Weekends seem so short sometimes, but we packed a whole lot into a few days. What did we do?
Well, I’m glad you asked…

On Friday I left work a little early to finally see a doctor about the pain I’d been experiencing in my ear. As I had expected, it’s a simple case of otitis externa – no big deal, treated with eardrops with cortisone and an antibiotic. I had to take the first available doctor at the clinic which was unfortunately the very doctor that datahawk warned me away from. His atrocious bedside manner and the fact that the clinic is a teaching facility (sorry, not interested in being on view to gawking students) means that I will not be going back there. genet recommended a doctor who, fortuitously, has an office in Lake Forest, so I signed on to make them my primary provider. Next time I need to see a doctor I can take comfort that it’ll be someone competent.

After the doctor’s visit and the (interminable) wait for my prescription at Walgreens, I finally got home to find that takaza had beaten me home for a change and Datahawk was there too. We hung out for a while while linnaeus had to (as usual, unfortunately) take care of some work stuff. Eventually, we went out to try pizza from the little Albanian joint around the corner that came recommended. I tried one of their byreks and found it the be quite tasty. Dan and Lara got a ginormous sausage/ground beef pizza, which they took back for Paul. The rest of the evening was spent lounging about, playing Ratchet and Clank, and relaxing.

On Saturday, I was up early to meet the installer from DirecTV. When Dan set up DirecTV in North Carolina, we signed on for a year’s contract, so we figured that since we’re going to be paying for it whether we use it or not, let’s have it installed. Fortunately, Paul agreed (since it’s his walls that were being drilled through). The installer did a reasonably decent job (would have been nice if he’d cleaned up the mess he made while drilling), and within an hour or so we had DirecTV goodness. Yay! I’m sure it will be with great glee that Paul is going to kick Comcast to the curb, after he received such stellar customer service from them. Saturday afternoon, Dan and I drove around a good portion of the western suburbs, working on a project for a later date. We capped the day with boixboi‘s birthday party, which was quite enjoyable with the exception of certain individuals who are either socially clueless or just plain stupid. I’m holding out for the latter, though “both” is an acceptable answer.

Sunday was slow getting started. Very slow. Like, we finally got in the shower to start the day at 2 PM kind of slow. Once we got started, though, we got a heck of a lot done. Dan organized and cleaned our bedroom, and I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom. Between the two of us, and with Paul’s help, we got the living room into some sense or order, and got everything swept, dusted, and mopped. The place looks pretty good, I think, and now when Rasslor comes to visit I won’t be shrieking, “Cover your eyes! It’ll be clean soon, I promise!” OK, so I have OCD issues. I admit that, and I’m dealing with it 🙂 We finished up cleaning at about 7 PM and rewarded ourselves with a tasty dinner from Leona’s (ph33r the wrath of the Twinkie!) and an episode of the extremely entertaining Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.

Meanwhile, I’ve been a bit busy finally getting a public calendar up for Dan and me, since it’s always a bit of a hassle remembering what’s going on when. You can see it at http://calendar.yahoo.com/dunkaza.

In closing, I’ll leave you with a couple of useful links. First off, if you’re in the Chicago area and are interested in food, you owe it to yourself to visit LTHforums for great discussions and reviews of all things food-related in the Chicago area. (And hey you Chambanians – there’s some good stuff there for you as well – do some searches when you’re done with that to find other useful threads). LTHforums has pointed me to several fantastic places that I never would have known about otherwise, and I’m really glad I found it.

The second is a link that, for some reason, I could definitely see thebroomecloset and ovrclokd being interested in, although I think it’s generally nifty enough that everyone would like it: Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, a practical guide for useful and handy tools for all aspects of your life. I thought the pointer for Magic-Sculp was pretty neat, and they get bonus points for the listing for Penzey’s Spices.