I'm moving out of Chicago in about two weeks up to Superior, WI. What this means for MFF, I do not know. Hopefully, I can make it though.

Going to keep this brief.

I've broken my foot, with a lisfranc fracture, back on the 21st of June while on vacation. The break is pretty bad. This Wednesday I will be undergoing surgery to attempt to fix it. Once the surgery is done, I will be in a cast until September. I'm not going to deny that this has gotten me pretty depressed.

I hope life is being kinder to everyone else.

~Saber

I've set up a new account to focus on commission of my current fursona over at  grizzlytrotsky Take a look if you so desire. I am going to use that account for pieces that deal with my fursona. I may or may not at some point migrate over to that account, but for now, I intend to use both accounts.

Take care and good luck folks.

Welcome to a new decade, folks. Hopefully it will be great and joyful for us all. The 2000s are over, pivotal as they will be to the rest of this century. Hopefully I'll be able to see many of you over the course of this year, some sooner than others.

Ciao!

Finals are finally over.
Damn, the last weeks after MFF were completely exhausting. I've never had an end of semester that was anywhere near that busy, not even in HS, which had more classes per semester. I suspect part of the difference is that most of the time, I can generally cruise through finals in one or two of my classes without having to study because I knew the subject like the back of my hand. Not true for this semester at all. Even Intro to Music provided to be a lot more challenging than I thought it would because it didn't cover the subjects I thought it was going to cover (no complaints there at all).
I did well in all of my finals at least, except for my French Oral, where I floundered horribly. Though, I did hold my first conversation in French that lasted more than 3 seconds! Even if it was the most disjointed conversation. I'm proud to say that on a number of occasions I was composing in French completely, and not resorting to composing in English and then translating into French.
I have three of my grades back, and I'm happy to say I've netted three A's. The last grade I need to get back may be an A or a B, so my grade point average may go up a little or it may go down a little, depending on the results.
So now it's vacation time. Hallelujah!

Finals are finally over.
Damn, the last weeks after MFF were completely exhausting. I've never had an end of semester that was anywhere near that busy, not even in HS, which had more classes per semester. I suspect part of the difference is that most of the time, I can generally cruise through finals in one or two of my classes without having to study because I knew the subject like the back of my hand. Not true for this semester at all. Even Intro to Music provided to be a lot more challenging than I thought it would because it didn't cover the subjects I thought it was going to cover (no complaints there at all).
I did well in all of my finals at least, except for my French Oral, where I floundered horribly. Though, I did hold my first conversation in French that lasted more than 3 seconds! Even if it was the most disjointed conversation. I'm proud to say that on a number of occasions I was composing in French completely, and not resorting to composing in English and then translating into French.
I have three of my grades back, and I'm happy to say I've netted three A's. The last grade I need to get back may be an A or a B, so my grade point average may go up a little or it may go down a little, depending on the results.
So now it's vacation time. Hallelujah!

Illinois' illustrious and august governor, Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on corruption charges. And I nearly danced with glee. However, the sheer size of the man's greed is absolutely stunning; even in Chicago, known for corruption, this is shocking. Attempting to sell the senatorship left vacant by Obama, illegally trying to get prominent critics fired from the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board (the Tribune has the largest circulation numbers of any Illinois paper, and is sold in many places outside of the state), attempting to get his wife a job as a lobbyist, among other things. And he did all of this /knowing/ that the feds were /already/ investigating him. It's almost scary.

Blagojevich has been unpopular for a while, with approval ratings that make Bush look popular. He's deeply unpopular within his own party in the state, having made enemies of nearly every other prominent democrat within the state, including butting heads with our Mayor Daley. This topic is all over the national news right now, so if you want to find out more, google.

I rarely like showing any kind of vindictiveness when it comes to politics, but I hope he resigns soon and leaves us /alone/. His bad has vastly outweighed his good. He is dead weight now.

As some people know, my cat of 18 years passed back in September. I was extremely attached to him, and I won't mince word: losing him was very traumatic. I loved him very much.

