Been sort of quiet here for the last few days, hasn’t it? Let’s see, what’s been going on?

On Friday we belatedly celebrated datahawk‘s birthday by going with a whole crowd of folks down to tour Macy’s Marshall Field’s Christmas displays. The general consensus was that they intentionally made the displays suck so that people won’t miss them when they don’t do them next year. We spent a very entertaining time critiquing the other displays while the cancer-addicts of the group got their smoke fix, then we adjourned up to Heaven on Seven. Although they have other locations, this location, on Wabash on the seventh floor of an old office building, is the original. They’re only open for dinner one night out of the month, and we were lucky enough it was the night we planned on going downtown. The meal was absolutely amazing! They are a New Orleans-style restaurant, and I (a former Tulane student) and genet (a Louisiana native) gave it an emphatic thumbs up! The hurricanes were fabulous. My shrimp po’ boy was quite tasty, and roho‘s shrimp and cheddar grits were yummy as well. takaza‘s country-fried steak and mashed potatoes were by far the best, though. We ate ourselves silly, then came the tasty chocolate-caramel cake that siriuswolfstar had picked up at Bittersweet. It was the perfect end to a wonderful evening.

The original plan for Saturday was to stay at home and relax. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, Dan and I drove up to Antioch to have brunch with Roho, Genet, feren, and neowolf2 at the always-tasty Las Vegas. Afterwards, we walked over to the surprisingly-well-stocked game shop where Feren picked up a bunch of Christmas gifts, then stopped next door at the small shop that sold record players and old vinyl albums and Feren got a new turntable. Then it was back to Roho and Genet’s place where we filled the afternoon with chatting and then a bit of shopping at Wal Mart. We also used their nice, heated garage to park my car so we could finally install my Sirius radio in it, which had been sitting idle since I took it out of my Alero when I sold it back in August. Linnaeus joined us not long after and we ordered pizza and got down to a serious game of Drunken Apples to Apples. It was very, very funny, even if I didn’t do very well until right up at the end of the game. Somehow, Neowolf skunked us all. I also learned that Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka is very tasty, particularly when mixed with Cruzan Rum Cream. It’s also very potent (woo!).

We got a late start on Sunday – no surprise there. We spent the afternoon doing some Christmas shopping, and we finally picked up a replacement electric blanket, since the one we bought earlier this year was going haywire (the center third of the blanket was getting far too warm for comfort). The evening was spent catching up on TiVo and being all domestic and stuff.

This is a short week for me. I have one more day at work then on Thursday, right after rush hour, we hit the road for South Carolina. We’ll be making a stop somewhere along the way Thursday night, then getting in on Friday morning. After a far-too-brief stay, we’ll be driving home on Monday, making the entire 14-hour trip in one day. It sucks, but I have to be at work on Tuesday, so that’s the way it is. Hope everyone’s holiday preparations are going well!