(no subject)

WGN radio out of Chicago was coming in mostly clearly this morning as I drove to work. It was a treat; I try listening every morning and most of the time there's just too much static. Apparently atmospheric conditions were favorable today. I love WGN. It reminds me of home and family.

The raccoon girl and I are back from MFF and two plus days of hanging out with a large number of really wonderful people. The con was a beautiful experience. There were a few moments of stress and weirdness, but in the company of my sweetie and our friends they soon passed.

I usually write these reports out chronologically and I will, I'm sure, touch on the course of our weekend events briefly, but I realize that more important than the specifics of our weekend are the highlights; the good people and good memories.

We arrived late on Friday. I retired to our room to destress from the long drive as Andrea walked about and greeted whatever friends were wandering around the hotel. After I'd spent a while lying down, Andrea came to fetch me and we talked to a bunch of people. I can't remember who we talked to and when, but over the course of Friday and Saturday nights we had conversations with (in mostly alphabetical order) boixboi, daveqat and synicism,datahawk, emrldgrrl, moryssa, tincrash, and several others. We met new people too, including werellama and mistletoe, and an interesting equine couple from Texas, Chestnut Stallion and his mate (who's name I would most likely fail at reproducing accurately here if I were to try), who we talked to for a while.

Andrea and I both got lots of hugs and snuggles from wonderful, interesting, attractive people. I hugged and scritched Daveqat and Jim, rubbed Tincrash's feet as my love and I sat with him in the hallway Saturday night, and got plenty of snuggles from all of the Chicago girls. And was it Saturday or Sunday that, in response to boixboi saying something about our 'deviant heterosexuality' (funny how few straight couples I know in Chicago *grins*), I moved in and gave him a kiss and said "I'm not exactly totally heterosexual ya know..."? I so would not have had the courage to do that a year ago. I was even asked by She Who Must Be Obeyed to help her finish unbraiding her hair as we stood in the art show. ( I was very nervous about messing up her hair and so just loosened everything up and let her finish untangling. I hope she wasn't offended that I didn't do a more complete job; I was nervous. I used to be skeptical of the effectiveness of any hair growth vitamins but I'm actually going to start taking the ones she mentioned. I soooo want hair like hers... *sigh*)

That's something that Andrea and I talked about on the way home. Not hair (though that was mentioned), but all the physical affection we gave and recieved at FurFest. We talked about how, though it might seem on the surface that such might call one's relationship into question, it really had the opposite effect. Having friends that we touch and hug is very affirming in many ways. It not only makes us feel good about ourselves as individuals that there are so many people who like us that much, but it makes us feel good about ourselves as a couple. Being together as one or the other (most times both) of us greet, hug, and sometimes even playfully flirt with our friends, all completely out in the open and unhidden, is affirming of our trust in each other. We can simply enjoy being with people we care about and who care about us because all involved realize that the good feelings are simply a wonderful benefit of friendship and the two of us, my mate and I, know to whom we belong and trust each other completely. What's a relationship without trust?

There were some panels I wanted to attend, but somehow I didn't get to them. I really wanted to attend werellama's panel on Zen, but I was a little nervous too. I don't really know why; I guess I found the idea a little bit intimidating. I'm still a nervous little puppy sometimes. The panel that Alan Kitchen ran on space technology would have been really interesting too, but the timing didn't quite work out.

Andrea and I did manage to make it to Ikea and peruse the vast array of strangely named Swedish goods. I was honestly very impressed by the store. It was huge! I'd never seen anything like it. I also admit to being somwhat obsessed by the weird faux-Swedish names that everything had and their method of generation. The hammer and tool set ("Fixa") seems fairly obvious but I am rather confused by things like the four outlet power strip with cord caddy ("Koppla/Tuba"), the set of decorative plastic prisms ("Lyrisk"), or the blue striped bathmat ("Halsted") that we acquired. At least one item of swag, the blue polka-dot shower curtain ("Brunskära") has a name that sounds truly Swedish to my (admittedly untrained) ear.

Andrea and I ate at a truly legendary Chicago pizza establishment, Lou Melnati's, for the first time. Truly excellent pizza and a fascinating restaurant that used to be a house. All the hype is worth it. I grew up listening to ads for them on WGN radio and it was really cool to eat there.

I guess that's about it. The drive home was fairly uneventful and I miss lots of people already. Images of scenes like my mate and I sitting in the hall, Tincrash on one side of the pretty raccoon and Synicism flopped out on the bench next to us on the other, just talking into the night, will be warming my spirit for a good while to come.

We did get a call from moryssa on the way home saying that my credit card had been declined for our Furfest badges. Did that get taken care of moryssa? I checked and I do have money in the account; maybe the credit card machine got a bad print of my card and you're using the wrong number? Let me know if I need to call you, ok?

In the meantime, I should get to my scheduled tasks for today. I've already mailed a bunch of ebay stuff on my way home from work and balanced my bank account. Now I need to do dishes, do laundry, and do catboxes. Then, I have an exam to study for. The work never ceases but I'm going to do my best to take farmcat's advice and make sure I do just the minimum maintanence every day making more progress as inspiration strikes. I have to get those exams out of the way soon.