Just got home a little over an hour ago, at 12:23 am.  Unloaded everything, wanted to quick check my new cell phone (which was invaluable to have at AC this year, so the artists could contact me), and suddenly now I can't do anything with it.  All it says is "Security Code:"  Crap, didn't want to deal with this now, just had a wonderful 4 days of stress free bliss at AC09, and I just want to go to bed and meditate on the wonderful time I had.  Need to do that, guess I'll forget about the phone and go to bed before 3 days of 5 hours sleep max each night takes it toll.  Anyway, got a call this morning (Sunday morning) that my art was ready, but I was in a panel and frantically pushed the hang-up button to stop it from ringing and annoying other people.  Missed the call but found the number in "missed calls", called her back and took care of that.  Then saw she left voice mail too, so I went to listen to that and the automated system began to set up my voice mail.  Thought about bailing out of it, then thought I better just do it and get it done.  I'm standing out in the hallway at this point, fooling around with this cell phone.  Went through the prompts, they wanted a security code so I entered one, then they said to disable it press 1 (or 2) and I did that, and it said security feature is diabled.  I used the phone since that time just fine, but I had it off while driving so someone left a message on it.  Now all it says is "Security Code:"  Thought that was disabled, oh well, I entered the code, it says code error, and at this point is unusable.

Will deal with it tomorrow- like I said, I 'm tired but I'm very happy and I want to think about Anthrocon and all the furries and my wonderful characters right now while I go to sleep.  That's right, let the phone go, Leo.  I'm so happy, I had such a great time at the con!!  Will post my report(s) and pics in  a day or 2 (or 3).  Hope all my LJ friends who made it there had a great time too!

Haven't had time to post on here, though I check it every day and there's stuff I wanted to talk about / comment on, just didn't have time.

Anyway, Anthrocon 2009 is at hand and I'm still trying to get my packing list together as well as my character description sheets for the artists.  Had the whole evening, chose to spend it with the family instead, now it's after 11:00pm and I'm just starting to work on getting ready for my trip.  I was going to take a half day off work tomorrow, but I changed it to a whole day to have more time to get ready.  Too freaking busy.

I leave for Anthrocon on Thursday morning with me, myself, and I, planning to get there around 10am I guess, something like that.  Should be a nice peaceful drive.  Only stressful time will be driving through the city and getting parked in the parking garage, after that I only need to find my roommates later and check in and then I'm good to go for the con.

My goals this year have art at the top of the priority list, to get Leostarr Lion a face and maybe a full body pose by one of my favorite artists.  And Josie Lioness.  And Cocoa Haflinger.  (they are my other characters, by the way)(If I have the bucks!)

Then, there's a number of comic books / graphic novels I'd like to buy if they're available: Loyalty & Liberty; Broken Plot Device; LackaDaisy; and, The Boy Next Door volumes 1 & 2 (yeah, I know, shame on me, but hey, I started reading it and I like it).

I want to meet Firestormsix and see & hug his new Dakkota Wolf (as well as Max Lyon if he brings him), meet Nbowa with his new lion fursuit, greet Takala the zebra and Unika again, and check out all the fursuiters I can.  I saw a female zebra there last year with blue hair, hoping I can get a pic of her this time.

Have to go through the con schedule with a highlighter and plan which panels I'm going to attend.  Wouldn't mind going to the Heavy Horse Magic show, but I think that conflicts with other things I want to do.  Fursuit design and construction is a priority, and the fursuit parade of course.  Drawing classes and comic book planning sound interesting.  Gotta see Bucktown Tiger do the piano on Sunday afternoon, saw him last year, it was good.

Well, gotta go get something done here, it's late but I needed a break so I'm posting on LJ finally.  Helped get my thoughts together, too.

On Friday, got off work at noon, stopped by my Mom's place on the way home to have lunch.  Rest of my family met me there, that was nice.  we had chicken pot pie for lunch which was really good.

( click for rest of my day & encounter with CAT PISS )

Ugh, I'm tired...

( Lion is ready for beddy-bye... )

I had a good weekend.  Well, at least one bad thing happened this week but I'll write about that later in another entry.

Let's see, Friday I had off work all afternoon, I fooled around the whole time on the internet looking at Fur Affinity and commenting on some drawings.  Then, the rain diminished, and since the ball game was not cancelled (only postponed an hour), I went to a local baseball game at the new York Revolution stadium.  This was preplanned, already had the tickets.  Now, I am not a sports enthusiast, I wasn't asked but was basically told I would be going along... but it was pretty cool.  Got to sit in the rain some, that was okay, I didn't mind, better than sitting in the sun.  Then the rain totally stopped for the rest of the game.  The opposing team got 2 homeruns early on, and were really hitting the balls hard... some of them out of the park.  Was not looking good for our team.  Then later on, it was 2 to 0 when our team finally got a good hit (not out of the park, but their opponents had to scramble for it), and scored three home runs in a row, bringing the score to 3 - 2!  Then a high foul ball flew over past our section of the seating way to the right, bounced off a seat there, and came back... heading directly for... me!  No freaking way.  My seat was at the end of the ball's trajectory, I reached up and tried to catch it with my bare hands, the ball wacked hard through my fingers, thumped my glasses into my face, and went down in between the seats.  Took a little skin off my fingers, too.  Somebody from the stadium came over and asked if I was okay, I said, "sure, no problem, stopped the ball with my glasses, but I'm okay!"  I thought it was nice of them to come over and ask.  So, I have the ball as a souvenir!  And then our team got another three homeruns bringing a final score of 6 - 2, they won!