The vet where we took Casey (that's his name) was one that we recently switched to; and we are glad that we did. He got great care in the last year or so of his life, especially once the cancer was discovered. The staff was always unfailingly gracious and kind, and the technicians were always knowledgeable. And when Sept 23 came around, and we had to put him to sleep, they gave us every kind of support possible. They're kindness I will never forget.

Since then, we have not had a reason to go back to the vet; the two cats we currently have are both young and healthy, and only need periodic checkups versus the constant ones Casey needed. But we received something in the mail recently...

The vet as a whole made a contribution to a feline health institute in the memory of Casey. I do not know if they do this for all the cats that pass on within their walls, but this is such kindness that I rarely see in businesses today, and I am all the more grateful to them.

*rubs his paws together*

*Edit* Sorry for the TL;DR inducing amount of text.

Alright, finally can get this out of the way; every free moment seems to be taken up by college right now.

MMF Report

Friday
Friday morning rolls around. Finally. While I saw a few furs on the Tuesday before (Crytus, Don, Ember, DragoMike, and Tolstoy), I had to say I was anxious, nervous, but also excited. True, I had gone to the con the last year, but it was on the sly, and this con promised to be far more enjoyable without the 5 hour commute time for last year.

Anyways. I had packed up the night before, mostly for convenience’s sake. I was going to be rooming at the main overflow hotel with my long time friend  arrowquivershaft . I have to say, he’s an awesome guy, and I was more than glad to be rooming with him. He was coming into town by train at Chicago’s Union Station (wish I had taken pictures). However, in order to avoid having to take public transportation (it’s a pain to travel with rolling suitcases on the CTA), I hitched a ride with my dad downtown, and got dropped off at the station. Of course, he had to leave early, so I ended up having a bit of lunch. It didn’t take long, however, for Arrow to arrive, and soon we were heading out to Wheeling.

Arrow and I chatted for a while, which was nice (and I wish I had done again), but it didn’t take much more than an hour to get to Wheeling, where  thundergryphon picked both of us. The original plan was to go to the overflow hotel, check in, and then hop the shuttle bus to the main hotel. Hahaha! That worked SO well. We ended up driving along that one road (same one that the main hotel was on) for a fair few minutes. Sadly, I ended up being in the sun, and my left side was slowly being baked… until we spotted the auxiliary hotel, realized that we must have gone too far, and then turned around, where my right side get its turn. At least I was evenly cooked by the end. We eventually decided that Arrow and I should get dropped off at the main hotel, get signed in for the con, and then catch the shuttle bus from the main hotel to the overflow one. Hey, it worked.

So we got dropped off, got registered, and immediately ran into a few people. Mintz, GWM, and I can’t remember who else, but I do believe there was someone else there. It was awesome meeting them, especially GWM who I’d been wanting to meet for sometime. I had two books for him as well, and gave him those. We chatted for a little while, but eventually Arrow took both of our stuff back to the overflow and check in, and I tried locating a few people, mostly by looking in the lounge, and briefly chatted with Tolstoy, inquiring about future plans. I didn’t stay long though, as I was trying to figure out where the heck everything /was/.

At this point, things start becoming a bit of a blur; a lot of things happened bambambam, right in a row. I do remember that I walked around a bit on Friday, got a badge from Jim Groat, and hung out at the fat furs room for a while. Then we went up to Mr. Lean’s Room, and there he showed up… crack videos. Trale Lewous or whatever it was, I’m trying to bleach my mind. The five second videos were hysterical though. Sadly, my natural inclination toward shyness sort of blunted the experience; sure I talked, but frankly saying little of any… substance. I loathe to do some naval gazing right now, especially when people will be reading it (especially as it seems little more than attention seeking), but I think I should be frank in this: Half of the time I worry about making good impressions on people, when I should be having fun.

At some point, I had gone down to the Furry Writer’s Meet and Greet panel, which was a lot of fun, and ultimately where I met Leasara, one of the several very cool people who I met for the first time and made me feel very welcome at the con. I then when to dinner with a small group from the panel to the hotel restaurant. Some of these people I have known for a long while online, but never met before in person (Hats off to Rabbit and Morgan), and I had a thoroughly enjoyable meal. That first night I was up until 1 AM, I believe.

