Blame zenwolph for this one. His post reminded me of what was going on five years ago. I checked my archives and found this rather amusing post to alt.lifestyle.furry. It’s nice to see that all of the friends mentioned are still folks I’m reasonably close to, plus a brief mention of a certain wolf who would later become a wonderful part of my life.

Newsgroups: alt.lifestyle.furry
From: {expired e-mail address} (Duncan da Husky)
Subject: Duckon Report
Organization: Durham Home for Easily Amused Canines
X-Husky: Woof!
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998

Well, I’m writing this on the flight back from Duckon, trying to keep the jumble of events of the weekend straight in my mind. Duckon was the first con of any size that I have attended, and I really didn’t know what to expect going in. It was a wonderful experience, and I had the opportunity to meet old friends as well as talk with new ones.

Friday: Following a flight marred only by a sprint through Newark Airport to make my connection, I rolled into the Ramada Plaza at about 11AM. My worries about not knowing anyone there were immediately dispelled when I ran into Aerofox and Pheonix Tigerborn while waiting to register for my room. I headed back to my room briefly – it was conveniently located only about four or five miles from the lobby – then returned to the lobby to wait for my roommate, Four-eyes. I ran into several furs I knew from other fora, such as alt.fan.furry.

Friday afternoon was spent bumming around the hotel. Once we had registered (a bit of a mess – they had my check, had my registration, just didn’t print me a badge), we hit the huckster’s room for a quick first pass, followed by a walk through the Furry Artists’ Den. I got to take a break from this and sit and talk to a couple of friends, which was nice as well. I also found out about con suites – a room that provides a free flow of sodas and munchies. Way cool. This made a great place to stop during the con to recharge or meet friends. Lunch was a quick run to (ugh) Denny’s with Four-eyes, Xao, and Alyeska. Following a quick nap (Lesson 1: da Husky learned catnaps during cons are your friend), I headed back to the huckster’s room and took in some of the art show.

A return visit to the lobby turned up Barbarian and Chouette. We headed over to a performance by Space Time Theater, an amateur improv group that was very funny. After the show, we met up with Mirko, the snuggly wolf, and Nrasser. We headed over to the Furry Variety Show, which, though it was supposed to start at midnight really started at 12:30 (Lesson 2: da Husky learns about Furry Time). Although some of the fursuits were very nice (I particularly liked Banwynn’s lion, which I’m told looks a lot like Nakira’s), the show itself showed a woeful lack or preparation and rehearsal. What the heck, though – everyone had a good time and that’s what matters.

Had a slow start Saturday, due to a late night of staying up talking with friends. A stop by the con suite yielded good company and a breakfast of muffins and Coke (hey, I need my caffeine). From there, we moved over to the Furry Spirituality discussion group, run by Takaza and assisted by Four-eyes. As I expected, just about every reader of alt.lifestyle.furry at the con was there, but I was surprised to see a good twenty or so other furs show up as well. The discussion started with a general round of introductions and a quick sketch of each fur’s beliefs, which yielded everything from militant agnosticism to totemism to Roman Catholicism. From there the discussion moved on to comparisons and contrasts of beliefs, drawing some interesting parallels. The works of Joseph Campbell came up, as did mentions of a variety of references that I intend to track down. The discussion was originally supposed to run for an hour, but because of interest and audience participation ran closer to an hour and a half. The discussion was one of the highlights of the con for me. Four-eyes tells me that he will be running a similar SIG at the Mephit Furmeet on Labor Day weekend – I’ll be there for sure.

From spirituality to costuming – Mirko, Nrasser, and I headed over to the SIG on basic fursuit creation. I stuck around for about a half-hour of watching Ostrich carve a head out of a 3-foot cube of foam with an electric carving knife (!) and Robert King talk about types of fake fur available, but I was starting to fall asleep – the late night catching up with me again. After making the journey back to the room and taking a short nap, life looked much improved. I met up with Nrasser by the outdoor pool and took advantage of the grill the hotel had set up for the con to grab a late lunch. Mirko joined us and we had a great discussion about high-tech fursuits. I really like Nrasser’s idea of tracking the wearer’s facial expressions with infrared sensors and transmitting that to servos on the fursuit head to duplicate the expressions.

