Screen falling off the door

[austin_dern]

Furry Connection North is not actually held in our backyard but it's near enough. It'd be crazy for us not to attend, and bunny_hugger has attended every one of them so far, starting with the inaugural convention. It's almost near enough to make it worth debating whether to actually get a hotel room, or just drive home, but it'd be an hour-plus driving home at the end of the night and the same driving there, so, no; we need more sleep than that during a convention weekend.

We were thinking about where we'd eat, as we drove there, and wondered if there were a Red Robin somewhere nearby (since they'll make any of their burgers with one of two vegetarian patties) and we spotted one just before the exit for the hotel. Our hotel --- a Holiday Inn Express, neither the main nor the official overflow hotels --- wasn't ready for us to check in, so we went across the highway to the Sheraton and to the registration line. I managed not to understand the registration spot actually was the registration spot but followed bunny_hugger. There we learned that they somehow didn't have bunny_hugger listed as a Sponsor, which would deny her the con suite. She upgraded but was really sure she'd pre-registered as a Sponsor to start with. Another mystery of the ages: they gave a T-shirt away to everybody, but an official con slinky only to Sponsors; doesn't that seem the wrong way around?

After spending literally a couple minutes going through the registration line, and upgrading bunny_hugger to sponsor, we had some free time before any events we were that interested in. So we went to lunch: we found a Red Robin on the satellite navigator, a different one from the Red Robin we saw on the way in. Apparently the Red Robin chain is thriving in Novi, Michigan. The radio, as we entered, was playing Walk The Moon's ``Anna Sun'', a song that's not only exciting and cheering to hear to start with --- and something that we don't recall hearing in the wild, as opposed to on the iPod or at a concert, before --- but so intertwined with our joyful summer of last ear that we had to see it as a good omen for the weekend.

Trivia: Immediately after Apollo 13's safe splashdown President Richard Nixon phond Marilyn Lovell, inviting her to accompany him to Hawaii to meet the astronauts. Source: Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage Of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger.

Currently Reading: Opus 100, Isaac Asimov.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I know this 'hotel room?' feeling, as I have lived within 50 to 75 minutes drive of Furfright for as long as there has been a Furfright. It means I usually don't stick around on a Thursday or Sunday night, but Friday and Saturday, it's best to maximize sleep and being-around time.

T-shirt as a Sponsor perk is so darn near universal to furry cons, it's considered *the* Sponsor perk. However, if you get the cost low enough.. T-shirts for every member make sense. They're a wonderful way to advertise your convention, as people will wear the shirt from one con to another, the name of the con will be right there on those Facebook/Instagram/etc pictures.

Errors can happen in registration departments, but it's rare. It's worth asking them to double-check, now that the dust has settled.

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

We were definitely better off sleeping at the con. If we'd lost two hours of sleep, or two hours of con, to the travel we'd have had considerably less fun.

Somehow some part of my brain is convinced that custom T-shirts are difficult and expensive to get, and none of the evidence of the last fifteen years and of http://shirt.woot.com are able to deflect that in the slightest. So I just can't get over the idea of shirts as a free giveaway when con registration is $40 to start with.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I think Anthrocon's custom shirts run us about $7 each, and part of that is our need to have over a thousand shirts have to arrive within a 30-hour period to a specific place. If you don't need that[*1], you can likely get it closer to $5 or less, and a well-budgeted convention can do that for its attendees which keeping rates low.

--Chi
[*1] Anthrocon has certain complications with being in a union-run convention center, in a city downtown, 5 hours from the nearest Director's home.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think that FCN had any particular odd needs to have the T-shirts delivered in a narrow time window, but that's a guess on my part.

I suppose $5 out of $40 isn't that much, but it still seems amazing to me, since I still regard clothes as being inherently amazingly expensive.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I did check and, to my great surprise, I had in fact only registered Basic. This is never what I do for that con and certainly not what I meant to do this time. I am led to guess that I just clicked the wrong button or pulled down the wrong option or whatever.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised too. Maybe they did something weird with the default options on the registration page.

I'm pretty positive I got sponsorship for Morphicon, but we'll see.