Oh what a lovely day today

We started Saturday with something we never do at furry cons, with something we only do at Pinburgh: We went to the hotel breakfast. I ate so many eggs, in scrambled and hard-boiled form. This was also the most restaurant-like experience we've had in two-plus years. It felt so very weird to do. But after that we took our coffee and tea, went back to our room to finish getting ready for the day, and headed back to the convention hotel.

This for the fursuit parade, launching as it did last year from the ballroom. As fits Motor City's theme, they arranged the convention to be held on the coldest weekend of late-March/early-April. So in a fit of mercy they didn't have the parade go outside and to the pavilion out back for pictures. This was especial mercy since it cut out the part where everyone had to walk down two flights of stairs. Instead, they walked out of the ballroom to the lobby and turned around; I got a view from just before the turnaround. Also I learned how I forgot which button starts taking a movie on my camera, versus which button turns it off. I got most of the parade though, at least. All of it, if you can see past where they turned around.

We spent a good while looking around the remains of the fursuit parade, and I even found bunny_hugger after the parade. (She left the ballroom after the photographs, in some part of the crowd I hadn't seen.) And we got our first good look at the charity, a Detroit-area rabbit rescue. They brought out a couple of rabbits to show and encourage people to learn things about rabbit-keeping. They were also among the people delighted by my guinea pig puppet, Latham, who got a fair bit of time out in the wild and startling people who thought he might be real. Do you want to take a guess how many people said they thought it was a real guinea pig? I'll reveal the answer when I'm done with the convention report, unless I forget.

The rabbits they had on display, Saturday at least, were not rescues up for adoption. They'd explained they wanted rabbits which they knew were comfortable with crowds and with the frequent handling, so these were their own former-fosters, a couple rabbits at ease with strangers rubbing their backs. Also with being picked up and let to rest against someone's chest and shoulder, which our own Sunshine would put up with for whole seconds before turning active. Instead these were rabbits who'd just nestle a bit in long hair and chill out. Lovely to see.

bunny_hugger needed to do some work, for work, so we went back to the hotel. I spent some time reading my comics and that sort of thing, and was slow to venture back to the convention. This resulted in my missing one of the few species SIGs, the Insects panel, unfortunately. I hope they didn't miss the non-insect who sheepishly admits his only interest is that, if he were paying attention to his species' diet, would be lunch. They have to get so much of that, though.

I'd come back to the convention on my own for a couple hours, timing it pretty well to when she would finish her work for the day. I did some browsing around the Dealers Dean. Someone had set up a table with their carved stones, gorgeous and sparkling creatures that we absolutely don't need and I can't afford. But he was encouraging people to take pictures, which was a welcome thing. Had some great squirrels and bunnies that I needed to try again and again to get the camera to focus on correctly.

When we met up again we had an important decision to make. I mean important within the scope of convention-going. And what that is, I hope to get to tomorrow.

Here's a couple pictures from that Large Jenga excitement on Friday at Motor City Furry Con.

You'd think this would knock the tower over, and yet, it's not. It would be a full round of all the people playing before the tower fell.

The moment of falling! It's pitching forward, onto the back of the person with purple hair, but I snapped this about one-twentieth of a second too soon for the blocks to be really chaotic. You can see it in the people's faces, though.

The next tower, seeming ready to fall although it didn't yet. I didn't realize until looking at the pictures that I managed to get it almost lined up with the fursuit snout. I have another one that is lined up better, but it doesn't have that disbelieving guy's face in it.

Trivia: An element of Samuel Pepys's 1677 program for building the Royal Navy was that, for the first time, all England's navy ships would have guns made of iron.
Source: To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.

Currently Reading: Shattered Dreams: The Lost and Cancelled Space Missions, Colin Burgess.

PS: How March 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog, my usual monthly recap.