From there I wandered back over to the huckster’s room and once again didn’t buy anything – I have a great knack for talking myself out of purchases. The only thing I bought at the con was a greatest hits tape from one of my favorite bands, Uncle Bonsai. After wandering around for a bit, a group of us headed over to see what the Masquerade looked like. It was sort of sad, compared to the great fursuits from the previous night – only fifteen entries, and the majority of those were pretty amateurish. But again, it was done in good humor and everyone seemed to have fun, so what the hey. We adjourned back to my room for an impromptu ALF pizza party and general hanging out with Pheonix, Mistletoe, Aerofox, Mirko, Barbarian, Chouette, Nrasser, and myself. We had great fun playing with Nrasser’s cap, which has fuzzy ears that contain microphones, and snarfing Chicago-style pizza. Yum!

The evening closed with the Furry Dance, which started (predictably) about thirty minutes late. The music tended to early-80’s and late disco, definitely not my style, but it was fun watching the furs dance and meeting and talking to the gathered folks. (Lesson 3: da Husky learns the art of stealthily scoping out con badges to see if you recognize the name even if you don’t know the face). Another late night hanging out and talking resulted in FAR too little sleep.

Sunday was depressing – all those goodbyes. I missed saying goodbye to a couple of furs – Aero, Nrasser, ya disappeared before I could get my hugs in! Had a lovely Mexican dinner with Mirko, Barbarian and Chouette, then after they headed out, got invited out for sushi with a big group of furs who were spending an extra night at the hotel like I was. The sushi was excellent even if I was too stuffed to eat much (a good thing for my wallet, though!). After that, it was an early bedtime, since I had a 5:30 AM wake-up call for my 7 AM flight.

What an incredible weekend! It was wonderful seeing folks that I know and making new friends. I’m now looking very seriously at revising my decision not to attend AAC. After all, it’s only a 12 hour drive, and if I can find someone interested in sharing a room, there’s every chance y’all might see me up there. (Lesson 4: da Husky learns that cons are addictive!)

-Duncan da Husky, who now wishes he could go and sleep for a week

Of course, I did revise my decision and went to Albany Anthrocon.

Newsgroups: alt.lifestyle.furry
From: {expired e-mail address} (Duncan da Husky)
Subject: da Husky’s AAC Wrap-up
Organization: Durham Home for Easily Amused Canines
X-Husky: Woof!
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998

Home again, home again…

Well, the flights home went well, and I am back in North Carolina once again. I know some folks may not have even left Albany yet – my thoughts are with them, and I hope everyone arrives/arrived home safe. Well, here’s the day-by-day description of Albany Anthrocon ’98, from this dog’s point of view (I was going to annotate this with references to Aeto’s pictures, but my modem is too slow and I’m too tired 🙂 Anyway, here we go:

Friday:
I arrived at the Albany Airport at a little before 4 PM. Calling the hotel, they said that there should be an unmarked white van out in front of the terminal that would take me to the Omni. I had just flown in from O’Hare in Chicago, and couldn’t believe there would be only one unmarked white van in front of the terminal. There was. Albany Airport is that small.

I ran into Ricochet and Boomer the Dog while checking in – they mentioned that there was a great radio station to listen to during the con – it was called WYIF. Hmmmm…

I met my roommates, Nrasser and Mirko, in the lobby and we headed up to survey the room and make plans for the evening. The room was nice, if small for three, and it faced the fireworks. This last fact would have been useful if we hadn’t been on the third floor, with a large church between us and the Empire Plaza. Ah well. The lineup for the weekend looked good – lots of interesting SIGs, the masquerade, and the Purple Nurple Live. We started to head back to the lobby and found out what we would actually be spending the majority of the weekend doing: waiting for elevators. The Omni had a bank of four elevators for seventeen floors, and something in their programming made sure that every elevator trip necessitated a wait of at least three to five minutes, sometimes longer if the first few cars that showed up were packed full (an amusing side note – when too many people got on the elevator, a over-weight warning would buzz. This made piling into the elevator with a crowd of people an exercise akin to playing the old game “Operation” – who would be the person to trip the buzzer?)

