So the trip to Chicago was somewhat fruitful, I’d say. I made some good contacts, and have a line on some possible contract work with Abbott Laboratories. We’ll see if anything comes of that. Meanwhile, there’s still Amfine and Static Controls, either of which could call and offer me a job, and Honeywell, who I should be hearing if they want me to come in for an interview sometime this week. So, as usual, stuff is still up in the air.

When I last wrote anything of note, I was about to head off to Froggy’s for dinner with Linnaeus and Datahawk.

After a wonderful round of drinks at the bar at the front of the restaurant (I was able to get pastis, which always makes me happy), we retired to the restaurant. We were shown to a nice, secluded booth which was quite cozy and comfortable. We looked over the menu and saw, tucked away on the back, a variety of prix fixe meals, including one called “Chef’s Choice”. The waiter explained that each of the four courses (cold appetizer, hot appetizer, entree, and dessert) had a sampling of whatever the chef wanted to show off that night, typically small portions of three different items. All three of us took the plunge and put ourselves in the chef’s hands. Here’s what we had (and I’m doing the chef a disservice by leaving off some of the descriptions of the sauces, but I can’t remember them all):

Cold Appetizer
Paupiette of Dover sole (don’t feel bad, I didn’t know what it meant either)
Paupiette of salmon
Raw Ahi tuna filet with a balsamic vinaigrette

Hot appetizer
Shrimp ravioli with lobster sauce on a bed of steamed spinach
Medallion of monkfish wrapped in bacon

Lemon sorbet in vodka to cleanse the palate

Entree
Grilled lamb chops
Pheasant Wellington
Duck breast in a black currant sauce

Dessert
Autumn tart with apple, pear, and apricot
Mini Summer Tart
White/Dark chocolate mousse cake

Rich, dark coffee

Oh. My. God. What an amazing meal. The food was excellent, the company even better. And the most amazing part: the cost for the Chef’s Choice Prix Fixe Menu? $36. Damn. I will be going back, there’s no question. Thanks to Linnaeus for introducing me to this place – I’m in love!

Wednesday was a fun night out with daveqat, jimcyl, linnaeus, awfulhorrid, chouette, and rustitobuck. Again, great company, plus we got a lot of good MFF geekage taken care of. This makes me happy.

On Thursday, after a tasty Mexican lunch with feren and Linnaeus, I drove back down to Chambana. Worked on some MFF budgeting stuff with mirkowuff, then we joined some of the CHUFF folks for Happy Hour. That was a lot of fun – there’s some great folks there. And careful, rcfoot, I may hold you to that pledge for MFF’s charity 🙂

Friday was The Great Drive Home. Already mentioned, yay.

Saturday was fun too. Because, you know, I don’t see enough people or something, we had me_not_you, Thomas, Sherry, ursulav and her husband James over for dinner. We made a nice pork roast, Buca di Beppo‘s garlic mashed potatoes, and a delicious panzanella. After dinner we retired to the living room and chatted the night away. Lovely!

And on Sunday…we did very little. And it was good. We finally ran some errands around 5 PM, then watched some TiVo goodness when we got home (including the first two episodes of Wolf’s Rain, which Cartoon Network is now airing).

Today was spent mostly just catching up on bills, applying to jobs and other fun stuff. There’s a possible trip to Charlotte and maybe my parents’ place this week, but we’ll see how things work out. And now, back to the job boards…