austin_dern

So in other home-repair stuff here's something that was not specifically connected to our recent trip. But it did make packing for the trip more stressful to bunny_hugger, who did not need that. She does enough travel planning and house-preparing, she doesn't need appliance malfunctions too.

What happened was the dryer stopped drying. At least stopped drying in any reasonable time; she had some pairs of blue jeans in for hours and they were only warm and damp after all that. The drum was tumbling and the dryer producing heat all right, but not much air was coming out the vent outside the house. It would fall to me when we got home to call a repair guy, and then to call a different one because it turned out I didn't remember who our preferred appliance repair guy was.

I know what a subset of you are thinking. Dryer has heat, and spins, but not much air comes out the vent. This has to be a clogged vent hose. Yes, you've diagnosed it correctly. Also, turns out according to sites that look legitimate-ish, you should be cleaning out those vent hoses more often than our current ``never''. One site said clean it annually.

Well, the appliance guy came today while I was in office --- my last in-office-Wednesday on the schedule by the way --- and apparently had some good patter going with bunny_hugger. He identified the problem as a clogged hose, and cleaned it out, digging out what he said was a bird's nest from near the dryer end of things. bunny_hugger was skeptical that it could be a bird that far inside the house but her research turned up evidence that yeah, they'll do that sometimes. It's hard not to suspect nesting mice, although they'd have to get in from outside the house at least as far as the birds would too.

And turns out it wasn't just the one clog near the dryer end of things; there was another near the outlet. So we got the vent vacuumed out, bunny_hugger judges from the noise of the machinery, and as I write these words we have a short while before we learn whether we've solved the problem. Also if we've got a new annual chore of dryer-vent-cleaning, up there with dishwasher-filter-cleaning.

Postscript: it works great!

But next up in photographs? Eh, let's take a half-dozen pictures of our pet rabbit, you deserve that.

``Now look, anyone could have eaten that fun-size Almond Joy bar.''

Great moment of bunny tongue stuck out at you.

Bunny exploring the edge of the knowable world --- she's not fond of the floor on this side of the room --- while her fur gets a little sheddy.

Bunny examining the underside of the coffee table; her verdict is that it hasn't been chewed nearly enough.

Did you know solid black rabbits could phase out of existence like that? Here she is at the start of the process with just a transparent hindleg.

And here she is leaping out of frame, both forelegs half out of reality.

Trivia: Signing the Versailles Treaty for Germany were Hermann Müller, the new foreign minister, and Johannes Bell, minister of transport, who only arrived at 3 am the day of the signing; the German government had trouble finding ministers willing to put their signatures on it. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan.

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

And now, with the last of my days being too full of doing stuff to write about doing stuff, here's the last of our Halloweekends pictures. We're not out of October yet in my photo roll but we are closer than we've been before ...

Now this is something you never see at Cedar Point: The Derby Dogs stand was open! But since they don't have veggie dogs we couldn't take advantage of that fact.

Are we getting on evening already? There's Siren's Curse in the distance, with Corkscrew in the upper right corner.

Siren's Curse tilting over while the sun sets behind it.

And the vertical position for Siren's Curse. This may look scary but let me reassure you: it is.

Some lovely color on the trees near Cedar Downs.

bunnyhugger takes me for a drive on the Cadillac Cars, lone survivor of the antique-autos rides.

Spot of late-afternoon sunlight from the Cadillac Cars ride, as ValRavn sends a train up the lift hill.

Raptor washed in some golden light.

Tall performer near the Boardwalk area. They would pose for pictures with anyone and I just wanted to admire the tallness.

The Ska-letons performing at the Boardwalk area.

And now, coming to the end of the night finally, a streak of light as Siren's Curse drops down its lift hill.

The Siren's Curse train whips around; the lights change over the course of the ride. Hope that lasts.

Trivia: In 1979 customer-research corporation ViewPoint asked a focus group of Black persons what celebrities they saw aligned with the Filet-O-Fish (a poor seller in Black communities). Respondents offered that the sandwich was like Paul Lynde, Mary Tyler Moore, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Source: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain. The heck is with that question even? (If you can't place Paul Lynde, try and remember the voice of The Hooded Claw on Penelope Pitstop. That guy.)

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

Still no writing time. Instead please enjoy pictures from the last day of our big Halloweekends trip last year. I'm being a little more judicious in my sharing of pictures this time but don't worry. There's way more I could make you look at instead.

Sunday morning we had lunch in the park while watching a school (high school? college? who can say?) cheer group putting on a show on a small side stage.

