Got some new tires today. Mmm, the car just rides so much better now. The old set had quite a few miles on them and one was leaking slow. Probably out of shape and unbalanced too. So gone now is the subtle wonder "will today be the day one blows out?" with every ride.

I had got a quote from Wal-Mart a couple weeks ago for 478, and took it up the street to Tire Kingdom, who looked at it and said they would do it for 450. So naturally I went there first today, but it seemed that 450 somehow turned into 580. I guess Wally World won this round.

First off, happy birthdays to my wonderful roommate Liesl (lillibug and friend kuddlepup both of whom had birthdays this week. Spankin's for every year and one to grow on!

Second of all, fuck you Levy Restaurants for stripping our holiday pay as well as putting a freeze on all raises for the indeterminate future. They tell us this the day after Wolfgang is here, probably so no one will make mention of it to him. Blah.

I am in the center of the photo. Second on my right (left most person fully visible) is Wolfgang Puck himself.

Yeah, today was kind of like that.

Started the new job a bit early, worked it Saturday and Sunday. Over the weekend I worked about 32 out of 48 hours. Whew! Monday was spent relaxing at Typhoon Lagoon. So far the new job at the express is okay. I just hate being the FNG and having to learn the ropes all again. Everyone there is a stranger I haven't figured out yet, and everyone seems to have a different way of doing things. "Do this - unless the manager is here, then do it this way." and all that. Grr. Apart from that, the section I work is ridiculously easy compared to what I do in the Dining Room. In the morning between 9 and 11 I do omelets and after that switch over to doing pastas. Very simple.

Going to work there early in the morning is a different experience too. It was quite surreal walking through Downtown Disney Marketplace so early. No people around, totally empty. Dew still sparkling on everything, seeing the delivery carts zipping around from place to place. All while "Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go" plays from hidden speakers everywhere.

Well, I start a new job on Tuesday. In an attempt to corner the market on all things Puck, I will be working 2-3 extra days a week at the Wolfgang Puck Express in the Marketplace side of Downtown Disney. Different style of cooking that what I do at the Dining Room, much faster and tourtisy orientated. We'll see how it goes! A little extra dough on the side will certainly help!

Well, that sucked. The new graphics card I got a couple months ago, the fan has been whining and acting up. Today it was pulsing, so I opened the case. It was sluggish and finally stopped entirely. Shit. So, I was trying to clean it out, didn't make a difference. Ended up transplanting the fan from my old card onto this one. So far so good! Never done that before. Made sure to spread the silver heat compound onto the heat sink and all. No smoke yet!

There was a lovely party this Friday at wildwolf4paws place, for Rockband and such. Very nice with the light and fog stage kit going too. Won't get to go to Elliots today as I work, so it was a good time there instead. Heh heh, still recovering from it. ;) I did a bit of cooking, doing some pastas and such. Thanks to everyone and hope you all had as much fun as I did!

Also - Thursday, in the parking lot of my apartment building I had a strange encounter. I'm not sure if it was a regular grasshopper or a locust or something but it was frickin HUGE! Biggest insect I've ever personally seen. The blurry camera photos under the cut don't do justice, but you can see in them that I have my car keys for comparison of size. Holy crap, is that what all this "reclaimed water" they pump through the sprinklers does?

( Hopperzilla!! )

As I mentioned in a prior entry, for awhile now I've been making and marketing my own little creations on Second Life. For months now, its been fairly self sustaining, with what I sell paying for the rent for my land parcel, so I haven't had to spend anything on SL at all. Well, today marked a first for me - after cashing in some of the Linden Dollars I accumulated and transferring to my real bank account, I can say that Second Life payed to fill my car with gas today. That's awesome!

During Megaplex I was in a conversation with a few people while making a Target run and the topic of their favorite/finest moment in different pen and paper RPGs came up. I've played a variety of them since high school and it took awhile for me to decide on which I thought was my best.

( Warning, RPG geekery ahead... )

I posted on a couple convention LJs, but not here on my own. I recently created a community, sushi_furs, with the idea of it being a forum for furs around the world to not only discuss and review their area sushi places, but to be a resource to arrange outings to them during conventions.

Well, this past weekend was Megaplex, of course. Was a few firsts for me, not the least of which was being on the staff for the first time. There were a few "OMG what do I do?!" moments in the months leading up, but the con itself went pretty smoothly as far as I could tell. wildwolf4paws and I were co-Fursuit Track leads this year, so we organized the fursuit games and such. Wild built an awesome head drying rack for the headless lounge, and we both managed the Funspot go-kart outing (Thank you Yappy for doing the negociations with the park - I wouldn't have known where to start with that!)

Since the con was only 6 miles down the road from my apartment, I commuted there a few days, and stayed a couple nights with friends fyrdawg and sibir_lupus, and gave the former a ride to the airport on Monday morning.

Saturday was the first sushi_furs outing to Wolfgang Puck's sushi bar. It was attended by r_bear, darktiger77, sibir_lupus, rieshal, Zuri, and myself. May it be the first in a long string of such events all over the world!

The fursuit games were nuts! (Note to self: More supplies and such for next year. I'm sorry to everyone that didn't get to participate in every game, we had a much higher turnout than imagined!)

And as always, had a blast just roaming the con, getting food, and tooling around on carpet skates in suit! Thank you one and all!

Well as I've mentioned before, its been a lengthy break between full conventions for me, so I was quite anxious and excited to be going back to AC this year. sibir_lupus and I were traveling together there, starting out with an early ride to the airport from lillibug on Thursday. Second time using my luggage and it got smashed and broken on the flight in. :P

Thursday was arrival and set-up day. Sibir and I were the first in, wildwolf4paws was driving in later, and Steelclaw Fox was delayed by a broken alternator, not arriving until 10 that night. All together, we had five fursuits explode over the whole room, and thanks to Wild's fans and a borrowed rack, the turn around time on drying was pretty quick this year! Thursday night we all ventured down to 18th street to Primati Brothers, a sandwich shop thats been features on the Food Network. Their thing is that they slap coleslaw and french fries right on the sandwiches.

