When it came to shootin' straight and fast he was mighty good

With the comments panel, The Last Laugh, done there were only two big convention things left. So we ambled back and forth some, and looked over the message board and marvelled that the cork boards were still a thing. Also that the muck Sociopolitical Ramifications was (a) still around and (b) advertising at conventions. Also that Great Lakes Furry Con was (a) still around and (b) advertising at conventions. Cons advertising at other cons is normal, and there were attractive flyers for all sorts of cons, some of which we might even get to. Great Lakes Furry Con, which had disappointed us its first year with a nearly-empty schedule and terrible arrangement of rooms, and which we skipped its second year, is on its third year. The not-a-bad idea theme is Furry Olympics. The flyers were almost bare things, possibly printed on someone's Inkjet printer, with pages cut in half. We hadn't planned to go to the con anyway --- even if we hadn't made plans for that weekend it's just too soon after Morphicon/Anthrohio, which was this past weekend's event --- although there's something piquant in Great Lakes Furry Con still projecting this slipshod image. (Maybe the con has got its act together. But the flyer at least had the air of ``Oh! I can do that in Word! And I have nearly fifteen minutes!'')

We went to dinner, and remembered the promise of an Indian restaurant in the gas station across the way. It's so, too: a little take-out place with a healthy selection of stuff. I got, I think, some kind of garlic paneer and bunny_hugger a more mild paneer that we took back to con suite. And my but it was really, really good. Also my car smelled of paneer for a couple days, which is everything you could hope for. Whoever gave us the tip about the place was brilliantly right and we passed it on to anyone we could.

We lingered over dinner, not just because it was that good. So we missed the start of karaoke, one of the last two events of the night. We didn't think that anything too bad; surely we'd be able to jump in and sing when we got there. Probably we could have, in principle. In practice, karaoke night was really busy. It was packed, more than we'd ever seen at karaoke at Morphicon in past years. We had absolutely no idea where the catalogue of songs was and suspected it was only available online. We had even less idea where you went to sign up for songs, and watching people near the DJ's table didn't give us any hints. There was the usual sort of fun stuff, including a woman singing ``Pinball Wizard'' --- bunny_hugger had to go up to her and thank her, and show off the Lansing Pinball League t-shirt she was waring --- and four, count 'em, four Queen songs being picked within sixty minutes of singing. Also people trying to do ``Let It Go'' from Frozen even though you really have to be an expert singer to pull that off. In short, while we didn't get to sing, we did get to enjoy karaoke night, quite a lot.

And the final, final thing was the Dead Dog Dance. We'd again expected or feared this would be sluggish. And again it wasn't. The dance was less packed than Saturday's, fairly enough considering how many people had left the con, but it was still big, crowded, and lively. It was still going strong well after midnight, when we decided that as fun as it would be to see the Dead Dog Dance to its closing minute, it would also be really great to drive home and get to sleep in our own bed before 3 am.

So we made a last round to hug and say goodbye to everyone who needed it, and drove home, where the house was intact and in good order, and we didn't get to sleep until after 3 am.

Trivia: In an encounter with the Portuguese at Santiago, in the Cape Verde islands, shortly before completing the circumnavigation of the globe, the survivors of Magellan's voyage pretended to be returning from America. Source: A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, William Manchester.

Currently Reading: All Was Done With Measure, Number, Weight: An Introduction to the New Metaphysics of Numbers, Jacques Vauthier.