Here's my poignant shot of one of the performers off to the side, alone, for some reason that probably is as simple as her part wasn't up yet.

Corkscrew bestriding the midway, with the Top Thrill 2 reverse tower in its center.

Noticed some nice flowers at the park despite it being late October.

Not sure if there's a bee in the picture somewhere or if I just did a depth-of-focus thing on the flower here.

Feeling more confident now that I took these pictures just because the flowers with a bit of amusement park far beyond was scenic or something.

What if you were barely an inch tall and someone noticed you wandering around the midway near Corkscrew? How about that?

Always fun to encounter old telephone logos around the park. I can not understand how they have the pre-Saul-Bass Bell System logo on any still-legible sticker.

While waiting in line for the Calypso we noticed the Skeleton Crew doing their acrobatics show at the Boardwalk stage.

Really like this moment of one of them midway between the light fixtures.

Another moment of the Skeleton Crew bouncing between Calypso light fixtures if you don't know about perspective.

I don't know how I got a double exposure here. It seems like the same weirdness of that beach picture and the guy walking past the sun.

Trivia: in 1939 Racecar driver Cannonball Baker drove a new Crosley subcompact cross-country and back on only 130 gallons of gas, proving the company's claim of 50 miles per gallon. Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McCloure, David Stern, Michael A Banks.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle.

This week my humor blog's made that transition from one ancient MiSTing to another, explored a curious lot of doughnut days, and had like three times the story comic plot recaps of usual. Here's what you missed:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 20: The End
• These Doughnut Days Are Not Getting Any Less Complicated
• Statistics Saturday: Some Possible National Donut Days
• What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? Did you forget about Flash Gordon? February – April 2026
• Also the Admin Page Has Started Asking Me to Rate It
• What’s Going On In Judge Parker? You ragequitting _Judge Parker_ yet? March – June 2026
• What’s Going On In Flash Gordon? Does it *matter* how Ming came to power? April – June 2026
• MiSTed: All The King’s Horses, Part 1: A Finale

If you guessed that after going to the Merry-Go-Round Museum we'd return to Cedar Point for the rest of Halloweekends Saturday why yes, you'e definitely picked up on a very well-established pattern here! Thanks!

Steampunkified swan boat, formerly a decoration along the Frontier Trail when they were doing the steampunk-themed walkthrough. Now it's part of the Kiddie Kingdom decor.

Nice light coming in from near the building where Helen Keller gave the speech that inspired the Lions Club to support blind people.

Just a park building? Yes, but one we noticed on a walkway that we really never paid much attention to before. It's out of the way and doesn't lead you anywhere that bigger paths don't, which is why nobody uses it.

But they decorated it for the Halloweekends, such as with this faux-mausoleum.

This is the pathway and yeah, it's just a surprisingly quiet part of the park.

The path even takes time to commemorate a couple of trees.

Here's what ValRavn looks like from that little trail.

And here I emerge from the shade and point the camera that much farther up.

Next, I went and got on the Sky Ride. Here's the queue beneath me.

Almost ready to go Von Rolling!

I started from the far end of the ride, near Corkscrew's turnaround.

Looking from the launch platform off in the direction of Siren's Curse.

Trivia: In the late 17th century China allocated fifteen acres in Canton for the trading outposts of all outside powers, who had to share the small space. The traders also were allowed to stay only six months of the year, departing to Macao for the other half of the year, to avoid suggesting that the foreign powers had any rights to the land they used. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham. Also among the trading nations there was Denmark which, right? You never hear of Denmark sending merchants anywhere.

Currently Reading: Ad Astra, First Quarter 2026, Editor Rod Pyle. Special edition about the Artemis II mission.

The latest Stern Pinball game, you maybe heard, was Pokemon, a game license it's a little surprising wasn't done at any point in the past thirty years. It took a while --- we kept getting bumped back --- but a Pokemon game finally arrived in our local venue (displacing Avengers: Infinity Quest, a game I kinda like but don't feel too bad about losing) and so bunnyhugger was able finally to hold the long-delayed Launch Party.

The qualifying format was eight-round Max Matchplay, in which pairs of competitors are drawn up at random on a randomly chosen game and the winner gets a point. What makes it Max is that you don't have to wait for every round to finish before starting some more; you just need enough players to be done with their games to start assigning new ones.

