pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FIRE AND FUR Well, thanks to Tiger, I've now been spellchecked down from "PyroGuySr" to "pierogi." *grins* It's been a busy week in Lake Woebegon... I told you I'd come back and fill in some of the details. This is the same entry as my LiveJournal for you dual-bloggers out there. My cousin flew me back to Indiana on Friday, June 24th. My brother picked me up and promptly took me to White Castle. I think it's an indoctrination program of some sort. You need to eat White Castle sliders in order to quickly assimilate back into Midwest culture. Don't get me wrong! I love my sliders. Those belly bombs still taste as great as they did long ago. Just keep the windows rolled down and we'll all be fine. Saturday, I made the three hour journey up to Iron Ridge, Wisconsin to see some net friends I'd lost touch with a few years back. Their darling daughter, Danyele, was having her graduation party. Now, Danyele and I used to have marathon conversations late at night on ICQ. She told me things she couldn't tell her parents. Of course, I told her the same things her folks were saying, but couched in different terms. Anyway, Danyele is now 18, gorgeous and makes me wish I were 30 years younger. She immediately burst into tears when she saw me and hugged me for almost 10 minutes. I have never been missed that much by someone and it really touched me. She kept hugging me every time she passed me and cried several times. The poor girl has had her share of difficulties, not the least of which is that Iron Ridge (population 843, if I remember)is in the middle of NOWHERE. But she also fought some nodes on her brain that were precursors to multiple sclerosis (MS). She went through chemotherapy and suffered through things that no high school junior and senior should EVER have to suffer through. I truly do love her and hope that she does well, whatever path she decides to take. Now, seeing my friends, KC (stands for her nickname "Kiss Chris") and Mark was also a delight. They were the first folks I'd ever met from the net. They also introduced me to another friend, Cheri (and her husband, Mike) Seidl. I had fun watching them and talking to them. They are really beautiful, wonderful people... the kind of friends you can count on to watch your back. Now that I have them in my email adress book again, you can bet I'll be in contact more often. Then I shot fireworks. Dyer Freedom Festival on Sunday. Now, I wore shorts for the first time at a fireworks show. I don't normally do that because my legs are SO white that I can be seen by the naked eye from the space station. So I applied SPF 45. I missed a stripe on my left leg (which now sports a RED stripe) and the shirt I was wearing, along with the gallon of sweat I exuded (it was 99 degrees out with about the same percent humidity)...anyway, the shirt slowly wiped away the lotion on my neck. Yes, you can now legally say that I am truly a "Redneck." It got burned. Bad. And I didn't bring my usual cures... Vitamins A, E and Calcium. Had to wait two days to get it. By then it was too late. If I do those right after the fireworks show, I generally don't even peel. It just goes away! So now I have TWO beacons for the space station. I wore long pants the rest of the time. Saturday, I really wanted to go visit my old writers group, but we scored another small fireworks show for a wedding at this place called Monte Fiori. If you're ever in Chicago or getting married, hold the reception there! It's beautiful... plus we do the fireworks! I had something happen there that has never happened before in the 13 years I've been shooting. I had a shell get sucked out of the gun by the other two shells going off. I looked and saw a leader burning and wondered if it was just from another shell... then I saw the shell at the end of it and thought, "Oh Shit!"... but, while I respect the explosive power of shells, I know they won't hurt me in my nomex suit... so I turned my back to it and let it blow up. Only caused a small fire which I easily put out. All the other fireworks shows were fantastic and I could give you details of how good our crew is, but most of it would be meaningless to anyone that hasn't spent 8 hours setting up a show. Needless to say... it WAS fantastic. Then was two days home with mom. One of the reasons I went home as well - to check up on mom. Mom fell a few weeks back and twisted her ankle. Then she fell the previous weekend and bruised herself up pretty badly. So my brother Jim got her 24 hour care. Mom's 84. Mom's cranky. Mom's set in her ways. It was Tuesday. I don't ask much, but I wanted to watch "NCIS" and "House" - just two shows... two hours out of the week to interrupt her continuous TV watching schedule. Mom doesn't "like" those shows. It's her house. I didn't get to watch. I did get to see more of the rat this year... erm... cat... I mean, "Snowball" - her fucking furball psychotic, mean, viscious, unsocialble bitch of a cat. Every one of the home care people remarked about how the rat...erm... Snowball... had hissed at them and then charged them. As I told each one; "When Mom goes, the cat goes in the coffin with her... dead OR alive!" It is the only cat on the face of this