Registration was amazingly simple, as was checking in as a panelist. My preregistration had been received and everything was in order. As I wandered from there for a quick look at the Art Show, I ran into Kimba W. Lion, told me of a chocoholics meeting taking place up in his family’s room. Well, never one to turn down fine chocolate, I immediately headed up (with the attendant elevator wait, of course). There, I found I’d hit the alt.lifestyle.furry gold mine – Robin, Neko, Jinx, Ambergold, Aetobatus, Harry Bear, and others. Robin served up her “Death by Chocolate” cake, a mere taste of which quickly rendered me into insensibility. Naturally, I remedied this by taking another bite (hey, it made sense at the time). Kimba also showed The Tape, the contents of which are too horrible to go into here except to say that that ninety seconds were the most traumatic of the con (the worst part being that I couldn’t breath because I was laughing too hard).

While there, I also picked up my “Furry Forever” pins from Aetobatus – folks, these things are just beautiful. Aeto, you really outdid yourself with these. I had many people approach me at the con asking, “Ooooh – where can I get one of those?”

For dinner, Mirko, Foxcar, Arden Scentaur and I headed down to the Big House brewpub, a few blocks from the hotel – excellent beer to be had there, I might add. Not terribly useful advice, considering the con’s moving to Philadelphia next year, but if you’re ever in Albany, it’s worth a visit. Mirko received several complements on his tail, and a family stopped by and asked to pet it. As part of our duty as his friends and fellow furs, we of course ribbed him unmercifully for this.

We came back to the hotel and milled about for a bit, and wound up in the bar with Ricochet, Boomer, Growtiger and Alterskunk. They had Laphroaig (single-malt scotch), so it was a good visit. The company was good, the conversation was good, and I was reminded why cons are great places to go. I headed to bed early (at around 1).

Saturday:
After sleeping until an astonishingly late 9:00, we headed down and joined Arden for the breakfast buffet at the hotel restaurant. Reasonable food, and not as overpriced like the restaurant at Duckon seemed to be. Arden and I got together and spent some time planning the Furry Spirituality SIG. I was nervous as heck about this, but Arden had a lot of good ideas and working with him I felt that between the two of us we could make this work. We bounced ideas back and forth and hammered out a framework for the discussion, then took a break.

At 2 PM, we started the Furry Spirituality SIG. By Aetobatus’ count (and Smokechaser’s notebook, maybe?), we packed 55 furs into a meeting room that would comfortably fit around 20. Of those 55, I’d guess about 20 were regular contributors or lurkers on alt.lifestyle.furry. Arden and I tried to keep the discussion on topic and get as much input as possible from everyone gathered there. Sixty minutes wasn’t nearly enough, but we knew that going in, so I had looked into reserving a room for the next available time when we might be able to get people together – 11 PM that night. I want to thank everyone who attended – there was a great “feel” to that room, exactly what I would imagine a gathering at Homestead would be like.

After the SIG, we headed down to the hot tub for some time to relax. Heaven. After showers and the usual stops for skritching and hugs (actually going anywhere at the con necessitated a stop for skritching and hugs – I *like* this!), we picked up LupusUnus, Ambergold, Harry Bear, and Nrasser and returned to the Big House brewpub. Lots of food, lots of great company, more good beer. Life is good. We tried to get out by 8 PM, when the masquerade started, but in spite of our best efforts (included quick-stepping back through the driving rain that had come up while we were eating), we didn’t get back to the hotel until ten after. I figured “No problem, things never start on time at cons.”

The masquerade had, of course, started on time (Ron, how the heck did y’all manage that feat, anyway?). I stayed for a bit, but it more of a show-and-tell then the skit-type show that had been put on at Duckon. Things seemed to move a bit slow, unfortunately (not to knock anyone – things seemed a bit chaotic in the fursuit preparation area, which probably was part of the problem). There was even a wedding between Wayd Wolf and French, which earned a hearty cheer from all there. I ducked out early and went and hung out in the Yiffnet Lounge for a while, since the fireworks were rained out and postponed until Sunday night.