My night? Started out nicely for me, playing on Monster Bash and having a first ball that just ran away with it; I got lucky and I think broke my opponent's spirit. The second game I was playing DMC on Tron and while that's a game that usually treats me well, c'mon, I was playing DMC. I got lucky that he had an awful first ball, but he ended up with a 20 million point game, and going into the last ball I only had about half that. And yet, somehow, I kept managing to keep the game going and keep racking up points and on bonus beat him. Third game was Elvira's House of Horrors, again one of my pocket games and against a much weaker opponent. Fourth game was Jaws, another game I'm weirdly good at for not understanding any rules, and I again had a first ball that I think broke my opponent's spirit.

Now, the top four people --- of 18 playing --- would go to finals and maybe win the grand prize of a plaque and a couple rating points. After a four-game winning streak I started to think how if I just did okay from here on I'd probably be in finals. Dangerous stuff to start thinking, but, next game I got another lucky pick, Attack From Mars, against another lucky opponent, and got a fifth win. Sixth game I expected to lose, as it was Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, which I don't understand at all and can't play well reliably, against MAG, who's streaky but who's an A-level player when he's on. And yet I had a good third bal land he didn't and I had six wins. I didn't know where I was in the standings but figured I was likely in finals, and one win in the next two games would make that a sure thing. As it happens I was correct in this assessment, but ...

Next round was on King Kong against BMK, who I don't think has ever finished outside the top four in Lansing Pinball League. This was going to be a game I could win only if he stumbled badly and first ball? He stumbled badly. Unfortunately I stumbled worse, and did every ball, while he did quite well on ball two and didn't need to play ball three. That's all right, though. My eighth match was on Venom, which loves me, and against one of the league's perennial B-level finalists. While neither of us did much ball one or two, I got everything happening for a killer ball three and a score that she'd have to have the best Venom of her life on. Which, slowly but eventually, she did. While I was disappointed for myself I did congratulate her profusely because she had just that good a rally and it's exciting seeing.

So, I ended up with six wins. Three people were tied with six wins, for two spots in finals (two people were tied with seven wins). So three of us --- me, DMC, and MC, a newcomer to league who was having a killer night --- would play one game of The Addams Family, lowest person going home. MC looked good to be the lowest finisher, except that I did spectacularly worse. MC managed to come to about fifteen million points, a normally disappointing score. I didn't mange to break six million, and you can break six million on skill shots alone that game. (DMC, an expert on The Addams Family, reached the wizard mode of touring the mansion on ball one I think it was, and was on his way to a second tour before his finish became moot.) After six rounds of perfect play, I finally hit three perfect failures, and was out.

BMK, FAE, DMC, and MC would go on to finals, three sets of four-player games with standings determined by finishing order. FAE --- top seed from qualifying --- won the first game (Cactus Canyon, their pick and also the game I would have picked if I'd had choice) and BMK took second; the second game (Rush) FAE took second and BMK first. At this point MC could hope for nothing better than third place in the tournament, and that if he won the final game, Pokemon, which he didn't, so all this work only got him to fourth place. DMC got third place in every game and finished third in the tournament. The champion would be whichever of FAE and BMK did better on Pokemon and FAE put up an intimidating lead. And, much as happened to me on Venom, BMK just kept whittling the lead down and down again until it was gone, and BMK won. Bad news for FAE --- who bunnyhugger realized after was wearing a whole outfit themed to a particular Pokemon I have definitely heard of and have always known a lot about --- but, goodness, everyone's thrilled to see a comeback from far behind. It's such a good show you enjoy it even when it happens to you.

This all ran way too late into the week, but that's all right, there's other times I could sleep.

Continuing on here with the Cedar Point History Museum, as of last October:

Panel of Fantastic Facts about the park that can't date to any later than 1978 given the Jumbo Jet roller coaster's appearance in it. (That Jumbo Jet coaster was last reported operating in Belarus, if you want to ride it.)

That 'The China Shop' sign sure seems like they're saying The China Shop that had survived in the park since the 1970s and the last independent concessionaires was gone, doesn't it?

Now here's an adorable project: making miniatures of the various eras' trash bins and the parking lot section signs that used to name rides. bunnyhugger observed that Iron Dragon stands out here for being just the ride logo rather than a monochrome ride photo.

And here's a miniature reproduction of the old Iron Dragon ride-height sign. The park doesn't have ride height signs with any kind of pictures or interesting detail anymore.

I'm sorry not to have a better picture of Wildcat's ride height sign because it sure seems like a design choice.

Old photograph, from a photo opportunity I'm surprised the park hasn't brought back. They've re-created the 'Barrel of Fun' photo opportunity; surely a bench made to look like a biplane's wing wouldn't be any harder.