Friday opened with running around in suit, visiting the Masquerade rehearsal to see if any extras were needed (negative) followed by last breakfast at Steel City Diner. That place (and every restaurant within a couple blocks) was humming constantly! Wild's Pred Panther came out to stalk around the con and was quite a hit from what I could tell, I didn't see many other costumes with the theme that were even close. One of the highlights on Friday was amassing a big group of friends, amoungst them aceswild, ramensnax and his GF April, to hit up Sushi Kim's. Our waitress was quite awesome and turned out to be an internet DJ whose broadcast we would listen to on another day.

Saturday brought around more suiting and activities. Attended the panels on fursuit construction and costume tech that Wild was putting on. Over the course of the weekend, I heard reports of a ZiB being spotted at the convention, however details were sketchy at best - many complained of lingering feelings of deja vu and of being unable to remember exactly where, when, or what happened around him. Quite curious. A definite highlight for me on Saturday was coming in first place in the fursuit games Solo competition! A first for me, I never win anything! The nifty hex badges, fursuit plaques, trophies and such were memorable bits of con bling to take home, thank you triggur and tugrik for creating them!

Sunday we attended another fursuit panel of Wild's, as well as the Hoofers panel. Things always get a little sad as there is that unavoidable feeling of them winding down on Sundays. Dealer's Den closing up early, things shutting down one by one, until even the con center is closed off. The DeadDog in/on/around the Hotel was packed wall to wall, omg! The headless lounge was standing room only at many points!

Special thanks again to Sibir who during the course of the con was called upon to tuck in paws, adjust alien armor bits, zip and unzip suits, wrangle costumers, photograph everything in sight, and suit a few times himself too. I hope his first AC was as memorable as mine was!

It was great to be able to reconnect with so many that I haven't seen in a long while and to feel that feeling of being welcomed back into the fold with open arms. Also, I finally got to meet Lauren Rivers in person, after I missed her debut last year. We needs more zeebahs! So many to shake a paw, give a hug, chat for a minute or just be silly with, I couldn't compile a list of everyone. But thank you one and all! Comment below if you like of any memories and moments I may have missed.

Arrived home yesterday after battles with the TSA, flight problems, and destroyed luggage. After a 20 month hiatus from anything con-related it was an awesome welcome back. Didn't truly realize how much I'd missed it all until I was there, reconnecting with friends old and new. The whole con was great from my perspective, and an awesome way to celebrate/forget about turning 30 on the 4th of July. I will post a more in depth report with pictures and such as time permits, for the moment though I'd like to give a shout out to sibir_lupus whom it was my pleasure to introduce to his first AC. Between wrangling/dressing us suiters, photographing everything in sight, noming on sushi and pho tai, suiting himself, and generally having a grand old time, I'm glad he was there for the whole experience! Thank you one and all, especially the hard (over)working staff!

Naturally I stuck to my resolution to post and comment more by taking half of April, all of May and half of June off from posting or commenting. Go me! Guess I haven't felt inspired to write much, most everything going on has been rather mundane. A few highlights here and there, but they're old news now.

Went to the Sunshine Foundation on saturday with wildwolf4paws and kuddlepup for some volunteer work, doing characters for the Progeria Reunion. Always fun to help out there, this was the second year for me. Zeebah got taken for a ride on a Harley-Davidson trike, hehe. And soaked by one of the kids at the balloon toss with a bucket of water. All in fun, anything for the kids.

I am immensely looking forward to going to Anthrocon next month! Vacation time scheduled, reservations, tickets, etc taken care of, woo! Its going to be epic! By the time July rolls around, it will have been 20 months since my last con (MFF 07) - Almost two years! Thats nearly as long as I've been going to cons! :( Zeebah needs to get out and stretch!

Of course to make it extra special, it will be my birthday during the con (July 4th) so the whole experience will be like one big present. Lots of people I've missed, and just the whole sensation of it all. Anthrocon was my first convention and in many ways it feels like going home again, to see the halls of the Westin and DLC, populated with so many friendly faces.

Had a busy week or so, after the last post. sibir_lupus was up visiting and we went to the parks and such, as well as other fun stuff like tracking down durian fruit at an asian market. twinkie_ottah was also in town, met up with him a few times - Haven't seen him since.. mmm... MFF '07.

What else.. Oh, last night at work we had Barry Bonds come up to the Dining Room, so I've cooked for him now. Might also get a picture in the newspaper, one of the parties tonight were writers that took a few photos and said they would write up their experiences.. that would be cool. First time having a picture in the paper without a fursuit on, hehehe.

... To Downtown Disney!

As some may know, this past September Disney shut down the night clubs on Pleasure Island. They're planning on renovating the whole area and putting in a variety of new shops and such. One of the new attractions is slated to open this spring:

Character's In Flight is a tethered helium balloon ride that will rise to 300 feet for views of the area. Its designed to hold 30 passengers at a time. Apparently, there will be Disney characters on the ride as well, hence the name. The old guest services building in the area is being converted for ticketing and, I've heard, as a staging area for the character performers.

We've been watching the construction of the launch area for the last few months. The actual balloon landing site is constructed over the water, on pylons driven into the lake bed. Apparently, the balloon will also light up and glow at night. The first inflation/lighting of the balloon is scheduled for March 25th! Should be a sight to see from the dining room windows that night! Will be nice to have some characters around DTD too. All we have right now are the strange fairy ladies that sprinkle pixie dust on kids. Yeah, really. o.O