Morning began bright and early on Saturday. Arrow and I had a nice breakfast at the overflow hotel (continental breakfast nowadays seems to mean a lot more than it used to!) I can’t really remember much of the substance of that day…

… Actually, I think I’m mixing up several different days in my head. Go figure. I know that Friday there was that stupid fire alarm going off, and ended up enduring that with GWM (was nice to get to talk to him for that long). Saturday, I played Frogger with Mr. Lean and co to get to a Mexican restaurant (actually, we just went in a direction, hoping there would be a restaurant out that way. Yay for no crosswalks). Then I went to the TSA dinner. Now Morgan, who organized it, has been lamenting how horrible it was, for me the dinner went pretty well, though again I got plunked down in a group that I have little history with in general; I’m horrible with small talk. I got to talk with some others, Fox, Arrow, GWM mostly. I would have talked with Jaggers, who was sitting right across from me, but… again, foiled in my plans by that stupid shyness. The food was… okay. I’ve had better, especially at the price. And I had to experiment a bit to get the captain morgan’s rum + sprite to the ratio that I liked. I’m not very experienced with alcoholic drinks.

Sunday was sad, I’ll admit, but mostly good. I got to have a long conversation with Leasara before she went, and then was able to hang out for a little with the fat furs some more, including dinner. Arrow had left by 5 PM, because he had to catch a train back in Chicago to head home. Since I live in the city, I could be a little more flexible, and I decided to go later so I could go to the dinner. We went to… Oh, the name escapes me, something Jumper? Anyways, that was quite nice, overall, though I’ve easily had better country fried steak before. I got to chat with people (Whoo) and was finally feeling a little more comfortable with the group at large. Figures, it’s right before I go. Alas, I had to leave the dinner early so that I could catch a train back to Chicago and be home as a semi-decent time.

Events thrown into the mix: Watching from a distance as RaccoonDrew and co make the great escape; meeting Amber and talking with her for a very long time and getting some really good advice for a story I’ve been working on; meeting Squeakers who seriously came across as one of the coolest and nicest people in the con; the ride to the train station with  thundergryphon was a really nice conversation; hanging out with Spyke (which was way too short); the parade, the Plotting panel, and simply… the general craziness.

Sorry for the total mess in terms of chronological order; the con passed by in a whirlwind, as you can see. Anyways… I thank everyone that I met for allowing me to have a really great time. I hope to go back next year (college may or may not allow me), and see you all again. Thanks for having me around. 

PS. I also got several commissions. I’ll be posting some of them. (I’m looking at you, Ember; I blame you for one of them.)

I will, at some point, try to get proper links going; but there are way too many that I don't know in terms of FA names. (There are too many people to mention without accidentally forgetting someone in the mass too.)

I'm really bad at maintaining accounts like this, especially as I rarely have anything to post. Buuuuut...

Here's giving it a go.

I'll post a con report at some point soon (probably after Tuesday, when I don't have an impossible schoolwork load to deal with).

Anyways, ciao.

Sorry for not posting much in this journal. Oh well.

Just some short things to say:

School's started up again for me.

I'm going to be posting small little sketches and stuff that I do from time to time in the scarps section

It's FRIGGIN' COLD HERE. Brrr... -5F here last night, with windchills of -20F to -25F. I don't think today promises to be much better. It'll get warmer... but snow is on our way as well.

And that should be it.

Ciao, and stay warm, those who are stuck in this bitter cold...

Happy New Year, everyone.

This is gonna be one heck of a year... A year that'll make or break things, a decide or die kind of year, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, the US or France, or the world's environment...

This is going to be a year of big decisions. Keep updated with the News.

So, yeah, feeling good.

But my back aches after my cat slept on it...

I should post pictures of them at some point.

Dunno if it was a 24 hour bug...

But Yesterday morning came down with something real nasty; I was throwing up even water that I tried to drink. Eventualy was able to keep down some Gatorade and a singe cracker.

Gosh I ache all over.

And good grief, I am such a whiner while sick.

Yes, I'm feeling better now; but not over it.

As a college student...

Good grief, Finals are taking their toll on me... Eeeeeugh...

*zombie Saber*

Aussi...

Je suis très triste. Je ne trouve pas mon cahier français! Je ne peux pas faire mes devoirs...