Trivia: In December 1860 John Sherman, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee (and brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman) told his colleagues that the federal government lacked the cash to pay their salaries. Source: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundread Years' War Over the American Dollar, H W Brands.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, May/June 2026, Editor Erin Bartels.

Monday was the day to return home, and we could enjoy sleeping in a bit since check-out was a luxuriously late noon. This is not to say we had everything out of the room at 11:59 am, but we were tolerably close. There were still a lot of people bringing stuff out of their rooms as we checked out; it wasn't like the old days where we'd see Punk Cat and nobody else. (Also we never see Punk Cat anymore; hope they're doing all right.)

We've sometimes done specific things on the Monday after Anthrohio. Letterboxing (where we saw a wild rabbit flop and realized why they do it), or going to the Olentangy Caverns, one time even the Columbus Zoo for the segment that used to be an amusement park. We'd talked about maybe doing the Zoo again, since the roller coaster had reached an anniversary year and it's been like a decade or so. And one time we took the long diversion to Cedar Point to get some amusement park time in; would you believe we got all the way into June without any amusement parks this year?

But when it came to making the decision, you know, we decided we didn't feel like doing much of anything. The zoo we expected would be packed --- it was sunny and not too hot --- and it's a bit pricey to go in for only a couple hours and not even see most of the animals. And other stuff didn't seem that urgent and we didn't bring our letterboxing gear anyway. In the end it felt more appealing to get home instead.

So, we went to a Skyline Chili for vegetarian five-ways --- first time we've been there in ages --- and headed north, making more stops than we did on the way down. Since we had the time we stopped at bunny_hugger's parents, to give their dog the extra-long walk she'd been denied Thursday, and to tell something of what all we had done, and finally to collect our rabbit and the deer mice. With that, it was but the work of an hour to drive home and, neatly, we reached the end of our backlog of Greatest Generation episodes just as we were pulling in to town. It's rare we're caught up like that.

Tuesday, I could return to work, and bunny_hugger could return to summer vacation, apart from the pinball stuff.

Pinball stuff will wait. Now, some pictures of the Merry-Go-Round Museum's roommate, the Cedar Point history museum.

They have so much Cedar Point ephemera, and it's not stuff that used to be in the Town Hall Museum. Here, for example, cans for discount admission from back in the sad days of Cedar Point being a Pepsi park.

Here's a 1907 letter by that G A Bockling sending a railroad line the Annual for that year. There's also what seems like a budget broken down by department, which makes it look like they were spending a lot on cigars in the day.

A century-plus old season pass, and a book of pictures of the park.

A life jacket from the days that a ferry was the only way to get to the park.

Back in the 90s Cedar Point was all ready to name a roller coaster Banshee, and then someone looked up what a Banshee was and they panicked and renamed it Mantis. So there's a little display of the not-used Banshee stuff. (Kings Island, owned by the same people, named a roller coaster Banshee, but that was literally over twelve years later and in the southern part of Ohio, not the northwest.)

Here's a copy of the memo ordering all Banshee-themed merchandise destroyed. If you zoom in you'll see, I'm not joking about ``someone looked up what a Banshee was and they panicked''.

Trivia: 44 percent of the 12,889 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration members in December 1946 were women. Source: The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War, Ben Shephard.

Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.

I only got to the Rabbits and Rodents panel after the whole thousand-person-long fursuit parade ended, and after getting through the dense cloud of people milling around, including fursuiters running back to get out of suit and into something where they could breathe. Finally I got to the panel room where I found bunnyhugger already there; she'd arrived just before, and she too had been late. When she arrived there was someone else who'd taken the lead and started the round of people telling who they were and what their rabbit or rodent thing is. So great thanks to whoever it was saw the gap and took charge, and we had a pretty good time going around, talking, and even managed a much more orderly transition upstairs for the group photo. If we missed anyone, they didn't complain.

We finished at a reasonable time, got back to the room to unload stuff, and went across the street again to the North Market for lunch or dinner or whatever it was you eat at that hour. It was past 4 pm. We ended up going to the Polish counter where bunnyhugger got more and bigger pierogies than she could eat. Me, I felt an irresistible longing from my heritage, and made a rare exception to my basically vegetarian diet, getting a kielbasa hoagie. Vegetarian kielbasa has gotten very good but, oh, there is something in the crisp, juicy crackle of the real meat skin being punctured that isn't there yet. We joined mystee and spouse and friends, a semi-lucky break given we'd known they were going to lunch too.

