Well most of the important challenges for this year are almost behind me and hopefully life will become more normal now...
Work:
At work, I am still in probation time for another 6 weeks which means here in Québec that they can fire me at any time just because they don’t like the way I lace my shoes or the way I looked at them; after that 6 weeks, they’ll need a real reason and they will have to go through the system (which protects the employees over the employer). That said; I do my best to impress and integrate myself to the group there.
I still can feel some sparkles going between me and my immediate boss but I am starting to slowly eat away the image she got of me after their little psychological-profile (which left her somewhat intimidated by me). This week, they fired the young man that was working with me which means that now I do the work for two for the summer (since they won’t hire someone back before business picks up again) but it also means that it will be harder to fire me ;) .
As for work itself, I am getting more and more use to their software and even task I haven’t done yet on it feels almost intuitive at this point. As for the picking, the billing and other chores are now becoming automatics which makes the work a lot less stressful and I come back home less tired every weeks.
What The Fur:
This year, WTF stressed me greatly and I made so many nightmares because of that convention. Many of the core staff went through hell at the beginning of 2011; two lost their jobs, three got health problems that lasted for almost a month each, a family was broken and one feared losing his job. All that in the more crucial time for promoting the con which made it up more difficult to bring the amount of people we wanted for the con this year.
Many of our friends and regular attendees (I know it is only our second years but there are people who you know will show year after year) went through rough time (lost jobs, awaiting operation, sickness and such) couldn’t make it this year. I had to beg people to have panels this year. We didn’t got quite the number of panels we wanted but the quality of our panels were extraordinary, thanks to our panellist which did a wonderful job this year again.
We are still learning from our mistake and there are things I saw that will change next year if I am still director of programming. For the first years, I gave each director the time slot that they wanted for their activities; next year will be a bit different. The fusuit game will have to be on Saturday afternoon and I’ll make some change to promote the Saturday night dance (which we want it to become the best convention dance ever). One thing is sure is that we will still have the Rock Band in the Grand Salon on Friday night.
No matter the problems we had before the convention, I must say that I was impressed about how things went this year at WTF. We only had three incident related to the con this year: First, our Rock Band Drum died on us Friday night L so InsaneFox went a new one for Saturday night. Second, we were lacking a set of portable speaker for the Rockband (it seems that sometime you don’t learn from your mistake) but that was settle within the hour. Last, our life model cancelled on us but we were able to find a wonderful fur that jumped in and modeled for our artists.
Every single little glitch was taking care on the spot, calmly and swiftly. This year there weren’t any running around after our tail and even though I got only five hours of sleep and 45 minutes to eat my meal of the day; I still got a tad bit of time to chat here and there with old friends and made a few new ones. All the events and panels started on time with a few exception (like the furgame and the masquerade) that started less than 15 minutes late and for that I am proud of everyone (staff and attendees) to have help WTF to roll that smoothly. And man, I never saw a teardown going so quick...
I was able to hide myself from my duties for a full hour on Saturday and I want to thank Belic, K’Gra and their group for giving me refuge for the con. I know it will sounds weird but focussing my mind on massaging the stress out off muscles and talking about things that are not furries helped me rebuild my energy. Thank you for letting me in your little gathering that night; it was really special for me. Another of the great moment was when HollyAnn gave me back my commission; I already had seen it on her FA but it is even better on paper and to best it, I got my first HollyAnn hugs at the dead dog later that weekend :D .
I also want to apologize to many of the attendees and friends to which I didn’t have the time to chat with and especially to Sedge which i saw briefly at the dead dog. I had to leave him shortly to great someone else and one thing leading to another, I was gone longer than I should have been and when I looked for him again, he was gone. I feel like I lost the occasion to reach out for a new friendship and I am sorry if I left him alone. I’ll try to amend myself next time I see him L
I have been staff on many conventions, shows, competitions and I never got any PCDs to any of these occasions; I was proud of what we accomplished but also happy that it was over. This year, WTF was so special that I was sad that it was over and left with a good case of PCD.... Welcome back in the fandom Kildoo J
Life:
I found and signed a new lease for the first of July. I was looking for something a bit bigger than what I have (we live in a 4 ½ at the moment) and I found something smaller (3 ½). We will be moving one corner from where we are now, closer to the river. We will be living on the first floor with many windows, two small yards and a fair size basement (concrete floor, unfinished ceiling and roughly finished walls). I can wait to move in there and see what I can do with the basement; and it will be nice to be able to sit on the grass or to be able to go take a bike ride without having to fight our way out of the basement with our bicycle each time we want to ride. I might even try to suspend a queen bed in the basement and adapt it to be able to quickly transform it between a guest room and a play room ;)
Now that most of the stress is behind me, I have a bit more energy and my libido is starting to kick in again. I’m also able now to show my mate how much I love him and how he means the world to me (and I am not talking about sex here). We started to walk again and I plan to show our nice province to my mate this year if I can afford the gas expenses. It feels good to be able to get in touch with my emotion again.
Last but not lease, I was feeling really bad with the extra weight I was carrying (I went up to 189 lbs) but since I started my new work, I have been losing about a pound a week and I am now wavering around the 181 lbs). I hope getting back to my normal range (155 lbs) before the end of summer.
Well, the DVD is almost over and so is my inspiration so I’ll stop here and keep some topics for future updates.
Kildoo out