( Picture of the baseball and rest of my weekend... )

A pencil drawing I made of Marty the Zebra:

www.furaffinity.net/view/2330215/

Hey, put up my first art submission on Fur Affinity this week:

www.furaffinity.net/view/2307424/

Ugh, really run down from the week of lost sleep.  Mowed the grass and weed wacked yesterday, and I hurt worse from that than I ever did from horseback riding.  Sipping on a tiny bit of straight Jagermeister at the moment, and drinking some soda, in hopes of feeling a little better.

Anyway, wanted to update on what's happening in my horseback riding.  Gave notice and had my last lesson the other day, so I'm not doing it anymore.  At least for now.  That last lesson went really well, too.  I rode the little brown horse I learned to lope on last summer, and he was decent for me.  Found out he had fallen down in the creek just a few days before, so I was pretty nervous when I rode him through the creek at almost the same spot.  But we made it through unscathed!  Gonna miss those horses.

As I mentioned briefly in my March 25 post, I found a brochure at the tack shop for another local riding school that specializes in ground work, so after taking some time off from riding, I may take some lessons there.  This place had an open house on April 18, which I attended.  Brought along my helmet just in case.  Really nice place, really nice people, both instructors and clients.  I missed the 10am clinic on groundwork, but there was a trail ride at 11am, and although I didn't have a horse, I was invited to walk along with them on the trail ride, so I got some unexpected exercise.  Went for a couple of miles at least, had no trouble keeping up.  Oh, and the weather was fantastic!  Blue skies, cool breeze, sunny.  Had my denim jacket on, but unbuttoned it towards the end of the walk-along trail ride.  And they had goodies!  Cheese and bologna cubes / slices, pretzels & large cookies, punch, tea, juice, even beer if you asked, and had a little cookout at 12:30pm and they made me a huge burger as well!

Here are some pictures from the April 18 open house, mostly from the trail ride, behind the LJ cut:
( pictures from the horse farm... )

I had a furmeet to go to in the afternoon, so I had to cut it short and left a little after 1:00pm.  Nice place, I liked it.  No doubt I'll be back at some point.

Got a fairly half-decent night's sleep last night, still running a deficit.  Haven't slept well for a whole week because of the weather fluctuation.  Have to go back a week ago to when this all began:

Last Friday the 24th, a week ago, it was sunny as I remember, but a little chilly out, high 50s or low 60s I believe.  Then Saturday the 25th, holy crap, the temperature went up up up, into the 80s and peaked close to 90 or a little over.  It was hot.  Saturday night I didn't get much sleep, it was too hot in the bedroom.  I had the window open halfway at first, but the neighbors two doors down were freaking up all night outside, talking and burning a fire in some kind of outdoor fireplace, and I kept waking up periodically from the noise and smoke that kept drifting in through the window, so I finally closed it.  Then I woke up in the middle of the night feeling half sick from the stuffy heat, and lying there I wondered what it must be like to be in a fursuit on a hot July day, which only made me feel worse.  Opened the window all the way and finally got back to a restless sleep.  Blah.

When I got up on Sunday around 7:45am, it was already over 80 degrees outside, and went into the 90s in the afternoon.  Sudden summertime temps.  I ran around in nothing but my jeans for most of the day, wondering how I was going to survive this year's summer when it truly does arrive.  Ugh!  In the late afternoon, I finally decided to attempt to find and put on shorts, as even without a shirt, I was still overheating in my long jeans.  I rooted through the closet but could not find any summer stuff, it was still all stashed away hidden somewhere for the winter.  All I was able to find were these really old ripped-up denim cutoff shorts, so I put 'em on and wore them for the rest of the evening.

Anyway, what a four-day run of heat in April.  Lost sleep Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, and I do not do well on a sleep deficit.  So I am run down right now.  Temperatures finally returned to the low 60s on Wednesday, but I still did not sleep well until last night, and I still didn't get 8 hours.  Hopefully, tonight I finally will.

Just updated my journal style the other night, and changed its title.  It was previously Leostarr in the Lion's Den, now I have given it the same title as my furry fiction story, Lion in the Pony Barn.  Haven't started actually writing this story yet, it's in my head and I'm developing the characters at this point.  Would like to finish writing my Madagascar fanfic first before starting this one.  It would be really cool to do my story as a graphic novel comic book, but we'll see what happens when I get into it.

My first post was about the Goat Races in Falmouth, PA, in September 2007.

Going riding again tonight... it's only been two weeks but seems like over a month since I was last in the saddle.  Not really excited about it like I used to be.  Knowing I'm not making progress and also knowing why I'm not making progress has taken the fun and purpose out of what I'm doing now... not to mention my legitimate fear now which wasn't there when I started.

