Well. Another weekend come and gone. Why am I so exhausted?

Well, on Friday we had planned to go to Sal & Carvao (caution: crappy Flash site ahead), a Brazilian steakhouse in Schaumburg, not far from the Midwest FurFest hotel. Roho, Genet, and Feren were to join us, but unfortunately had to drop out. Bummer. I picked up Datahawk after work, and we drove over just in time to meet takaza. We proceeded over to Sam’s Club and met up with Linnaeus and picked up some much-needed items (like a new bed frame). Then it was over to the restaurant, where we were joined by posicat. They seated us quickly and the feast began! Wow. Just wow. Those of you who have been to Rio Churrascaria with us in Raleigh will appreciate that the meat was better, the salad bar was better, and the service? The service is what The Angus Barn should have been. My water glass was never empty the entire night (a big gauge of service for me), and if wanted, for example, a new plate, I set my cutlery down and within thirty seconds the old plate was whisked away and replaced with a clean one. This place was absolutely amazing. Yeah, the price was pretty amazing too, being about 25% more what we paid in Raleigh, but it was definitely worth it. Many, many thanks to my parents, whose birthday present made the meal a heck of a lot more affordable! We’ll be going back to Sal & Carvao, though certainly not too often!

On Saturday we had an early start (much to our downstairs neighbor’s chagrin, oh well). We got the back bedroom of Paul’s condo cleared out and cleaned and ready for our furniture. The futon was stuffed into Paul’s car somehow to be dropped off at a dump (it never made it to one, but again, oh well). We grabbed a few items that had to go into storage and drove on up to Lake Villa. Roho and Genet arrived promptly at 11, and Feren quickly followed with the U-Haul trailer. Data and Posi were, um, a bit later. Anyway, we got to work emptying the truck. As I mentioned before, we went with ABF and I can really recommend them. We filled 20 feet of a 28-foot long truck with all of our stuff and they trucked it the 800 miles to Chicago for under $1,000, which is really damn impressive. Granted, we got gouged a bit by the $50 ramp rental on each end ($100 total) but in the end it was a really great deal.

It took us about three hours to move everything from the truck into the 10×20 storage space, and it’s pretty full in there now. I had hoped that we could leave an aisle to access anything we might need, but unfortunately that just didn’t happen. Ah well. On the bright side the kitchen boxes (which I would want access to the most, probably) are right up front. As one might expect, we had a couple of casualties during the move, the worst being one of the legs snapped off one of our end tables. It’s easily fixed with some glue and screws, though, so I think we fared reasonably well. I bequeathed our lawnmower to Roho and Genet, and we loaned them a full-sized bed, too. Feren picked up a couple of useful yard implements as well. We didn’t give Posi and Data anything because, well, where the hell would they put it? 🙂

With our headboard, dresser, and king mattress and box springs and miscellaneous boxes loaded into the trailer that Feren brought, we then headed down to BD’s for an enjoyable lunch, our way for saying “thank you” to everyone who busted their butts to help us move our stuff. Mmm, their mango whatchamacallit drink is mighty tasty. Then it was back into the city. Feren and I drove up the alley with his Expy and the trailer, and (with some dolt pulled up right behind us – TURN AROUND, MORON!) very quickly offloaded everything from the trailer into the parking lot behind Paul’s condo. Feren beat a hasty retreat back to his place since there was really no place to park and the trailer had to go back that night anyway. The next thirty minutes were the worst as we hauled the furniture and boxes up the stairs. It was only the second floor, but with my right knee going out and hurting even worse than my left knee did, I was pretty much useless. Dan and Paul did a great job of getting everything up, though. The bed went into place neatly and amazingly enough there’s room for everything in that little bedroom, though it’s still mighty tight.We poked around to get some stuff in order, but really pretty much collapsed early in the evening.

Sunday came and I was up too damn early, as usual. Dan was feeling pretty crappy with the cold/flu/plague that he had been fighting for the past few days, so we took it easy in the morning. At around lunch time we drove down for a tasty brunch at Pick Me Up, which was good once the waiter realized he had someone sitting in his section. Then it was a stop over at Whole Foods for coffee beans (Must Have Coffee!!!) and a few other items, then back home. I was feeling rather icky myself, so Dan and I relaxed on the sofa while Paul industriously moved stuff around, trying to make everything fit. We’re still working on that, but hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have everything in place. We had an online Midwest Furry Fandom Board meeting at 4 followed by an online Midwest Furfest staff meeting at 6 so not much got done for the rest of the evening, though we did wind up laughing ourselves silly over some online antics.

And then we’re up to today. It’s been pretty quiet, which is nice. I’ll be stopping at the grocery store on the way home and stocking up on groceries for the week. Later this week, we have LAFF Coffee (of course), and hopefully a visit with chouette. Plans were floated for a wine/dinner thing with Roho and Genet on Friday or Saturday – we’ll need to work on the details of that.

Now to finish off a bit of work before heading out for the day. I hope everyone’s weekend was enjoyable!