Afterwards we went through the Dealer's Den, finally getting a sense of what was there. And bunnyhugger got a promise from an artist to do a sketchbook sketch, but the artist wanted to take her sketchbook only Sunday morning and return it that day. This gave us the time to return to our room and rest a while.

Because we had three panels left in the day. One to go to: the con history guy was doing a panel Con History: From Costume Masquerade to Fursuit Parade. This was in a much smaller room, packed so full we only got seats by climbing over a row of attendees and also someone deciding they were leaving. It was in some ways an expansion on one thread of his discussion the previous day, with a lot of pictures and stories, not all of them about Forrest J Ackermann being all like that.

This was great, but we had to leave as it was nearing the end because come 8 pm bunnyhugger had her next meet-and-greet to run. This was for birds, and bird-adjacent creatures like gryphons and such. I believe a couple dragons also popped in because you can't keep dragons out of things. This was a smaller group, probably because of the lateness of the hour, but the downtime we'd had before heading out did mean bunnyhugger had the chance to change into her peacock kigurumi, putting her on theme. She'd been annoyed she hadn't had the chance to bring her squirrel puppet to the Rabbits and Rodents meetup. This got things a little better at least.

Also for the photo someone in a really tall suit joined in. I don't know what kind of bird they were representing, but something with enormous legs, performed by their walking on stilts. This added just a foot and a half or so to their height, but that is a lot of height, especially on a thin body. Everyone was impressed.

Then came the last of our meet-and-greets, me running the Mustelids panel. I started out admitting that a member of the raccoon family isn't technically a mustelid, but then neither are all the skunks here either. They're in the Mephit family, a thing taxonomy has been clear on for decades and that hasn't filtered into the public consciousness as well as the ``rabbits are not Rodents'' classification has. However, both the raccoon and the skunk families are part of the Musteloidea superfamily so there's at least some relationship there. I was able to also correctly bring in the red panda suiter, as that family is also Musteloidea. I did go and blow it by saying the otters weren't mustelids either, but no, the otters are a subfamily of Mustelids. I was apparently inventing families inside the weasel superfamily and not even bunnyhugger called me on it.

Anyway, when all of that got finished fine, and we happened to notice out the window there were fireworks going off. Professional fireworks, so we knew it wasn't something like a major political figure turning up dead. No, it was just Memorial Day weekend, probably around the AAA baseball team. (Columbus's team is called the Clippers, after the mid-19th century sailing ships designed for oceangoing speed that I don't think could possibly get to the center of Ohio?)

We would spend time after this back in our room, rebuilding our energies. When we ventured out again there was some point where I ended up in the video game room alone and playing Tetris far better than I would have thought I had the reflexes for. (My secret is not accelerating the piece's drop because you can use the time to figure what to do with the next piece.) We would spend some time at the dance; we'd also eventually get to the karaoke, which was moderately well-attended but half of everyone called to a song was missing. It turned out the waiting list was something like 90 minutes long and you can understand people giving up and wandering off. And we were there when there were under 30 minutes to the scheduled end of the event. The karaokemeister said he intended to stay until they kicked him out; but we didn't stick with it. bunnyhugger, taking her daily walk, happened to be past there about 90 minutes after this and found the room empty. We do not have the information to determine whether they exhausted their singers or got kicked out.

Good dance, though. We were getting to sleep something like 3 am, so it was a good thing there wasn't anything happening Saturday morning we really needed to be awake for.

In pictures, now, we're carrying on with the Merry-Go-Round Museum, as mentioned packed with more things and I still haven't even hinted at the really big addition. It's coming.

And here's the sea dragon from the point of view of someone about to be licked up by them or snorted into their nose. Enjoy!

The brass ring game arm, here, plus stairs such as one would use if one were loading the rings.

Happened to catch the side of this horse you can see the lighting from. Yes, they're hollow. I bet you can think of two good reasons for that.

Here's a close-up look of the hollow. The main body is built around a box.

Unpainted lion that's on display in front of the brass ring arm and stool, probably limiting the number of people who climb up top of the stool.

Did a little panning shot of the carousel and got a good in-focus view of the other chariot while everything was in motion.

Trivia: In 1940 the average auto worker salary was $1.04 an hour. Steel workers earned 95 cents. Coal miners made 99 cents, but worked ten fewer hours a week than factory workers. Source: A Call To Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.

