Further Confusion 2014 - one day report!

[tuftears]

collie13 suggested we meet up for lunch. Looking at her availability and Loki's, it occurred to me that Further Confusion would make a good time to go meet up... So that's what we did. We met up at TechShop in San Jose and walked a bit down to the nearby street where we perused some of the offerings-- Hoagie Steakout, Pauly's Famous Franks, and Iguanazilla, Home of the Burritozilla. Well okay, we didn't actually do too much deciding, we walked into Pauly's to examine the menu more closely and it seemed interesting enough!



This is what the shop looks like from the outside-- it's a historic landmark! It really doesn't look much like a restaurant from the outside, though it has outside tables for dining.

The menu is pretty extensive. You can get several different sausages-- polish links, bratwursts, chicken apple sausages, and a couple other types-- with a HUGE number of toppings. And we're not simply talking various additives sprinkled on. Some of the entries involve things like wrapping the hotdog up in a tortilla and frying it. They did a really involved production on the "works" fries that Collie and Loki split, starting with a strata of fries, layering chili on, grated cheese, bacon, then getting out a small gas torch and melting the cheese with the flame!



This is what the food looked like. I'm not too sure what dracosphynx and collie13 had, but I had the teriyaki hotdog, which had a good amount of bell peppers, onions, and pineapples. Loki had the breakfast burrito dog, which involved a layer of scrambled eggs and chorizo on top of the hotdog, plus hot sauce.

We took a tour of the TechShop next, thanks to Collie and Loki's memberships. Seems like they pay the place a visit once a week to work on textiles. There's an incredible array of machinery available in a warehouse-style space divided up nicely into various project areas. Dangerous machinery too, like the 12,000 PSI water jet, but hey, that's part of the fun, right?

After that, dracosphynx and I headed down to the con. I believe Collie and Loki went to people-watch in the public areas for a bit; I waited around in the registration line for a while, then made it up to the dealer's room, only to be delayed by the Neverending Fursuit Parade. There are an incredible number of fursuits at the con, and the parade only highlights this fact. Some really pretty fursuits though-- several natural-colored lynxes and one really cute pink lynx! I tried to take a picture of one cat but it came out too blurry to post here.

dracosphynx was quick to point out a Friendship is Magic con in San Francisco in April and threaten me with being auctioned off. I r skeered. o_o

We browsed around the dealer's room and met up with gen, who was surprisingly glad to see me-- I guess even though she knows I'm around from my LJ posts, it's been 15 years since we last saw each other! :) I saw a few more of the usual suspects, but I missed xianjaguar this time around, as well as wordslinger, traveller_blues, khromat, and a host of other people. I know tugrik made the con Friday, not sure who else was around that I missed! ah well, things happen.

Sad to say, Stuffe & Nonsense are retiring. I snagged a Bast statue from the table where Melody Rondeau was unloading their remaining stock of plush animals-- it's nice and heavy and could be used to kill someone in an emergency, but more to the point will serve as a nice bookend.

I managed to get contrib copies of "What Comes Next" (my story illo for archangelbeth) and Myriad Song, normanrafferty's RPG, but otherwise than that, not a lot of other things really hit my interest. It seems like comics are on the wane, and a lot of new books seem oriented more toward sexuality and relationship rather than fantastic adventures and the like. Possibly just the way the furry fandom market incentivizes writers.

The art show was somewhat uneven. I wasn't really as wowed this time, but there were some really good pieces-- I liked CrookedWolf's piece here for instance, and Laura Garabedian had an art book out that was tempting.

After all that, I spent an hour doing a pencil sketch for dracosphynx while sitting on one of the inflatable seats in the main concourse, since I wanted to see if anyone I knew would pass by. A 'Hideo' played a keyboard live nearby in the meantime. Not bad, but not really my kind of thing. Once I was done with the sketch, I decided to call it a day and head back home.

Now to take it easy and slack off for the rest of the long weekend. ^_^