After the Trash Animals SIG, Anthrohio Friday gave us an hour or so of free time until ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's first panel, the Bunnies SIG. This drew a smaller group than Trash Animals, and for that matter than the Bunnies SIG last year did. But it was still a nice-sized group, and people got to talk about Watership Down and Bugs Bunny and such as you'd like. And then a couple hours later she ran her other panel, the Rodents SIG. She tried to do a trivia contest again, giving away small prizes, although it got hung up on a couple of fine points like what do you mean exactly by the ``smallest mouse'', or something to that effect. I forget the precise back-and-forth and it doesn't quite matter, but when you are doing trivia about animals it's hard to rank anything as most extreme without a lot of qualifiers and footnotes.
The real excitement, we figured, would come in the evening, when the dance started and bunnyhugger could unveil ... uh ... well, actually, we had a bit of a fashion problem first. We would end up spending a lot of time fussing around with the outfit, trying to get it together just right. But we were foiled by things like not having a long enough safety pin and not being able to fit her bunny tail on the dress she had to wear right. Finally, with less than a half hour to go before it closed, we went to a Meijer's, to pick out a belt thin enough for the purpose.
That purpose: her new fursuit. A month or so before she'd seen a pre-made suit put up for auction and kept thinking about it. She left a message about being interested but imagined she'd be outbid, and never thought about it after the auction deadline passed. And then, curious who did win it, she looked through Twitter for the first time in ages to see what might have happened and learned the fursuit maker was having the hardest time finding the person who'd expressed interest. She gradually realized that she was the missing bidder, and they got everything connected and money exchanged for fursuit parts.
But, much as she loved it, it wasn't a complete suit. Head, paws, tail ... she needed a dress to go with it. She found one, the day before we left for the con, and so didn't have the time to learn how difficult it would be attaching the tail to. No feet either, but there was nothing to do there except use other fursuit feet or go in regular shoes. (She used other fursuit feet.) A better, more suitable foot would come and is in fact sitting waiting for her to do in her spare time this month. Between temporary feet and an adequate belt that would also be usable in regular life, she was ready for her debut. And how that went, I intend to tell you shortly.
Let's have more of the fair.
Another kiddie funhouse attraction, thsi one decorated with everyone as off-brand superheroes.
Not to knock the off-brand superheroes. I like folks coming up with their own ideas. The art has the feel of a commercially made line, yes, but I support kids thinking up their own superheroes to be.
We got back to the carousel, of course, for a ride. The operator was only willing to let us ride the chariot which, eh, fair.
Still got some nice views and I love the complicated mixtures of colors for stuff like this.
This was the only thing that looked at all like a maker's plate, and it's as much a mystery to me too.
But here's a last look at the center of the carousel, looking great in the night.
Trivia: In the last years of the slave trade over a hundred enslaving ships would leave Liverpool for the West African coast each year. Source: To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.
Currently Reading: Come Fly With Us: NASA's Payload Specialist Program, Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas. It's largely a discussion of the payload specialists in turn, each of whom flew (usually) the one mission. There's a chapter up front that I could have done with much more about, regarding the wrangling about how to define what a payload specialist was, and how to distinguish them from a mission specialist, and about the (natural) conflict between the astronauts who competed mightily and against long odds to then compete mightily and against rough odds for one of a (in the early 80s) ever-dwindling number of seats versus, you know, someone who gets to fly because RCA put up some cash or because a Florida Congressman wanted to.