So, the fursuit parade. After hastily dressing bunny_hugger in --- not her BunnyHugger fursuit! We were worried that bringing all our con gear plus the rabbit plus the deer mice for the first hour of our trip we'd be out of space, so we packed relatively light and left one fursuit and several kigurumis behind --- we got up to the floor of the other hotel where we'd taken group photos. And bunny_hugger disappeared into the assembly area, apparently late enough to have missed the group photos. Meanwhile I found a spot near the top escalator, by the windows, so I could take video that wasn't backlit. Even better, I was around people who didn't spent a lot of time weaving into my line of sight or talking about nonsense, one of my better experiences.

The parade started maybe ten minutes late, which isn't bad by furry event schedules, and the route --- going down at least two levels of escalator --- would prove to be maybe optimistic. At some point one of the escalators stalled out under the load of every fursuiter in line on it, and the con hastily arranged traffic managers who spaced every suiter at least eight steps away from their neighbors. And there was even a side track; some of the suiters, especially ones with very large suits or with mobility issues, jumped out of line to get into the elevator.

There were a lot of people. I'm used to a fursuit parade that goes on ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I knew this was a big parade, though. It was when my camera reached the 30-minute limit of its recording that I started to realize: this is freaking enormous and also we have a panel in like fifteen minutes. Also, I still hadn't seen bunny_hugger. When I finally did I figured we're in the clear since she likes to hang out near the back of the parade and yet the parade kept on going, and going, and going. Now, there were a lot of suiters, and a lot of great suits, and a good number of people doing things interacting with the 'Rock You Like A Furricane' theme, but the whole thing wore out my camera battery and in all ran at least fifty minutes.

And that's to watch. What was it like in person? Well, I don't know, but I am told by a reliable source that bunny_hugger, whose vision was better than in the BunnyHugger fursuit but still extremely limited, at one point lost track of what the actual parade route was. But that's all right; in that case, you just follow the person ahead of you and hope for the best. Only, in this case, that person started walking outside, and outside for a longer time, and longer still, until bunny_hugger realized that she was following someone who had nothing to do with the parade at all and was just roaming downtown Columbus. So she turned around and retracted her steps hops, finally intersecting the parade again and rejoining it after ten minutes or so, not yet having missed the end.

When the convention closed they gave official attendance statistics, and the estimated fursuit parade length. It was about a thousand people in that line of furries, in which case getting everyone past a fixed point in under an hour is doing very well. But also: this is literally three times the size of Anthrohio back when it was Morphicon and we started attending. As the performers at one event. The entire convention, we would be told, was just shy of four thousand people. To put it another way, it was the size of Midwest FurFest in 2013, the year we decided the Midwest FurFest had gotten too big for us. Considering what we most liked about Morphicon was how cozy and compact it was, and how you could know everyone, this moment was sobering. We're still planning on going next year, but it's not the convention we were going to a decade ago.

When the parade finally ended Saturday, we had a practical problem. We had not arranged a meetup point, but bunny_hugger also was not able to bring her phone, and the mob was too big to rely on the ``we'll both go to where it seems the other person will be looking for us'' that usually works better than it ought. More, it was past the 3:00 start of our next panel. I made the guess that bunny_hugger would try and find her way to our hotel room, to get out of suit, and the best thing I could do was get to the Rabbits-and-Rodents meet-and-greet and hold things down until she could arrive. But what I found there was ... to be revealed.

Now in pictures we're on to Saturday of Halloweekends, which starts by not going to Halloweekends and instead ... do you know where we're going? Mmm?

That's right, it's the post office! I mean, the Merry-Go-Round Museum in downtown Sandusky! But wait, there's more ...

This year they had a lot more stuff, making the museum weirdly cluttered. Also new: monitors with rotating information panels, which I'm torn about. A flat plaque is easier to read at your pace, but a screen does let you go into more detail.

Also new: giving out plastic cards to tap for your rides, instead of wooden nickels. I guess the advantage of the cards is you get souvenirs, but, like, you can keep a wooden disc too.

You know what this is? Inside the ear? It's a spider, painted on to the figure. Now why would a spider be painted on to a figure?

Yes, because it's a pig, and now you get the spider connection, don't you?

And here's some of the horses that I've probably shared photos of before, because you see that secondary figure on the right there? That's a billiken, which seems like it should be a Japanese legend brought over to North America but which is in fact a creature created in Kansas City that for some reason got to be lastingly popular in Saint Louis and Japan.

Trivia: Sections of the underwater telegraph cable laid from Ireland to Newfoundland in 1873 were still in service over a century later. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.

Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.