Unbeknownst to me, following the masquerade, Aetobatus ran several trips between the registration area and the lobby to secure a room for the informal spirituality discussion that evening. I’m still a little unclear on everything that happened, but he managed to secure an excellent room – thanks for that, Aeto! Arden and Aeto headed up the discussion that picked up at 11 PM -I’ll leave the description of what happened there up to them, since I was ducking in and out through the evening. In short, though, I heard that some 35 furs attended and the discussion ran from 11 PM until 3:30 AM. Wow. Great job, guys.

Where was I during this? Playing hooky at the Purple Nurple Live. For those unfamiliar with Furrymuck (which, actually, would include me :-), The Purple Nurple is the gay/lesbian dance club there. Cargo DJ’ed this live version, and the sound and light system were great. The music ranged a fair bit – some songs were great (TMBG’s “Istanbul No Constatinople”), some weren’t so great (c’mon, the Bay City Rollers?), and some were just downright strange (a country rave-up cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”?). A good show all around, though.

The rest of the night was spent talking to friends, skritching, more skritching, and more talking. I even got to visit that paragon of broadcasting, Gush Limbarge. Be sure to keep a lookout for his capsule description of AAC98 – I’d like to see about getting that on line if I can. Sleep came after listening to Gush sign off for the evening, around 5 AM.

Sunday:
Too damn early. Woke up at 8 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Nrasser and I jumped into his car (the Daytona From Hell 🙂 and drove until we found an interesting little diner. Had breakfast there and enjoyed the ambience, such as it was. We stopped on the way back and he took some pictures of the interesting architecture of downtown Albany (the NY State House is gorgeous). Back to the con, where I *finally* got a chance to visit the Art Show and the Dealer’s Room. Beautiful stuff in the Art Show, but all ‘way out of my range (I still want that raven and fox picture, “The Fox and the Cheese,” but $1,200 is a bit rich for me). I picked up a copy of “Extinctioners” #1 and commissioned a badge from one of the artists there (she drew Duncan da Husky with more Steel than Balto to him, though I lean to the opposite. Ah well – it was five bucks, and it’s still a good picture).

Grabbed a quick nap, then went down and met the folks assembling in the lobby for the dinner trip to Outback Steakhouse. We managed to get thirty-some furs divided between six vehicles and out the door in ten minutes – folks, that has *got* to be a new land-speed record. A fur whose name I didn’t catch (sorry!) even had the forethought to get written directions to the place from the front desk. Dinner was a blast, and we wrapped up just as the Yiffnet furs started to come in – good timing. By going early, we also missed all of the traffic for the fireworks, which apparently totally snarled things for those returning later.

In spite of our room location, a couple of us watched the fireworks from the third floor anyway, seeing them around the church steeple and reflected beautifully in the windows of the Empire Center. After the fireworks, we headed down for the Doctor Demento Party (and Nutella Orgy). Again, great company, lots of fun conversation. I headed up to bed sort of early (around midnight), after many good-byes and hugs and skritches (did I mention that I like hugs and skritches?).

What a great con. Yeah, I wish I’d gone to some of the SIGs, but I always seemed to be in the middle of something else when any of the discussions that looked good came up. Seeing all of my friends, and making new friends – that’s what made the con for me.

A word about the con organization – I can pay the con organizers the highest compliment: the workings of the con were pretty much transparent. I never saw any frantic discussions, reschedulings, or really any problems at all. These things might have happened, but if they did they were handled well and out of sight of this con-goer, at least. Well done, folks – just an amazing job. Next year, Anthrocon ’99 will take place in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Barring any unforeseen difficulty, you can count on this husky to be there. In the meantime, I hope to see many of you at Mephit Furmeet on Labor Day Weekend in Memphis, TN!

-Duncan da Husky, who will now go and sleep for a week

Hmm…I combined that trip to Anthrocon with a job interview in Chicago. This year, two days before we leave for Anthrocon, I’m going on a job interview in Columbus. Auspicious? I’ll take it as such.