For the most part, people were pretty good about it and only took a couple of slices, though I did see a few people with half a pizza or MORE on their plate. I wanted to take the mic and do a little social engineering, but was overridden by the other staff there. Next year, though I will take that mic and embarrass the hell out of anyone that does that crap by announcing to the entire room who just took HALF A FRICKEN PIZZA. Oh well, the idea was to have fun, and we did.

That night I hung out until it was time for the spirituality track. Blackfeather Tanfur along with Wurrigur (sorry, Wur, but don’t remember your other moniker) were doing a totem animal search. I sat back and observed. All in all it was performed well except that BT was a little impatient on the first run through and tended to rush and that Wur had never kept beat before so he wasn’t familiar with the tempo’s involved. Considering it was the first time for both of them doing it (or so I understand) they did a fairly good job. Later I came back for the round table. Interesting to hear what everyone’s take is on religion, especially in the furry community. Afterwards it was once again off to bed. I didn’t crash until almost 2AM this time.

Sunday I got up early again. Don’t remember a lot about what happened in the AM or the rest of the day for that matter, I was a bit burned out. Spent the day in the dealers room again as we still had to close out the silent auction. Sales of the Pocky I brought along with the items from the silent auction brought in another $150 for Tiger Haven which they appreciated. Only really annoying thing is the West Corner of the Park cartoon bard that came around. MaxBR did a drawing on it which I couldn’t resist answering. Considering the fact that I can’t draw for squat, I was actually pretty happy with my handy work and passed the strip on. Unfortunately it got to Steve Martin’s table where someone saw him stick it in one of his bags. The bastard doesn’t like either Max OR Jim Groat so he took the panel rather than just passing it on, which means that he’s now on my shit list. I don’t care if you hold a grudge, you don’t steal something that belongs to someone just because you don’t like them.

After the dealer’s room shut down, I went to the closing ceremonies. All of us staff were required to show up. Tiger thanked everyone and I got to auction off 2 items that hadn’t made the main auction. One was a photograph/poster (on photographic paper, not a regular poster) of a big cat at a zoo. The other was for the “Family Portrait” by Bill Holbrook which I’d forgotten at home (you always forget something). Afterwards the staff was presented with T-Shirts, which had drawings of all our personas on it. They were only given to the staff. There was one extra, which all the staff signed, and I’m holding until next year for the charity auction. I was also given a great skunk tail which will be auctioned next year. The gent who makes them (who’s name I don’t have on tap) will only make one from now on which will be exclusively for the charity auction. Gotta love people like that. Afterwards folks filed out for the barbeque, unfortunately although the food was ready, the hotel didn’t have a cashier there to take money. Rather than stand in a HUGE line, I hoofed it up to Jim’s room where I hung out with them for a little bit. Eventually, the restaurant got its act together and the line started moving. Once it was down to a reasonably small line, I headed down to grab some food with Jim, James and Max behind me. After we got our food, Jim and I found a table with plenty of open seats, unfortunately Max and James had vanished. Rather than worry about it, we sat down and had a relaxing dinner while chatting with some furs at the table. Soon they brought out the ice cream and the line formed again. Rather than fight the line, I once again took the lazy out and waited for everyone else to go through. Once the line was down to a reasonable amount again, I hopped up and got my self some dissert. After that was finished, I headed up to Jim’s room again where James was watching cartoons while DC Rabbit was in the floor drawing. I said howdy to DC and plopped down on the chair in the room to relax. Eventually Jim broke out the alcohol and offered to get me drunk. We had a few visitors in the room whose names elude me (I suck at remembering names) who Jim had invited for a drink. James was tired so I offered to take everyone over to my room so we could hob knob while he got some sleep. I had some wine while Jim did some Scotch whisky on ice with water. The other two did wine also, I believe, but don’t remember. We broke up around 1AM when Jim decided to head back to bed so he could get some sleep. I went down to the lobby and hung out with the folks there until about 2AM when MaxBR dropped by with my sketchbook and apologized for not having time to ink the image. That’s all right as I appreciate any art he’s willing to do for me. A little time later I crashed.

BING! Up and at ‘em early on Monday. We had a staff meeting to attend where we would cover problems and issues that had come up during the con. The biggest problem I could see was the night manager. The guy was a prick. He didn’t want us there and made it obvious that he held us in nothing but contempt. I doubt he’ll be there again next year. There were some issues with water not being provided for the people who do mascotting (dressing up in the furry mascot costumes) as well as a few other miscellaneous items. For my part, I had no complaints at all. Of course we did come up with a new complaint after the staff meeting when we met with the hotel sales rep. All during our meeting in the restaurant, not a single employee came over to offer us water or see if we wanted to order anything. Not good. After they negotiated out all the errors and discounted things that the hotel screwed up on, Tyger paid the bill and figured that we had about $2500 in the kitty for next year, which is pretty good considering the fact that the con usually only has 300-800 leftover at the end of a meet.

Packed up the room and got everything ready to roll. Loaded up RC’s Suburban and then camped in the lobby for a little while until everyone else was ready to go. I never did see Jim or James as I assume they took off earlier in the day. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to spend a little more time with James as I’ve not gotten hardly any chance to communicate with him at the two con’s where I’ve seen him.

The trip home was an exercise in torture. RC’s truck overheated before we got out of town and he did the “turn on the heater” trick. Considering the temperature was in the 80’s and 90’s to begin with, I was about ready to die. Finally, about 7PM or so, we stopped in Cape Girardeau for the night. Rather than try to go out for dinner, we ordered Pizza Hut. They lost our order and by the time we bitched, their delivery guys were gone. I screamed and they gave us a credit for a free pizza, fat lot of good that’s going to do two guys from Kansas. Called Imo’s Pizza and they were still delivering so we got a pizza from them. In the morning, Ian called a local GMC place that could look at his diesel Suburban. They said that the radiator was clogged with bugs and that’s why it wasn’t cooling. (I didn’t believe them, but it wasn’t my truck. My diagnosis was the thermostat). Half an hour later, we’re on the road for a test drive. Half a mile later, the truck’s over heating… back to the garage. They’re all eating lunch now, so there was nobody to work on the truck. Since we couldn’t go anywhere for lunch, I decided to call Pizza Hut and have them deliver that free pizza (guess it was good after all). While they worked on the truck, we ate pizza. Hour later truck was fixed and the heat problem was gone. Drove the rest of the way home at a reasonable speed with the AC on. I was in heaven. Finally got home around 9PM and unloaded the truck. RC went on home and I unpacked…

And that is my con report.

[whiterabbit]

*loathes you with a chaingun of loathing*

I wanted to go to MFM, instead I got one day of Dragon*Con. I'll get you next time, Gadget! Neeexxttttt ttttiimmmmeeee!!!!!

Maybe I'll make it to AC next year. By then I should have some money.

[Zorro]

Shonies is Damn good for breakfast and basicly Nothing Else.