So, we’re into another week. Another day closer to MFF. Yeek.

No new word on the job front, but that’s cool. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on the job in Ohio – it would be a good position, I think, even if the location may not be the greatest. We could certainly do worse.

We had a busy weekend. On Friday, me_not_you and wildmouse and Thomas and Sherry came over and we cooked up steaks and enjoyed some excellent wine. Hey, Rasslor – we finally cracked open the Habersham Winery Georgia Scarlett and, I have to say, it was excellent! Thanks again from bringing it up, and maybe next time you bring a bottle we’ll actually open it while you’re here so you can have some 🙂

Saturday was an interesting bit of choreography. After seeing takaza off to a physical therapy appointment, I joined Donald and Janelle in a trip up to the local homebrewing shop (the only one in a 50-mile radius, I might add). We picked up another carboy and the ingredients for a brown ale. We met up with Dan in time for lunch at the tasty MacGregor Ale House (mmm, good food and football. Yeah!), then adjourned back to the house. Dan squeezed in a bit of work on the con book and also made a tasty beef stew while I made brownies. Then it was time to hustle over to Thomas and Sherry’s for their Halloween party. Great food, great company, lots of really good wine and champagne. Mmmm, yummy,

Was the night over after that? No! It was time to stop by Clyde and Pony’s Halloween shindig that they threw for the CarolinaFurs (hell, it was all of five minutes from our house – it’s not like we had any excuse not to stop by and be sociable). It was a pleasure to meet Clyde and Pony, and it’s always great to see Perro. We met the elusive tervicz, played with Pooka, Clyde and Pony’s adorable husky, and got to meet Pony’s neurotic bird and his ill-tempered mutant lake bass. Somehow, we also wound up talking MFF business while we were there (how the hell did that happen?) and put some folks’ minds to rest about some misinterpretations of the Artists’ Den rules. Anyway, we also saw zenwolph there and, as planned, he crashed for the night at our place not long after.

On Sunday, after a lovely morning of chatting with Zen and enjoying some tasty French toast, Donald and Thomas came over and we cooked up the brown ale we had bought the ingredients for on Saturday. All went well and I sent five gallons on beer home with Donald, where I’m sure it’s bubbling and foaming away even as I type this. Zen sacked out on the couch for a few hours, which was cool because that gave us a bit of time to unwind and read the newspaper. Once he got motivated again, we grabbed dinner at Chili’s, then sent him on his way back to Richmond. We spent the evening working on the Restaurant Guide and conbook stuff – a quiet night, but pleasant.

So, for the near future: More work on the restaurant guide today, putting together a map for it. Possibly might work up a big map with numbers keyed to the individual restaurants that we could post someplace – we’ll see how motivated I am. I need to get the attendee badge layout to Dan tonight so it can go to the printer tomorrow, and sometime soon, as soon as it’s all finalized, grab the programming schedule off the web and convert it into some format suitable for the con book. Oh, and somewhere in there I have to continue working on the HACCP course – I finished all the coursework on the other two classes I’m taking, but the HACCP course is going to require more time. With luck I can wrap it up before MFF, though.

Beer-wise, thebroomecloset and ovrclockd expressed interest in making a batch of stout, so that may well be next on the agenda. I also want to make a batch of Christmas beer (similar to Anchor’s fabulous annual Christmas brews) that I can put into the keg and serve at the Gang Christmas party (and probably for a good while thereafter, but that’s OK). Those might have to wait until after we get back from Chicago, though, since the next two weeks are going to be somewhat insane. We’ll definitely be bottling the English Special Bitter that I currently have in the fermenter this week, probably on Tuesday. That should be ready for MFF – talk to me if you’d like to try a sample 😉 On a side note, I found that the venerable Cat’s Meow, the immense compendium of homebrew recipes that was a great reference when I was brewing back at Virginia Tech, is still around and even downloadable in PDF – all 310 pages of it (the first link is browsable in HTML, though). It’s a great resource, and I’m awed as ever by the compiled wisdom of the net working together to continue to keep it around and available (and even providing an updated way to share recipes!)

And now, off to start the day!