Well, I suppose I owe y’all a decent recap of the weekend, now that I have some decent net access.

I drove down to O’Hare after work on Friday afternoon, learning a nifty shortcut between Northbrook and Rosemont along the way. My flight out was delayed, unfortunately, then delayed again, and again. I finally landed in Raleigh at 12:30 AM, and hour and 15 minutes later than scheduled. takaza picked me up and I got to spend the night sleeping next to my wuff, which made me very happy.

Saturday morning we got a too-early start, as me_not_you and wildmouse joined us at 9 PM sharp. Did I mention that they had stopped by on Friday night before Dan got home and loaded up the truck so it was ready when he got home? You just can’t get better friends than these guys. We were joined shortly thereafter by vileone and vilejynx and Thomas, with scarlett_fire coming along later after she ran some errands. Fuzzytoes brought his trailer, which was a fantastic addition. ZenWolph drove down from Richmond to help as well, because he’s just that cool.

We didn’t have the good fortune to have a 28-foot truck this time, so we made do with a 14-footer, making two trips on Saturday (in addition to the one that was made Friday night). We wrapped everything up by 3 PM, which wasn’t too bad, I thought. We adjourned to Dakota Grill for some tasty good and good company, then Dan, Zen, and I adjourned back to the new place to hang out and relax before heading off to bed moderately early.

The new place – that’s an interesting concept. It’s actually quite lovely – an older ranch-style house, 1,600 square feet, fenced back yard, on a very grassy acre-and-some. I wish we had bought a house like this when we first moved down to NC, but oh well. (And I’m not just being complimentary because I know our new landlord will read this 🙂 It’s a good place to be, however temporarily, and in a lot of ways I wish we had had something like this sooner.

On Sunday we started slowly, which was a pleasant change from Saturday. I really enjoy those weekend mornings, chatting with friends over laptops (’cause we’re ALL geeks!). We eventually got motivated and met most of the group from the previous day over at Johnny Carrino’s, an Olive-Garden-like chain restaurant. I splurged a bit and had an incredibly tasty Bellini (I want more of these!!!) and the food was excellent overall. Then it was back to the house to relax a bit. Zen headed home (thanks so much for your help, and for your company!), and soon it was time for me to go back to the airport.

This being-apart thing from Takaza really sucks. The one thing that is good is that between now and Midwest FurFest we’ll be seeing each other every two weeks or so, as he’ll be flying up to Chicago the weekends of October 22 and November 5. After that…well, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.

My flight back was uneventful, and I stayed up far too late Sunday night. Monday dragged, as you’d expect, but after work I did get a little done, picking up some new shoes and some shelves to make my little corner of Linnaeus’ place more livable.

So now it’s on to the rest of the week. I need to stop and pick up some coffee beans and maybe some groceries tonight (Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s? We’ll see…) and maybe even get a haircut, finally. I’ve got a pile of MFF-related stuff to work on as well. As for this weekend, I’ll be working on adding some information to the Restaurant Guide (which will be the Restaurant and Services Guide this year, and might even have maps!) and catching a hockey game as well. Yay!