Wow, a week since a substantial update. Impressive! Well, maybe not. We just survived the exhausting Weekend of Doooom and let me tell you all about it…

Last week we didn’t do much. Well, I finished Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando and started the Challenge Mode, where you do it all again, only it’s harder. That’s been surprisingly fun, actually. How exciting was our week? On Friday Dan went to bed at 8 and I played R&C for three hours straight. Gah!

On Saturday we worked a con picnic. Dan’s employer’s summer picnic to be exact. Well, we didn’t really work it, just volunteered in a couple of places. It was at a nice day camp in Lake Forest, IL, and it was pretty impressive – a huge buffet lunch, entertainment for kids, lots of raffle prizes, bingo, carnival games, etc. We worked the registration table (really just telling people which raffle ticket to put in which box) for the first hour, then wandered around a bit. It was dreadfully hot and humid, and that made things a bit trying. We tried to keep hydrated as much as possible, but I think I fell a bit behind. anyway, after a bit we decided to go over and play a game of bingo. We played a game or two, then we we saw what a hash the people running it were making of things, we stepped in to help and wound up doing that for the next hour and a half. We stopped by the organizing tent to find that Dan’s name had been picked for a prize – it turned out to be a mystery box from Crate and Barrel. Yay! Well, sorta yay. I have no idea what we’re going to do with that…

After that the heat was getting to me, so we elected to leave. We drove up to Gurnee Mills for a quick trip to investigate luggage possibilities for Anthrocon, and left with the decision that what we have will suit us well for now. Then it was back into the city to meet up with linnaeus, datahawk, and emrldgirrl. After a brief dinner at Charcoal Delight, it was down to the Neo-Futurarium for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: Pride Edition. It has been far too long since I’ve been to TMLMTBGB, and I don’t think I have ever seen a better show from them – I laughed my butt off, and even shed a tear. Not all the plays were new, but the ones that were repeats were excellent and worth seeing again. We were joined before the show by timeisahelix, on her forty-seventh or forty-eighth hour of being awake, so she was, um, somewhat manic 🙂 After the show we walked down to A Taste of Heaven for some ice cream, and noted that Cafe Boost is no more; it closed on Monday, June 20, and everything was auctioned off two days later. Bummer. We hit the fine liquor emporium for refreshments, then went back to the apartment to hang out and relax. Well, that lasted about 30 minutes for me and I had to go to bed. It sucks to be old and boring 😉

On Sunday, we were faced with a dilemma: takaza had two tickets to see the Cubs at the Sox at Comiskey U.S. Cellular Field. I wanted to go to the Chicago Pride parade, and don’t really care about baseball at all. In the end we wound up splitting up, Dan to the game and me to Pride. werellama and mistletoe came down from the cheesy wastes of Wisconsin to join us and we took the El/walk down to Halsted Street just before noon to watch the parade.

The first half of the parade was great; we had a great view, got to wave at all the politicians (including the governor of Illinois – funny, where was Mayor Daley, I wonder?). I had a lot of fun waving and clapping showing support for the great groups that turned out. As the parade continued, we were joined by posicat, tybis, and siriuswolfstar. It wasn’t all great, though. The trouble was that after we found a good spot on the curb, the crowd slowly started pushing into the street over the course of the parade, slowly narrowing the space for the marchers to get through to the point where I honestly thought someone was going to get run over. That, coupled witht he heat taking its toll and a dread of the crowds that would all be running for the El when the parade ended (400,000 people all trying to leave at once – aieeee!) led me to slip away about halfway through the (oh-my-god-is-it-ever-going-to-be-over) parade. This gave me time to relax a bit at home and decompress before the rest of the crew stumbled in about two hours later, at about the same time that Dan walked in. In hindsight, I probably would have had a better time at the ball game, but I would have been unhappy about missing the Pride parade. Ah well, hopefully we can work out something better next year.

Paul had run to the store for supplies, and I proceeded to cook up some chicken breasts, cheddar brats, and roasted veggies and veggie burgers on the grill. We ate and chatted, and generally had a good time, until I started dozing off 🙂 Fortunately, folks were heading out at about that time, so I waved weakly and then stumbled off to bed not long after.

Man, after a weekend like that I need a weekend to recover. Not that that will happen, unfortunately. It doesn’t look like we have a whole lot planned for this week, though, so that’s good. We have Anthrocon planning to do, and that’s going to keep us plenty busy. My last day at Abbott is on Friday, but I don’t have anything lined up for after that, unfortunately. Not for want of trying, of course, but it’s pretty dry out there right now. I’ll continue to investigate all possible avenues and hopefully something will come up. In the meantime, it looks like I’ll be unemployed come Anthrocon, yay. This leaves me curiously conflicted, of course: More time to prepare and I don’t have to worry about requesting time off – yay! Coming home from the con to unemployment: boo! Well, I intend to do everything I can to avoid that.

Time for me to head home!