I knew going into the weekend that I was going to get precious little done. And what do you know? I was right!

They were predicting a big snowstorm to hit the Chicago area starting on Friday. I hightailed it home Friday afternoon, stopping for a brief run through the besieged Jewel Supermarket to grab a few staples. The place was a mob scene, of course, though not quite as bad as I’ve seen in North Carolina when snow is predicted. The people there seemed to have a “we’re all in this together” attitude, and that helped. By 7 PM the snow had started falling, and I resigned myself to a quiet night, chatting with friends and watching a few things on TiVo.

Saturday morning I slept in until 8:30, which is really unusual for me. As I expected, we were at 9″ on the ground and the snow was still falling. I’d guess we topped out at around 14 inches or so, yay. After a few false starts and telling ourselves that the food was worth it, Linnaeus and I ventured out into the teeth of the storm to walk the four blocks to Tre Kroner, a little Swedish restaurant.

Wow, what a fabulous place. The coziness was extremely welcome after the walk, and the coffee was quite tasty, too. Paul and I each ordered something different,t hen split it so we could get a good overview of the menu. We ordered a cinnamon roll (weirdly lemony, and not enough cinnamon), a maple pecan danish (delicious!), vanilla-orange French toast (yum!), and an omelet with roast beef, red peppers, goat cheese, and Jarlsberg cheese that was unconventional, but quite tasty. It was a great brunch, and surprisingly inexpensive. We really need to go back for dinner some night and try the traditional Swedish smorgasbord. And no, neither of us said “Bork, bork, bork!” while we were there. Nyah.

The rest of the weekend was spent lazing about, doing a bit of laundry, and generally being slothful. Paul made a batch of chili on Saturday that unfortunately had a bit too much heat for my taste (for his too, it turned out). On Sunday I made chicken and dumplings that turned out quite well. I hadn’t made it with the peas before, but I really liked the addition. As always, I used Bisquick dumplings ’cause I like those a lot better than the baking-powder type.

So that brings us up to speed. The biggest problem I have today is that, because I ran out of Protonix over the weekend, I’ve been having problems with reflux. I wound up waking up twice last night, the second time at 4 AM and I never did get back to sleep. As a result, I’m really dragging this morning, though I’m trying to dose myself with caffeine as much as possible without kicking off the reflux again. Bleah. With luck, Takaza is going to express-mail the Protonix that came into Durham on Saturday today, but if that doesn’t happen I’m going to have to find my way to a Walgreens or Osco and get some Prevacid OTC (which takes 24 hours to work, just like Protonix). Bleah. I really need to stay on top of when to reorder medicines better – this is entirely my own fault.

Eh, back to work. Hopefully I’ll have something to write about later.