planet Earth that I absolutely abhor and hate with every fibre of my being. My brother, Jim, bought it for her because it whined so pitifully at the Humane Society when he went to get it. It curled up and purred in his lap when they took it to Mom's. Now it hates him. No, wait, it hates ALL men... and most women too. Snowball better hope my mom lives to her full potential age of 96 because it WILL NOT live longer than she does. I guarantee that! But enough there. Mom's fine. I cooked for her and she enjoyed it. She doesn't eat much, so I had to really reduce the amounts I was cooking. I still ended up eating two portions. But I miss Mom. Love her dearly. I just need to make a mental note to bring home another TV next time I go for a visit. Back to the fireworks... So, I did 5 shows in 6 days, then got on the bus to take me to the airport. I arrived at the station in PLENTY of time, but the bus was 40 minutes late. Then it took 2 hours to get to Midway from Hammond because of all the construction on I-80 and 294... so I missed my flight by five minutes. I have to say that I do love Southwest Air. They didn't even bat an eyelash and had me on the next flight out. Mom gave me a bag of Hershey's Nuggets... Dark Chocolate with almonds. I gave them out to each flight crew and each counter person I worked with. On the flight from BWI to RDU, I was in the back of the plane, so I gave the flight attendant enough for every one of the crew. She took it up front and I heard the flight engineer (a female) just about scream "OOOH! CHOCOLATE!!!!!!! Of course, it flew into Baltimore-Washington. I almost thought I should just stop there and crash at Tiger's house, but I didn't know anyone to call to pick me up. Would have saved a lot of sleep time for me, because I flew from there to Raleigh, then woke up at 8 am and promptly drove up to Baltimore (to pick up mail) then up to Philly for Anthrocon! Lots of small fiasco's this time. Anthrocon was now in downtown Philadelphia at the Wyndham. Next year, they are moving it to Pittsburgh. But this hotel was quite nice. We stayed at the Travelodge about 6 blocks away. They messed up my reservation, but I got it straightened out with just a little coaxing. Actually, the manager was quite nice. We weren't the only furries staying there though... but we got a nice, small, quiet, small, clean, small, air conditioned room. Did I mention it was small? It was within walking distance, though, and had a couple good pizzeria's close by - even though I was sick of pizza by then... Tim, my cousin, would give us all frozen pizzas after each fireworks show. Not that it was bad, it was really great of him to do so. I just got tired of eating it. Anyway, it was close to a lot of neat things... the French Provinciale decor of the city hall was nice. Forgot to get a picture of it. Independence Hall was less than a mile away and I walked over there on Saturday. Unfortunately, I needed to get there about three hours earlier than the 10:40 am I got there. A line formed all the way around the block to see the Liberty Bell (which cracked 15 years before the Declaration of Independence, thank you) and Independence Hall. OK, so I get all worked up and misty about visiting places with historic interest. It has always been that way with me. I love to stand in awe of my country's founders. I love the fact that I was standing on the same soil as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. It's a connection to the past. I absorb it through my soles. At Anthrocon, I got a lot of compliments on my handlebar moustache. I have to chuckle. A lot of the kids thought it was "cool" and asked me how long it took to grow (16 months so far). I told them, "You end up eating a lot of hair until it gets to the point where you can wax it. But I'd achieved some level of fame there. While there, the fur suiters managed to piss off only a few folks here and there that didn't quite understand what the Con was all about... especially the folks that were there for the wedding on Sunday. "Mom" seemed to get upset on the elevator as it stopped on each floor and either someone sporting body paint and a tail or someone else in full fur suit costume got on. I, myself, got asked a few times what Anthrocon was about. After listening to furries stumble around about dressing up like sports mascots and crap, I looked at the people and said, "It's a graphic arts convention. Artists come here from all over the U.S. to sell their comic books and other art. It's called "Anthrocon" because the artists give their animal characters (anthropomorphic) human traits... just like Walt Disney did for Mickey Mouse and Warner Brothers did with Bugs Bunny." I usually get an understanding "OH!" after that... and nods from the peeps in the fur suits. The drive back was long and uneventful. We got in at 2:30 am and I went to work the next day. I'm still trying to recover. This weekend is TrinoCon here in the Raleigh-Durham area. It's new for us and it's local. And that's the news from Lake Woebegon where the women are strong, the men are good-looking and the children are above average. 1:25 a.m. - 2005-07-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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