Wow, a week since I last posted here. That’s probably not good.

It’s been an exciting week.

Last weekend was quite lovely. Saturday Linnaeus and I drove down to Bev-Art in Beverly (an island of yuppiness in the middle of ohmygod-walk-with-your-crucifix-before-you-Myrtle). It’s the best of the homebrew shops I’ve seen in Chicago, and I was impressed by their selection of hops and yeast in stock. Linnaeus bought a kegging setup and I daydreamed about buying a jockey box before Midwest FurFest (not gonna happen, but it’s nice to dream). Afterwards we stopped by the Coffee & Tea Exchange, which had a good selection of coffee beans a lot cheaper than Whole Foods. Then we went to a fabulous little café for brunch. It was a wonderful way to start the weekend. I spent the afternoon working on the Restaurant and Services Guide for MFF, plus a little break time spent with Jak and Daxter. In the evening we met up with daveqat and jimcyl and drove up to Milwaukee. There we spent a lovely evening in the company of werellama and mistletoe and tecknow and his boyfriend.

Sunday was more work on the Restaurant Guide, then it was off to justincheetah‘s Halloween Party. I wound up working in the kitchen, which was just fine by me – sadly, I can say I knew only a handful of folks there, and that provided a nice way for me to keep busy. Plus, it was fun! I wound up spending a lot of the time chatting with wyldekyttin, Vlad, Gudi, and datahawk, which was fun too.

Tuesday night Linnaeus hosted a small get-together at his place to watch election returns and either celebrate or share the misery. Unfortunately, it turned out that the latter was the case, but there was plenty of alcohol in which to drown our sorrows (more cranberry juice!). And last night was a second outing to Cafe Boost, which had a smaller turnout but was still entertaining, despite the late bedtime for me.

One of the things that has really loomed large over me over the last few weeks has been Midwest FurFest preparations. When I haven’t been working on con-related stuff, I’ve been worrying about con-related stuff. And there’s always the feeling that time is growing short and there’s still so much more to do. The stress of getting a new job, the moving, the geographic separation from my husband, and general griping and complaints from staff and nonstaff have really taken their toll on me. I’m not burned out yet, but I can see it from here. Granted, by next year the job and separation stressors will be gone, but something is going to have to change in the way I’ve been handling things – this is too much for me, and if I continue this way for another year I’ll be completely fried by MFF 2005. I’m not sure what I need to do differently just yet, but it’s something I need to give some serious thought to.

Whining aside, things are actually proceeding reasonably well. We’ve gotten a somewhat larger space for Thursday night registration, which is good since based on our room nights for that night we’ll be handling between 50% and 100% more people Thursday night than last year. All of the printed items have been delivered and are safely in hand (or stacked in Linnaeus’ hallway 🙂 and the only thing still to be delivered is the engraved staff badges. Once the final programming schedule goes up, I’ll be mailing those who have volunteered for Registration and setting up a staff work schedule. There’s a lot of other small things to be done (like buying binder clips for the message boards), but that will get accomplished by next weekend.

Then there’s the car repairs. After the accident, I was able to drop the car off on Friday and get a rental car – no problems there. What I’ve found out since is that it looks like it’s pretty much inescapable that our insurance rates are going to go up – an average of about $40/month, in the worst case scenario. According to the state of North Carolina insurance laws (and we’re still insured in NC), any damage over $1800 is two insurance points, and any damage over $3000 is three insurance points. I found out today that is the combined payout, meaning the damage to my car and the other person’s.

Well, after talking to the body shop earlier this week, I see how the initial estimate could have gone up from $1891 to $2840 (internal damage under the hood that they didn’t see initially). Couple that with the fact that at the very least they’re going to need to replace the other person’s bumper ($500 minimum), and the increase in rates is inescapable. I looked into paying down the bill on the spot to lower the payout by the insurance company, but when you look at the money spent up front versus the money spent over time, it’s better to just take the insurance increase over the next three years.

The one wildcard in this is what happens when we transfer to Illinois. I’m not sure if the record of the insurance “points” from NC will carry over or not, or only if we stay with State Farm. We’re basically going to need to see what kind of rate quotes we get and do some shopping around.

As for this coming weekend, takaza is flying in tonight, and we’re going to spend the weekend at Z’Ha’Dum (aka Chez Feren), as well as have some lunch with roho and genet (and meet their new puppy!), go to perro‘s birthday party, and then the MFF staff meeting on Sunday. I can’t wait to see my wonderful wuff!