I'd been to four, maybe five, Morphicons at the Holiday Inn in Worthington, Ohio. 
bunny_hugger had been to eight. We ventured into a room we hadn't been in before, except possibly in passing during a fursuit parade. Anthrohio would have its Opening Ceremonies in a room I didn't even know existed.
But the hotel has this small ballroom, way off past even the far end of its restaurant that we usually visit once per convention. Opening Ceremonies, and all the mass performance events, would be held there instead of in the large dividable space just off the main hallway. That space, which had always been split, one-quarter into the Dealers Den and three-quarters into stage and seating for shows, had a new purpose for Anthrohio. It'd be one-half the Dealers Den and the other half Con Suite. Well, it was different, but I was willing to press ahead and carry on as if this were all normal and stuff.
Last year Morphicon did a running thing where you could get Perler beads and make figures out of them. That was used for some storyline I didn't quite get about eight-bit video game villains (the con's theme was eight-bit video games) and I'm not sure exactly what. But everybody loved making stuff and having something con-themed to do. This year they tried doing something similar by using the Renaissance theme. Everyone at the con was to be divided into one of five guilds, each vying for The King's favor by donating coins to their guild's cause. Or you could use the coins to buy decorations for yourself. And you got coins by ... I have no idea.
I mean, everyone started with one in their bag of con stuff. And bunny_hugger got one --- one --- for several hours spent working for one of the performance events. But I never earned one, and she didn't earn any of them, and we have no idea where you got them from. With the Perler beads you earned them by going to events, or by hosting them, or by being nearby when one of the con staff figured you looked like you needed one, or by it being Sunday when the con was winding down and discipline on the Perler beads bank had collapsed. I don't know what we were missing, though. But I admit not being emotionally invested in whether our guild wins the King's favor.
The charity this year would be a bunny rescue society, which was heartening and had us thinking often of our pet rabbit, whom I'd brought the day before to bunny_hugger's parents. They would evade the hotel's mildly ironic no-animals policy (and make me wonder about the rabbit fanciers who shared the hotel with Morphicon last year) by bringing a couple of rabbits out to an enclosed pen on the patio, outside the hotel proper. There'd be a couple hours for each rabbit and thus an ever-fresh set of bunnies to look at.
One of the traditions of Morphicon was to have a pizza dinner for all the con attendees delivered Friday night, and that tradition was lost with the change to Anthrohio. Except that it was not at all lost, or even changed a bit. We had just got busy off by ourselves, bunny_hugger grading and me working on reconstructing the pinball presentation, and we didn't realize the thing was happening until it was done happening.
So for supper instead we went to a burrito place that's a little north of the hotel and past the never-ending highway construction zone near one of Worthington's multiple Creepy Houses. It's one of those build-your-own-burrito type places and it boasts something like 14 sauces in an array of ascending hotness. Last year there was one sauce that had a 'Retired' sticker over it. This year there were two or three. It's not surprising to retire sauce flavors but why wouldn't they have got a new sign in the year since? Or why not add a new sauce to the mix? Anyway, it's a good place to get a filling meal and I only spoiled it a bit because I could not stop being distracted by some nutty show airing on Nickelodeon with the sound off. I have no idea what was going on, but at least part of it involved kids with a magician's hat and a rabbit puppet who seemed to be giving snarky commentary on things, based on the way the scenes were cut. Also in other scenes there were some giant toys and I guess I'm glad to know someone's making Sid and Marty Krofft shows these days.
Trivia: Alphonse Penaud's August 1871 rubber-band-powered Planophore, a 20-inch-long model airplane, stayed in the air eleven seconds and flew 131 feet in a demonstration at the Tuileries before the Société Francaise de Navigation Aerienne. Source: First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane, T A Heppenheimer.
Currently Reading: Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, Allan Bérubé.