Back From AC!

Whew, what a weekend. Great con, very profitable–unlike every other con I’ve done this year, AC has not suffered any apparent economic slowdown (thank goodness!) so I actually turned something like my usual sales. Bit more in the art show than usual, bit less at the table, but it ultimately balances out to the same number.

We have returned home, laden with art and Fiestaware (our drive goes by a wholesaler, and I have this serious Fiestaware habit) and everybody is fine–cats, dogs, Crab Bob. The sole exception is my candy-cane trumpet coral, which is bleaching and probably on its way out. (A coral "bleaches" when the live polyps are retracted or have vanished, leaving the stony white skeleton behind.) Being a complex, if tiny, system, it’s hard to say what might have caused the coral to die off–I gave it a good feeding and I’ll do a big water change this afternoon, but it could be anything, from angry chemicals put out by another coral that made it unhappy to Crab Bob taking up drumming. For all I know, it’s pining for the fjords. It is unlikely that my presence would have prevented its distress, so that’s something.

So many people to give a shout-out to at this con! Lord. I shudder to even embark on the list. I picked up some great pieces of art–a flute-bird by Tyrrlin, a teeny adorable crab by Meg Lyman (Kevin also got her Steampunk Octopus!) and a clock by Jill0r. Hung out with the incomparable Miss Monster, who is the purest of pure awesome and with the shadowy, mysterious furry artist cabal that rules the world (okay, maybe we just stayed up until stupid-o-clock in the morning working on sketchbooks, but they know who they are…) had a great dinner with the Sofawolf guys–who managed to get Digger 4 out for AC, saw a lot of copies go by, thank you to all the people who picked one up! Plus all the other nifty people I ran into or hung out with–the Steins, Blotch, Tango (Kevin left him to watch me at a very drunken party, while he ducked out for a cigarette. This was perhaps a cruel thing to do, but both of us survived. My liver may never recover.) Crimson, Fiawol, Waarhorse, the Jaegermeister man–he threatened to pour Jaeger in my wine, and I now run if I see him holding any object that might contain liquid–Susandeer, Den Mother who gave me a serious awesome little squash-phalloi, Tashabear and her husband, Psuedo…christ, I’m forgetting people, but…um… There were a lot.

Also, there was absinthe. You can’t expect me to remember everybody when there was absinthe. Multiple kinds of absinthe. Absinthe martinis. I believe I was hugging random security guards and art show staff. Hopefully they were also too drunk to remember.

There were also some very nice fans, who got some nifty sketchbook commissions, and who it was fun to see–couple people who were at their first furry con, and hopefully were not too traumatized and will come back again.

It’s also seriously awesome to do this Con with somebody who does not view it as a traumatic duty but as an awesome, if exhausting, adventure. Kevin took wonderfully good care of me, went to all the parties with me and quite a few on his own while I was burning the midnight oil on sketchbooks, and generally had a great time. He’s still adjusting to the fact that when he says "I’m Kevin…Ursula’s Kevin?" a disturbingly high percentage of people at this con will go "OH! I’ve read all about you!" and often hand him alcohol. (I warned him that furries were incredibly nice and rather tightly knit, but there’s a difference between knowing and having random strangers prove it.)

And now I am near death and the house needs cleaning in the worst way, because even with people coming over twice a day to let the dogs out and check everybody, the beagle is incontinent as hell, and there are too many cats, so the rest of my day will likely be spent cleaning and trying to recuperate a little.

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