Picked up <ahref="http://makyo.drab-makyo.com/characters/makyo-badge.png">my badge</a> and snuck off to the airport for a fairly smooth travel experience straight to Pittsburgh. The only weird part was the lady one person over, having watched me jotting down a song for my portfolio, leaned over ten minutes before landing and said as condescendingly as possible, "Oh! Are you writing a SOOONG?" 'Cause, you know, I'm ten years old.
Anyway, landed without fuss, and a forty dollar taxi ride got me to the hotel, where I was immediately accosted by Ogg and handed a DVD (thanks, monkeh ^^). After saying hi to Ben and Teal, I dropped stuff off upstairs and headed out to dinner at Sonoma with Teal and Rikoshi. I had some excellent, if expensive, sirloin kabobs over noodles in an olive sauce. And not just a sauce with olives in it - olives were simply ground up with olive oil (like a very pasty tapenade) and tossed with the noodles. Tons of olives. It was spectacular.
After dinner, we wandered out onto the bridge to watch fireworks, which turned out to be quite excellent. Drinks followed in the hotel bar with the foxes and Nothingkat before we headed off to bed.
<strong>Thursday</strong>
After heading out to breakfast at the Steel City Diner - a delicious and cheap diner who had printed up t-shirts for Anthrocon that the staff was wearing and selling - Teal, Rikoshi, Vlad, Ben, and two others I don't know, lounged in the Zoo and played poker while waiting for registration. Having registered, we snuck up to Roma and Tsuki's room, where the proceeded to get me quite drunk on three very strong drinks. We blamed Teal, just 'cause. Or.. at least, I did c.c I honestly don't remember too much, after that. I've been drunk to the point of being sick, but never to the point of blacking out, which I guess I did a couple of times. Didn't get sick, though. I don't remember where we ate or anything. (Having asked, I guess we ate at a place that used to serve fried pickles - I remember getting a salad with fries on it that I thought was hilarious.)
<strong>Friday</strong>
Since the foxes wanted to get sketchbooks out early and bids placed on art, we headed over to the Dealers' Den and Artists' Alley for opening - while we were there, I placed my two commissions - from Kitsumi, I got a <ahref="http://makyo.drab-makyo.com/characters/macchiotter-s.png">Caramel Macchiotter</a> along with a print, and from Heather Bruton, I got a picture of <ahref="http://makyo.drab-makyo.com/characters/hb-makyo-s.png">my character</a>. I also managed to snag some comics from Rabbit Valley, including Meesh's Moving In and Coyote River 1.
While folk wandered off to Iron Author, I wandered around some more, eventually hooking up with the foxes, Ogg, and KurtMRufa to head up to the room and sample mead. The pom wine was way sour, but the prickly pear mead got compliments all around.
After, Shanerak, Necco, Plastick, Media, Jill, Weasel, uh.. a bunch of other people and I headed out for early dinner at Tonic Bar and Grill, which was alright, and had very sweet mojitos. Don't remember much more from the evening, but I'm sure it involved more hanging out.
<strong>Saturday</strong>
Dun' remember much from during the day, other than meeting up with Vlad, Roma, and Tsuki for Steel City Diner and picking up some booze. I picked up my commissions after that, but mostly just wandered around all day. Headed to dinner with Shanerak et. al. again that evening to Sushi Kim's, where we apologized for another group of furries that up and left because the restaurant happened to be busy.
After dinner, I watched Uncle Kage's Story Hour with foxes and badgers and noodled around. I caught up with Shanerak and such later on, only to find them completely wasted. I followed them around for a while, to the dance, and back to their room. Much fun was had, until people started passing out. Met back up with pokerfoxes before bed.
<strong>Sunday</strong>
More Steel City Diner after sleeping in late. Headed over to the auction area to meet up with foxes after that and trailed along with them for a while before meeting with Shanerak and so on again for lunch at the 7th St. Grill. Our waiter was way awesome, and we ended up doing the whole furry explanation thing to him. We even had to list our species. Necco: "A dhole is an asian dog that whistles and wags" (and sometimes dhurps [durps? derps?]). Weasel: "I AM A WEASEL." Weasel was so eloquent. We snuck over to the hotel bar and met up with NK to have drinks in the bar, thus planting the seed for later that night, when I was "one gin and tonic ahead of everyone else."
Met back up with foxes and badgers and Kaysho's for the Iron Author readings and dinner at The Church Brew Works - a brew-pub situated in what used to be a catholic church. The beer was fantastic, the food was fantastic, the desert was fantastic, and the waitress was so far beyond fantastic that, had the bill not been over $200, I would have readily contributed to a 100% tip. All in all, that was probably the best part of the entire con.
Later that night, with folk doing their things, I wandered around until I ran into NK, Corrosive, and Weasel, who was very drunk. Lounged about with those folk for a while until Junkie, Media, Jill, and people from Sushi Kim's found us, then Shanerak and crew after that. Headed up to bed when I got tired and things got weird, though I probably should've stuck around longer than I did.
<strong>Monday</strong>
I really didn't do much other than one last breakfast at Steel City Diner and say goodbye to everyone, which was sad, as always. I hailed a cab and headed to the airport. Awesome Italian driver.
Travel was pretty horrid, due to the weather, but taking other people's experiences into account, it could've been worse. Basically, though I got on an earlier flight, I ended up home later than my original flight, only to find a voice mail from United saying that the original flight had been canceled. Scanned shit and went to bed.
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<p>Back at work now, and boy does it suck c.c Should’ve said I wanted an extra day off. Oh well. I’m almost definitely heading to FC this year. Don’t know that I’ll do AC next year, but I might try for MFF instead</p>
