Still recapping last week’s post-Midwest Furfest fun…

So, after seeing the new Harry Potter flick (good movie, about as expected – didn’t add to the book, but didn’t take anything away, either), we headed back to Rustitobuck‘s place and crashed for the night.

Tuesday was a nice, slow start. Datahawk spent the night at Rusty’s and we spent the morning chatting and waking up slowly. We finally got motivated around 2 PM, when the hunger pangs just wouldn’t go away. It was snowing outside, and the town had that lovely icing of white that makes everything look beautiful. We walked to a nice little Italian place just down from Rusty’s place and took a seat at the window. The scenery was beautiful, the food was tasty, and the company was excellent – I was in heaven. After a leisurely lunch, we adjourned to the bar in the back of the restaurant and played darts for about an hour (I won! Woo!). We spent the rest of the day just hanging out at Rusty’s, then going out and taking care of our accumulated laundry at a Laundromat nearby. Dinner was a so-so family restaurant, but again the company was good because Linnaeus was able to join us.

Wednesday found us making our usual trip to Oak Park to Penzeys Spices, then dinner at Gino’s East followed by an entertaining evening of hockey (thanks for the great tickets, Data!).

We spent Thanksgiving with Takaza‘s family – an early dinner with his mom, then visiting with his brother and sister-in-law. Again the company was good, and I had a good time. We even stopped by K Mart in McHenry and chatted with Giles (grabstein_69). Then it was a long drive back south to crash at Rusty’s place one last time.

On Friday, I got to do something a little different – go interview for a job! Right before the convention, I had a chat with my recruiter and he told me that a company I had had a successful phone interview with the week before was interested in flying me up. So it was that I found myself on a god awful early flight to Minneapolis. My flight landed at 8:15 AM, and I killed a little time at the airport, then took a cab to the offices to be there at 10 AM. I chatted with the vice-president of the company (it’s not that big a deal – there’s all of 12 people at the Minneapolis headquarters) for about an hour and 15 minutes, and got a tour of the facility. It’s a rough-and-ready kind of place, but looks like it could be a fun job. He drove me back to the airport and I caught the noon flight back to Chicago.

I’m really ambivalent about this job. I know that right now they’re looking at two engineers: me and a local guy. I’m told I’m the more technically proficient of the two, but if they hire me they’re going to have to pay relocation. The job sounds like a good one, though I have some reservations working for such a small company (they have a total of 60 employees in four locations). And there’s the biggest hurdle: we really want to be in Chicago. Yeah, Minneapolis is only a 6-7 hour drive from there, but that’s still a good distance away. So it comes down to this: They’re going to have to make me a hell of an offer to get me to take this job. If they really come through (and I’m looking for about a 10-15% increase over my last job’s salary, plus a really good relocation package) then we’ll have to give them serious thought. If they come up short, I’ll have no qualms declining their offer. They’re supposed to make a decision perhaps as early as the end of this week, but certainly by the end of the year. We’ll see how this plays out.

Anyway, Takaza and Linnaeus picked me up at the airport, and after a short stop at Rusty’s to pick up Datahawk and grab some lunch, we hit the road. Well, we left Linnaeus behind, but we took Datahawk with us 🙂 (As I put it, we got one of our friends from Chicago “to go”). We drove to Morehead, Kentucky (with a stop for dinner at the yummy Mug ‘n’ Bun in Indianapolis) and crashed for the night at the fabulously cheap and mostly clean Ramada Inn there, then drove the rest of the way on Saturday.

So, here we are back in North Carolina – safe, sound, and about as sane as we ever were. Datahawk will be with us until Monday or Tuesday, and her company is much appreciated. That pretty much brings you up to date, if you were keeping track of our lives carefully 🙂

Remember, there will be a quiz!