Dairycon

by on April 7, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Dairycon has come and gone and today we drive home. There will be a few more toys in the car than when we went. A few lesser dollars in our billfolds or bank accounts. And there will be the memories of another year spent with a hundred or so of our closest friends in the world.

I love weekends like this. And I’m going to love going back home and sleeping in my own bed as well. Few things remind me how much I love my bed like sleeping in a hotel bed for a night or two. 😉

So here’s the spending a weekend with friends. And here’s to getting back to our own comfy beds. 🙂

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Dairycon

by on April 6, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Today is Dairycon, a gathering of one or two hundred closest friends who love Transformers almost as much or more than I do. We are coming together in sunny Fond du Lac Wisconsin in the Cow Palace of the Fairgrounds. Yes. There is a bit of cow-themed humor in this convention.

I wonder what they would think of my copy of BattleCattle? I think I will bring it with me just to see what they think. Yes, I’m writing this before I go, so by the time you read this I will already be there. Prewriting and posting to the future is an interesting form of time travel. 😉

There will be dealers here selling Transformers toys. Other toys too, since we are mostly toy geeks. Mostly stuff from the 80s since that’s our jam. But mostly Transformers of all ages. I’ll be setting up a couple XBox 360s for gaming and watching Transformers movies and shows.

So if you’re in the area, come on by and check us out. We’ll be the middle-aged adults with a fair sprinkling of young kids thrown in walking around with a bunch of toys and child-like grins on our faces. 😉

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Dairycon

by on April 5, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Some of you know that I like Transformers. The big robots from Cybertron, not the electrical grid thingies. Some of you have had learned more about Transformers than you ever wanted to know while talking to me. It is the danger of tripping into something I really enjoy. I go from zero stop not talking to talking about nothing else, and doing so until the subject is exhausted. Or the people talking about it are. And I rarely exhaust first. 😉

Well…I’m off to Dairycon this weekend. It’s a little gathering of a couple hundred close friends who happen to like Transformers as much or more than I do. Yes. It is possible. And yes, we will all be together in one location. In sunny Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Do not blame us if anything odd happens there. 😉

It’s game night tonight, so we’ll have all kinds of Transformers related games provided for people to play. Come on over to the Cow Palace in the Fairgrounds and have some fun with us. You might even be able to ogle the collections some of the dealers are setting up at the same time. Not that any of us would cut the line early and buy anything tonight before the show opens. That would be totally unfair to all the people only arriving on Saturday. And we would never take advantage of our position in such an underhanded and…

Oh, who am I kidding? We would. We so TOTALLY would… 😉

Dairycon, here I come…

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Puppy Power

by on April 4, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Puppy Rides Again.

You may have read what I’ve written about the new puppy before. The night we took her from her person’s home, she was…unhappy. She fought. She nearly sent me sprawling down the stairs to keep me from taking her from home. And then the whole way in the car she was screaming and snarling and growling. And whenever we stopped, she would shout at anybody nearby that she was being dognapped.

Well, after relating that to her person’s kids, they told us that she doesn’t like car rides. No kidding. I thought that was a rather interesting downplay of her hatred of cars, but I figured it was mostly because she hadn’t seen her person in days and we were taking her away from her person’s home. And she didn’t want to leave.

Though we still approached her trip to the pet doctor with trepidation. It went off without a hitch. She was happy and went along with it like any dog on a ride. So, when it was time to do errands today, we chose to take her with to see how she would respond.

The short answer is, like any other dog. She sat up, looked out, and watched everything just like other dogs do. She never complained. She loved it. Well, that was anticlimactic. Nice. Certainly no Hell Ride From Beyond like the first one. And definitely not what I was worried would happen.

Tomorrow, she gets to go get her hair cut and her claws trimmed. We shall see how she enjoys that ride once it happens. I’m beginning to get optimistic though.

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Puppy Power

by on April 3, 2019 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Some of you may know that I recently acquired a new puppy. Well, she’s eleven years old, so puppy may be a bit of an exaggeration. And she was 19 pounds when we got her, so…maybe a bit big as well. My uncle died though, and she needed a home, so she found one with my mom. And since I live next door, she got me in the package deal.

Well, it’s been a few months, and the insanity of winter is melting away, and it was time for her to go in for a claw cutting, some hair trimming, and stuff like that. The basics you need to do for something that is on the Poodle-mix side of the dog spectrum. We asked my cousin where she went to the vet and walked in to find out what they knew about her. Turns out most of her vaccinations went poof in March, so she needs those before anybody will cut her hair. Those aren’t cheap. Two hundred bucks kind of “not cheap.”

But, what are you going to do? So we found a time to get her vaccinated before the hair cutting appointment, and then I went to sleep because I work overnights. And my Mom ended up driving her out to the pet hospital.

Now, the last time this girl was in a car, she screamed. She hadn’t seen her person in days, and while she knew us and liked us, we weren’t her people. And we were dognapping her from her home. From the one place she knew her person would have to come back to. And she screamed and fought and pleaded with us as we took her away.

It’s been months since then, and she noticed when I took her crate out into the car. And then Mom grabbed the leash that her person always used to take her on walks with. And she walked out happily with my mom, walked up to the car, and asked for help to get up into the crate. And then she quietly rode all the way to the pet hospital. There she said hello to all the people and dogs she could, had a good time meeting new people, and got a new wellness exam. She’s 16 pounds now. Lost three pounds under our care. The vet wants her to lose another pound if possible, but that’s a good improvement right there. So she got her shots, said hello to everybody as she left, and then led Mom right back to the car so she could ride back…home.

Tomorrow she gets to go back for a haircut and claw trimming. And I’m hopeful that she will have another good ride in the back of the car while doing so. And then she can come back home again.

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