The thing I was most interested getting to Friday night was the Con History: From First Fandom to Furry Cons, which I had imagined was just going to be a history of furry cons. I wasn't paying enough attention to the title or description; this went back to Hugo Gernsback's original plan to gather ham radio enthusiasts around his science fiction magazine and soak them for cash. And along the way create these astounding stories of intense fandom drama. This was by --- well, I think of them as The Inanimorphs Guy, from their disused FurAffinity account; I can't find their name on the program guide. But it was condensed from their Ursa Major-award-winning work, including a graphic novel that it then became my mission to buy a copy of. But every time I went to the Dealer's Den on Saturday and Sunday they were away, with the 'At Panel' tag hung on their booth. Finally in the last quarter-hour of the Dealer's Den hours Sunday I got to their booth and ... they were sold out. Had just sold the last copy. But ... and they looked through their backpack and found the copy they'd been using to edit copy and for notes that they didn't need now that the con was over. So that quest ended happily.

(This copy has on the cover the label 'Ashcan Copy', and I don't know if that's just what the cover says or if this reflects this literally being a copy-editing copy no longer needed since it went to actual production. I am aware of the professional meanings of 'ashcan copy', as a mockup meant to establish or secure intellectual property rights, or as a limited-distribution promotional copy. The latter seems more likely in this context, but without comparing to other copies sold at Anthrohio I can't know what's meant.)

The work was really, really good, presenting a compelling case with a lot of references to specific contemporary texts to support the narrative. Also it emphasized how much women and Black people had to do in pioneering every major element of fandom, including heading the first clubs, making the first cosplay patterns, and creating essential elements like hospitality suites. I suppose I've heard of many of these people or events but always from the white guys' perspective. The lone important flaw to the presentation was that it spent so much time on the earliest events --- admittedly the ones that set the most core elements of conventions --- that everything from about 1980 to the present was smooshed together in a really deep breath at the end of the panel. Also I missed whatever thesis statement might have introduced Bronies and My Little Pony cons; there was a good bit of talk about how these were important but apart from introducing the consent-to-interaction badges I missed why they're worth this much talk. The lone flaw in my experience is we ended up in seats behind some people with huge headgear so I could see the screen only intermittently. Well, I could have moved, a little, because the room was packed.

After the panel we got to Artist Alley, which had set up --- finally --- in the evening, in a few niches of free space in the hallway around the stairs. It seemed bizarre that Artist Alley would set up so late, and with so few tables, but the schedule promised that this was just a teaser. Because it turned out that the convention, Saturday, would become much more enormous.

The Hilton Or Whatever there is actually two hotels in the Columbus Convention Center, connected by a skybridge, and for Thursday and Friday Anthrohio had only one of the hotels. Saturday whatever the heck the other event was cleared out, and suddenly much more space was available. Friday night, then, and Saturday morning the con staff organized and prepared a bunch of meeting rooms, and a new, ballroom-size Main Event space, and a dance floor, and got that prepared for the start of events the next day. The upshot of this is what had been the surprisingly puny Main Events of Thursday and Friday became Artist Alley, and what seemed like had been a decently-sized convention bigger than we were used to suddenly became the biggest furry convention we've ever attended.

That, dear reader, was in our future. For now, for this moment, we were just getting to the dance and getting ready for what would be our busiest day ahead. One we dared not sleep through.

Much as this report was about Friday at Anthrohio, these pictures are about Friday at Halloweekends, so I hope you enjoy these moments from Cedar Point.

Another trick-or-treat station in the Kiddie Kingdom. This too is themed to an old Halloweekends haunted house, so there's nostalgia for the parents at work.

Got a picture of a bird taking off!

The afternoon offered some fantastic shadows and rays of light.

And looking east, here's some seagulls minding their business. I like the one near the center that's preening their chest.

After the sun went down we went past the petting zoo again and noticed the ducks hadn't been put back together yet.

A duck tries valiantly to sleep despite having had its feathers detonated.

Trivia: Gail Borden opened his first condensed-milk factory in 1859. By 1863 Army contracts brought production to 17,000 quarts per day. Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg.

Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.

Our Anthrohio '26 visit --- our first in two years, since last year's was held Easter/Pinball At The Zoo weekend --- started Thursday morning, and late. This because in trying to put the goldfish outside for the summer we found there were several fish in one tank that we weren't able to get. The nitrate levels had crept up to the not-really-good level and bunnyhugger had to do a partial water change so the stragglers could have some more comfort waiting for their eventual release. The rest of the goldfish are doing fine, by the way, and we're hoping they're having a low-stress time underneath the new netting that seems to be holding up fine.

