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Further Confusion 2007

Thursday 18th January:

So, the first official day of the con, well, once it started at 4pm. The furry influx was well underway now, unstoppable, with more and more furs and fursuits hanging out in the public areas of the hotel. Inevitably there are going to be questions asked, and these are good times to present a positive view of the fandom to the curious.

First up was taking photos of ultah74 and atpaw in the Corvette they'd hired and spent yesterday driving through the mountains before returning it to the airport. I have to say, that this American muscle car certainly looked and sounded impressive. The build quality however was not brilliant. It was true that the car seemed to have it in for Utlah; several times I had to let him out of the driver's door because the automatic mechanism wouldn't open at his touch.

We needed supplies, and emejn had a cunning plan to persuade dukefawks et al. to give him a lift to Walmart in exchange for a selection of Doubletree cookies. Went with him on a search for European 'suiters, and ended up chatting with aoi-the-kitsune, yakeo, and xavier_rotts.

Headed to San Jose's Japantown with Utlah and Atpaw on the transit for lunch. Missed one train while Utlah tried too see just how much change he could feed into the ticket machine, and debated the point of the one cent coin. Someone suggested putting an Australian dollar into the machine, and someone else did it; it stuck in the slot and was eventually forced through with a quarter. One thing the guide didn't mention was that Japantown is pretty much closed between 2pm (when we got there) and 5pm. We investigated every restaurant, and in the end had to choose between Hawaiian Pancakes and Chinese. The Chinese was pretty good. Had a browse around a Japanese toy store before heading back to the Doubletree.

Registration was easy and quick, then again I was a sponsor, and able to avoid the queue. Getting the special all-plastic ID badges took a little longer, but a nice touch. It might have been a good idea for the registration staff to have mug shots of the guests of honour, in order to avoid anyone cluelessly calling out their name when the machine finally spat out his badge.

Spent some time getting badgerguy into his new partial fursuit: Rallicat, then Emejn took us newbies (Badgerguy, Utlah, and I) for a tour of the critical facilities, i.e. the fursuit lounge. Definitely impressed by t_h_squirrel's head drying rack, or totem pole as some called it. Poked my nose into the dance, but it wasn't doing much for me - too tired, too jet-lagged.