Last two times I went riding, the cupboards at the barn were bare (no soup for you!), so yesterday I stopped by the tack store on my way home and bought a box of yummy horse treats- apple and oat munchies shaped like little muffins- mmm, they smell so good I could almost try one myself!  Anyway, while I was there I saw an ad for another local riding school that specializes in groundwork.  I'm gonna at least check them out, see if they can help me with my horse relationship problems.  Hope it's not too much $$.  Will probably check out a couple of different places before I make the decision to move on, if that is what I decide to do.

Happy 1st weekend of spring all you wonderful furries on my LJ friends list!  Hmm, what did I do over the weekend?  Well, let's see...

1. Thursday night: Worked some more on chapter 18 of my Madagascar furry fanfic.  When this chapter's done & uploaded I'll post the link here.

2. Registration confirmed for AC2009!!  Now I just need to find a place to stay.  FYI, I'm nice, quiet, clean, independent, and considerate!

3. Had my clarinet completely overhauled in January, haven't played it for like 12 years.  Got some new clarinet reeds last weekend, tried breaking one of them in yesterday and today. It's a number 3 reed.  Holy crap they're harder than what I'm used to!  I was using an age-old, broken-in number 2 that was squeaking a lot in the upper register.  Now with the #3, my jaw and mouth muscles were shot after only a few musical exercises, I can normally go a lot longer.  Other thing too, noticed that the new reeds aren't quite evenly cut, dag-gone it... the machined taper seems okay, but the rest of the reed is thinner on one side, thinner overall too which doesn't help as my ligature is somewhat loose to begin with.  Sloppy workmanship on the new reeds, grrr!  Oh well, I'll keep working with the #3 and see how it goes after it's broken-in.

4. Went bike riding today.  Not far, not many miles, but went out just the same.  Once I get a bike rack for the car I'll be able to go to the rail trail & parks to ride.  Should have priced racks when we all invaded the sporting goods store at last month's furmeet, but my mind was preoccupied at the time I guess.

5. Finally got an account at Fur Affinity today, user name is Leo_Starr.  Now I can comment on some of these great works of furry art, as well as upload some of my own stuff eventually.  It's currently my favorite site to surf at lunchtime!

Wishing cadpigjr  a very happy birthday today. Hope you have a good one!

Got this as part of an e-mail today.  Some e-mails I get are pretty lame, but I liked this one:
-  -  -  -

TO ALL NON-PET OWNERS WHO VISIT AND LIKE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT OUR PETS:
(1) They live here.  You don't.
(2) If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. That's why they call it fur'-niture.
(3) I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
(4) To you, they are animals.  To me, they are adopted sons/daughters who are short, hairy, walk on all fours and don't speak clearly.

Remember, dogs and cats are better than kids because they:

(1)   eat less
(2)   don't ask for money all the time
(3)   are easier to train
(4)   normally come when called
(5)   never ask to drive the car
(6)   don't hang out with drug-using people
(7)   don't smoke or drink
(8)   don't want to wear your clothes
(9)   don't have to buy the latest fashions
(10) don't need a gazillion dollars for college
(11) if they get pregnant, you can sell their children ..

I went to our local York furmeet over the weekend, and as usual, had a great time.  Quality people and good clean fun.  DevilPony, Kyraeus, Subwoofer, Swift Fox, Koebie, Sweeper, Zero Whitefang, Trajan, Autumn, Caddie, and myself invaded the local TGI Fridays restaurant.  It was really busy so it took a long time to get our tables.
( Read more, with a picture... )

The inguinal muscles of my thighs are still a little sore and stiff from squeezing horsey between my legs.  No, not my plushie, a real horse.  I was doing trotting posts on and off for about an hour, without stirrups, so it was a real workout.  As you can surmise, I had another riding lesson; it went sort of okay this time, I guess.  Last time was a scary experience.

( more about all of this... )

Lion sings and wishes mrianti  a very happy birthday today.

Thinking about switching to Verizon DSL, my current ISP is dialup.  Need more speed for my increased surfing of furry art, and dialup doesn't cut it for streaming video.

If I switch, it will cost me twice as much each month.  I'll also lose my private email account, and the free web site space my ISP provides.  But it will be a lot faster (so they say).  [Edit 2-18-09: I have to confirm this, but just found out Verizon gives you these also, so I won't be losing anything except more $.]

Problem is, I have to sign up for a 2-year agreement.  The contract has a $100 "punishment" fee if you bail out of their plan before 2 years.  Only reason I would ever bail out would be for loss of my income- otherwise, I don't have a problem staying with Verizon for two years or more.  But if I would lose my job, the internet will be one of the first things to go as I can't afford stuff on zero income... and that would be the worst possible time to be nailed with the $100 charge.  In these times.  I hate this contract crap.

Well, I have a few days left to decide, offer expires on the 21st.  Don't know what I'm gonna do yet.  Sure would be nice to speed things up here, but I don't like these contract deals.

Bought an equestrian riding helmet today with some money I got for Christmas.  I'll get my first chance to try it out Wednesday evening.