Whew, it’s been far too long since I updated. Well, looking back on my last update post, it looks like my attempts at prognostication were mixed at best. We had to bow out from Synicism’s birthday party on Wednesday, but we did clean up the MFF storage locker. Plus a lot more!

Not much to say about last week. I did finally visit the gym and found it to be quite an impressive facility. It amused me that their programs are almost exactly like the gym we used to go to in Raleigh, probably because they’re both members of the same national fitness association whose name escapes me. After a brief tour I was given a couple of passes to try out the place, so I’ll be going there a couple of times this week. The good news is that they take a very progressive approach to what constitutes a “couple” in their membership pricing – a couple is two adults. That’s it. They may be spouses, siblings, neighbors, whatever. Way cool! This means that I can join under linnaeus‘ existing membership and we both benefit from a reduced monthly rate.

On Friday The Party House (aka Synicism and daveqat‘s place) held a potluck dinner to celebrate Jim’s party again. Always a good reason! I reached a bit and tried a recipe I hadn’t made before, which generally isn’t a good idea. I tried making pot au feu. At its heart, it’s basically boiled meat and vegetables, but the array of meats and vegetables involved was impressive. Beef brisket, beef short ribs, and veal breast, plus leeks, cabbage, onions, carrots, and potatoes. It was tasty, but very subtle. It was probably not worth the expense and time it took to make it, but it was a fun recipe and it’s always great to try new things. The party was great, with many more entrees than we needed, but on the bright side no one went away hungry. It sounds like I left far too early, but hey, I’m boring and old that way (and monogamous, too 😉

On Saturday Takaza and I joined neowolf2 to the Midwest FurFest storage locker to make order from chaos. To be fair, I don’t fault aeto and his crew one bit – their job was to get the equipment from the hotel into the storage locker on Sunday night. I know what Sunday night of con feels like, and I doubt I would have done a thing differently. Nevertheless, the equipment was in there but in complete disarray. We pulled a good bit of it out, sorted through it, compacted a lot of boxes of Registration bags into boxes, and got items grouped by department. hightensile and mindslide joined us after a bit and sorted through some of the Art Show bins and helped get some of their equipment in order as well. All told, the task took less than two hours, which wasn’t bad at all. We’ll need to go back at some point for the Con Suite folks to take stock of what they have and what they’ll need to buy, but that’s not a problem – you can even walk into the unit and maneuver around now!

Afterwards we rambled around the northwestern burbs a bit. We wandered up to Hoffman Estates, where Dan played a bit of Dance Dance Revolution and we played a little air hockey. Then it was over to the Millrose Restaurant to check out some of their beers – not too bad, and worth trying some of their others on tap. Then we stopped by Mitsuwa Marketplace, which is always entertaining. It wasn’t until we got over to the snack aisle that I remembered that Anime Central was going on, and sure enough the aisles were swarmed with anime otaku and gothlings – it was so cute! From there it was back into the city, where we grabbed a tasty dinner at Charcoal Delights (and were amused at the theological conversation going on next to us – the effect of living next to a Christian university).

Sunday was somewhat less impressive in terms of accomplishments. We had a tasty brunch at Tre Kroner (mmm, crab cakes benedict), then spent the majority of the afternoon taking care of e-mails and finances. We watched the Survivor finale (Eh. Not a particularly exciting season for me, but I don’t object to they guy who won it), then it was off to bed.

Hopefully more entries this week than last. Not a lot planned, but somehow that always seems to get fixed along the way. Next weekend: , and the MFF Staff Meeting.