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bunny_hugger woke up earlier than I did Saturday, so she could sign up for the costume contest, and so she could go to a tournament of a board game she's got but rarely can play because it requires more than two players. I didn't think I was so tired but the fact I barely stirred for another hour or so said otherwise. What I did wake for was the second of the pinball tournaments, this one playing a full game. (This would be done in ``tournament mode'', though, with the random elements part of modern pinball games set to standard routines, for fairness to all players.)
I did quite well the first round, which came late enough in the contest that bunny_hugger was able to watch me playing pinball while trying to keep my tail from falling over somewhere. I was one of the top three players, in fact, and so went to the championship round where I was not one of the top two players. A person in fursuit won this game too. I'd had a good game anyway. And bunny_hugger had a quite good time with her game too; the game, based on haunted house movies, developed quite neatly and then when the shocking twist came (and the objectives of the game shifted) things were set up for a clean and satisfying resolution.
chefmongoose asked if we'd seen the charity auction room; we hadn't got there yet and he impressed upon us the need to get there. Among the things in the room was a long table of T-shirts for instant sale, including one for the web comic Staccato, which is probably not among the top 84,000 web comics out there (it's the one where the characters are in college, and play a lot of video games, and there's their sarcastic kind-of girlfriend-ish, and there's this computer that wants to enslave humanity although since the strip started in like 1997 it's probably running Windows 98), but which I certainly knew about from way back when because one of the lead characters is Tequila Coati. As best I know this is the only web comic to have a coati, at least as a main character, and that it hasn't been updated since 2008, and that a one-strip reappearance after a two-year hiatus, doesn't mar its status as a thing which exists and mentions coatis.
I was getting ready to buy it, but chefmongoose decided that he had to buy it as another gift for me. Besides being generous with his time, and his car, and the shirt, he'd also given to us a bottle of apple wine from a local winery, and we're quite grateful for all of this. We're just embarrassed that we weren't able to find any pasties to bring to him; they're a Welsh-inspired Michigan-regional thing but just not quite our region.
So, chefmongoose bought me a shirt. bunny_hugger looked around the various items that were for the auction, none of which quite rose to being interesting enough and not a challenge to imagine getting back home. (There was a complete set of Disney's Pocahontas stuff that made me think of that person living near d'Efteling, though.) At the raffle, though, there was a collection of horse memorabilia including a Christmas-themed carousel-type miniature and some other stuff (a belt buckle, bookends, something to mount on the wall so you could have a disembodied horse staring at you), and bunny_hugger liked the miniature well enough to put in a couple raffle tickets and make grim jokes about what to do with the rest of that if she won. And a pound of some locally-grown coffee got the rest of her tickets. We passed on the Complete Commodore 64 Stuff Plus Software So You Could Actually Use It kit.
We did some poking around the Dealers Den, naturally, although the slightly complicated scheme required for Connecticut tax purposes cut down on impulse buying. (As I understand it, state requirements for gathering sales tax are irritating enough that nearly all the dealers, except the guys with the T-shirts selling james_nicoll's quote without attribution, just have the con itself collect money. The result is that at the tables, or artist's alley, you make your selections, they write up a receipt, you join the long queue of everybody paying to the con's cash register, you bring back the proof of payment, and then get your stuff.) Bit of a nuisance, but bunny_hugger did get a Halloween-themed con badge, and sketches to fit. Also the general awareness of what coatis are seems to be rising. It has been ages since I had a friend come to me and say they'd just learned I had not made the species up.
Also in the Dealers Den I met up with a moderately recognizable name in furry art, who had completely --- and justly --- forgot that we've actually met before. This somehow turned quickly into a discussion of his outrageous and unjustified treatment at a Michigan-area con and how he wouldn't go back there. bunny_hugger was able to rescue me from the conversation pretty gracefully, though.
Trivia: German forces in Italy surrendered to the Allies on the 2nd of May, 1945; those in north-western Europe on the 4th of May, with the final surrender of all German forces on the 7th. Source: History Of The Second World War, B H Liddell Hart.
Currently Reading: The Long Road Home: The Aftermath Of The Second World War, Ben Shephard. This is really gripping reading, about a part of the story of World War II that just never gets told --- given the incredible numbers of people just in Europe whose families were shattered, in areas that were shattered, in nations that were shattered, how do you put anything back together in any way that makes any sense or is just --- but it also feels like all the bits of doing some right to traumatized people have to be paid for with incredible agonies. It's surprisingly similar in tone to (grown-up) westerns, in placing a relative handful of people in a situation too big to be really tamed and doing what they can to make a fair situation of it.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-19 05:18 am (UTC)Cornish, actually; they were brought to the Upper Peninsula by Cornish miners.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-19 06:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-19 06:51 am (UTC)Well, I'd gotten Bunny the sketchbook-thing, but nothing specifically for you. Also, you seemed more hesitant than I'd expect on grabbing the shirt and running immediately up to the sales table and saying 'Are hundred dollar bills okay?" So I had to step in.
Ah yes. That dealer, I know the one. He's not going back to that con because he's no longer permitted to be a vendor there.
--Chi
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-19 07:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 05:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 05:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-20 04:54 pm (UTC)Your pinball tournament experience sounds like mine in charity poker. I got past the qualifiers somehow (my first time playing poker . . .), and finished 8/9 in the finals. I got a tiger tail out of it, at least. Not bad for $10!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-21 05:49 am (UTC)Congratulations on the tiger tail, though. That's better than I've ever done playing poker, which has been to get annoyed at the Commodore 64.