You can shake an apple off an apple tree

We slept in Saturday morning. The first thing on the schedule we wanted to see was the Fursuit Parade, at which bunny_hugger figured to march, and there was a couple-hour dead spot between that and the next thing to do which would let us eat instead. So, never mind, breakfast, but thanks for the idea.

Though bunny_hugger was as ever among the first people to the organization session --- people gathering in the main ballroom about a half-hour before the nominal start --- she tried a different strategy this time and waited to be among the last people out. This meant, among other things, that she would have much less time spent waiting out of doors, since the weather was good enough for the fursuiters to gather outside after the parade, but it still wasn't warm. It was really winter's last weekend, this: temperatures didn't get past 40, and it did flurry several times, despite the nasty things we said about the flurrying.

But her strategy paid off very well, since besides not having to wait around forever in the cold for the rest of the ten-minute parade to gather, this also meant that she was naturally and inevitably near the front of the pack as fursuiters gathered for the group photograph. She's relatively short, and being blocked by everybody in the world because they do not follow directions like ``short people in the front, tall people in the back'' has been her recurring fate at group photos. This time she could hardly avoid being at the front, and while from some angles she was blocked, particularly by someone's black widow spider costume, she was only one or two people deep and was thus supremely findable in pictures. So we have a new fursuit parade strategy. Also, she was wearing her Michigan State sweatshirt, this at a time when Michigan State was delighting even University of Michigan crowds by beating teams in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

After the parade we did stop to admire the cats from the rescue shelter that was this year's con charity, though we didn't touch them as bunny_hugger's allergic. But some of them were bundled up into delightful little cat-cocoons of blankets and that's delightful to see.

To eat we went roughly across the street, to the Taco Bell, for one of my annual two meals there. I exaggerate. It was three last year, I think. There were a couple of con-goers there, including some who were in costume, partial or whole. This allowed for some delightful-to-us scenes of spotting families, with kids, who had no idea what was going on stopping in for some fast food and seeing a guy in a wolf costume trying to get Mountain Dew Red out of the soda machine. Also, I don't want to sound like I have a low threshold of danger, but I can't imagine being knowingly within a hundred feet of Mountain Dew Red, or chili sauce, while in suit.

Trivia: At the first public sale of land for Washington, DC, Pierre L'Enfant purchased lot 30 in square 27, at 17th and I streets --- just northwest of the land for the Executive Mansion for ``99 pounds Current Money of Maryland''. Source: Washington Burning: How a Frenchman's Vision for Our Nation's Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Fathers, and the Invading British Army, Les Standiford. (I make this out as the location of the Farragut West Metro station.)

Currently Reading: Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, and Prospects, Brian Harvey.