Visiting bunnyhugger's parents to drop off the pets went well. Our domestic mice we felt safe leaving at home, with abundant food and full bottles of water. The rabbit, of course, needed to come and get her usual vacation quarters. And the deer mice needed to come along to make sure that they would get full bottles of water every day. Her parents were not sure they were up to taking care of the deer mice, but they did just fine considering her parents never saw the mice. They also never saw baby mice, but the night we got them back bunnyhugger did.

Her parents' dog was thrilled to see bunnyhugger since her presence is always prelude to a special, extra-long, 45-minute-plus walk around the park/s. (It's one big park area, but which park depends which side of the river you are.) Here the poor dog was to be sorely disappointed, because we had to get going fast. We would make this up to her, don't worry.

But what did we need to leave so soon for? Coon's Candy, the (family-eponymous) candy shop in Nevada, Ohio, which would be closed Memorial Day --- when we would be driving home and could use a nice break in the drive for candy --- and would close at 5 pm Thursday. We haven't been to it in years and so could only make it if we took off after a quick lunch and drove efficiently.

We drove efficiently, getting there with not quite an hour of the store's closing. They've made some small changes, particularly in apparently using a new logo style that deemphasizes the raccoon-baker motif they used to use, which is bogus. They didn't even have it on the plastic bags of haystacks and buckeyes and stuff. They were also having a sale on divinity-flavor fudge; bunnyhugger got her own bar and I got carrot cake that I just now remembered I haven't eaten. Hang on.

After that we drove with a little less efficiency the rest of the way to Columbus, and to downtown Columbus to the new Hilton Or Whatever where Anthrohio has been for a second year running now. It's a vastly larger space, two hotels in the Columbus Convention Center, and by the time we were checked in, had got our stuff from the car into the room, and got our convention badges it turned out the nearest place to get food --- the North Market, which I'd call a hawker center if it were in Singapore and had a chicken rice stand --- was already closed since it was the late hour of 7 pm.

What we ended up doing for dinner was getting snacks (we still weren't very hungry from lunch) and Coke Zero from the hotel's self-service convenience store, at prices that were riotously too expensive. We wouldn't be doing that again, by virtue of having good-sized lunch-dinner fusions at North Market until we checked out, but I'd be fibbing if I didn't say I kind of wished we'd brought a 2L bottle of pop for our room from Meijer's. Maybe for next time.

Though there was an MST3K event --- Alkali telling jokes over The Apple --- we got only to the very end of it, and to help move chairs out of the way for the start of the Thursday night dance. We were happy that the dance was more of a 90s style, eschewing the Electronic Dance Music that's the standard for cons we attend, and bunnyhugger at least knew how to dance to it. But we could only be at the first couple minutes of it, because that Thursday night was also the final Late Show with Stephen Colbert and we got back to our room to watch that. We stand by the decision, but it did mean it was near 1 am before we could emerge back into the convention and by then all scheduled programming was done. We could do some wandering around, at least. And then finally flopped into bed, looking forward to getting up for Opening Ceremonies at 11 am Friday.

Now in pictures to a Friday, Halloweekends in late October 2025.

One of the music shows was The Shrieks!. We would get to them, don't worry.

French Quarter Flags Hung Upside-Down Count: 1.

Stitch pausing to admire and take a picture of the Midway Scare-o-sel. (I should mention I was wearing my Angel kigurumi so we were adorable together.)

Cedar Point seen from the wrong way around. They'd taken down the 150 sign from in front of the carousel but had a new park name one up in its place.

And here's the Kiddy Kingdom, which we worry every year they're going to renovate out of existence. The big Frankenstein figure used to be part of the parade that they haven't done this decade.

Now who's this handsome red dragon at the trick-or-treat station? (The trick-or-treat stations are all themed to retired Halloweekends areas or haunted houses, in this case the Fear Faire that used to be near the Town Square Museum.)

Trivia: Polynesian sailor Ui-te-Rangiora is supposed sometime around 650 CE to have sailed his canoe to the edge of Antarctica and been stopped by the frozen ocean. Source: On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield. It is, of course, unclear how much stock to put in this legend, or even how much of the legend is actually Polynesian lore rather than Western reinterpretation of Polynesian lore.

Currently Reading: Walt Kelly's Pogo and Albert: Dreamin' of a Wide Catfish, Walt Kelly. Editor Mark Burstein.