austin_dern | That the sun shines (brought to you absolutely free)

After Opening Ceremonies we had just enough time to stop in the AnthrOhio con suite and not really find something satisfying for lunch. They do all right, it's just, you know, eating vegetarian at these things means getting a lot of Fritos and, for me, fig newtons. And then back to our room to prepare for our panels. Also to realize that we were in need of supplies. I figured to run, once more, the ``Trash Pandas: yes or no'' survey to promote my Raccoons and Procyonids SIG. The masking tape I use to tape the signs to the bins was gone, though, stolen for our pinball league needs and not with us now. And bunny_hugger's headband-based rabbit ears were falling apart; she needed a new strap to wear them at all. Why not wear one of her other sets of rabbit ears? She'd left them behind, so that we might not weigh ourselves down with too much stuff we wouldn't even use. Also, you know, I really needed a new toothbrush. At home I've switched to an electric, the better to not gouge out my gums, but on the road I took the worn-out toothbrush I would have otherwise replaced back in January. It seemed all right in Mexico City but was really dead now. We'd have to find some time to get supplies.

But not now. We would have to get downstairs for the first of our panels. Well, my panel, except that I kind of signed bunny_hugger up for it without exactly asking. And that's all right, since it was the Completely Amateur Puppeteering panel, showing off the one (1) puppet that I own and the bagful (bunches) of puppets that bunny_hugger owns. She had taken a mass of them and put them into a duffel bag, part of our load of cargo for the convention, and we brought the mass down to the panel room together. Along the way we realized one of the best stage puppets, the sea serpent, was missing. She had a sea serpent with us, mind, a full-body thing that you can operate with two hands, one for the front and one for the back. But there was another puppet, just a head, big and shiny and perfect for use on stage, such as they had set up for the Variety Show. And we'd left it back home. With this, and the masking tape, and the rabbit-ears issue, and the toothbrush, we were not living up to our normal tour-ready status.

The Puppeteering would be a small panel, as it often is, with the puppets outnumbering the attendees. Freddie Grey, who's got much more of a history puppeteering than I do, was there, and we were basically able to resume the talking about how much we like puppets even if we don't do enough with them that we had last year at the other hotel. A couple people came in, showing some interest, and were even willing to try on my guinea pig puppet. All friendly stuff, at least. Still, I felt ridiculous again that for all that I talk about puppeteering what I mostly do is walk around with a guinea pig puppet that I make breathe and nibble at my shirt, and that's about all.

bunny_hugger was the star of the panel, of course, as she is of so much in my life. She had her new marionette dragon, as debuted at Motor City Fur[ry] Con. And as she's just gotten better at performing. The mouth doesn't move, which relieves most of the pressure of interacting; she can just make it walk around, look at things, lope his way up onto chairs and the like. And everybody loved this, at the panel and at the convention in general. She shared some of what she's learned about the marionette, just from her couple months of casual play with it.

The next panel was one bunny_hugger was to run, without even me explicitly named as co-host. I was happy to support, though. This was her Letterboxing panel. She'd run this introduction to the geocache-like hobby at Morphicon (and other conventions) for several years before it finally dwindled out from lack of interest. Ah, but this time? After not running Letterboxing for several years? And at a convention whose theme is the sorts of natural places letterboxing encourages people to explore?

Sad news. The turnout was dismal; one person arrived, late, though he did stay the rest of the hour and seemed interested. But it was disheartening all the same. And while showing off the tools of letterboxing --- log books and stamps and ink pads and a compass and printed-out clues to box locations --- bunny_hugger discovered that her signature stamp was missing. The easy assumption is that it got separated from her log book and the ink pad and all that since we last found a letterbox (four out of a sequence of five, found in Lansing back in September). But then where was it?

She took the prospect of having to re-carve her stamp well. bunny_hugger was confident that if we couldn't find it back home that she could re-make it in pretty short order. She's got printings of the stamp, and those can reverse-engineer the stamp quite well.

Still. With the masking tape, and the rabbit-ears issue, and the toothbrush, the missing sea serpent, and now the lost(?) signature stamp, we were deep in the pits of an entropy con, and the event was four and a half hours old.

Trivia: By the Agrarian Reform Law of the 17th of June, 1952, Guatemala could take uncultivated land on estates larger than 672 acres for redistribution to the needy, with the owners compensated paid according to the land's declared tax value. Source: Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Stephen Kinzer.

Currently Reading: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons, David A Bossert.

Exit sign for The Old Mill: it, like many rides, has a silhouette of the Rye Playland midway tower. This was one of the few I could get a good photograph of.

Evening view of The Dragon's return hills, as seen from around The Old Mill. And shining in the night.

Oh yeah, there's this roller coaster at Rye Playland: Super Flight. It's a 'Flying' coaster, putting people into a cage to twist and turn around.