ConCarolinas 2018

I love ConCarolinas, it's one of my favorites cons to go to. Todd doesn't like it because there aren't enough people he wants to get autographs from, though he did consider having me go on Sunday to get Adam Copland's (aka Edge from WWE) autograph. In the end, Emily and I just went for Saturday.

Like at SC Comicon, Emily and I were cosplaying as Pikachu (her) and Anna from Frozen (me). My choice of costume was pretty much because it's the most comfortable to make the two hour drive to Charlotte.

We got there around 9:30 so we had time to get our badges and head to the dealer's room. Since the dealer's room didn't open until 10 we hung around in the hallway talking to the SCA folks. They told me that there was a chapter of the SCA in Asheville and how to go about contacting them. I've been interested in the SCA for years, but it always all seemed overwhelming. But I did send an email and joined the local chapter's Facebook page. I've been to a couple of fighting practices, and hope to actually suit up and fight next time. But I digress.

Once the dealer's room opened, Emily hemmed and hawed about what she wanted to spend her money on. And then she saw that one of the booths had a tiny kitty that you could hold for a dollar - it was for an animal shelter. So I paid a dollar and she went into cat heaven.

After her cat time was done, she ended up buying some Pokemon cards. One was a big set that the

guy had discounted because the packaging was torn. It was a really good deal.

We left the dealer's room to go play D&D. The game we were scheduled to play in was for higher level players, but there weren't enough people signed up who had high enough characters. So one of the DM's ran a different game. It was two adults (including me) and then three kids. The other two kids were Emily's age and it made for a really fun game.

Emily played a wizard and at one point in the game, she put a rock to sleep. She was very proud of that. We ended up killing the rock as well.

From there, we took another swing around the dealer's room, and I paid so I could cuddle the kitty. Emily petted the kitty as I held him, and was in kitty heaven again. We also took a picture with the Ghostmobile that they had outside. Just as we went out there, the sky opened up and we got a little wet. Someone was nice enough to take our picture despite the rain.

We had some time before my friend Mikey's show was going to start so we went to see Valentine Wolfe play. I hadn't heard them before, but they were really good. Lots of dark, gothy rock that was really awesome.

Once they were done playing, we moved up to the front row since that's where Emily wanted to sit and listened to Mikey's concert. He always puts on such a great show!

After that, we were tired so we headed home. It was a lot of fun but I definitely want to stay the whole weekend next year. It makes for a very long day with four hours on the road.

Rest in Peace Star Kitty

Yesterday I came out into the living room like I always do. Emily was with me since she had just woken up. We were talking and I noticed our oldest wasn’t moving. I nudged him and it was obvious he had passed away.

We adopted Star back in 2005. He was at this really bad shelter in Hendersonville that had rows and rows of cages. He was very sweet so we brought him home. A few years later that shelter closed down because of issues with being cruel to animals.

The shelter had named him Starburst because of a white patch on his head and because they thought he was a girl. But when we took him in to be fixed, the vet told us that she was a he and he was already neutered.

We changed his name to Star since that was a little more manly. He adjusted to being our pet quite well even after we added another cat, Willow, and a baby to the mix. He was always so sweet with Emily even as a baby.

A while ago he started losing weight and having breathing issues. We took him to the vet but the vet couldn’t find anything wrong. He didn’t seem to get worse but he didn’t get better either.

So it wasn’t that surprising that he passed but it was shocking to find him that way. We aren’t sure how old he was but we had him for 8 years. He was a great kitty and he’ll be sorely missed.