It’s funny – whenever we are planning a weekend getaway, the week before compresses into a bothersome few minutes leading up to our departure time. That pretty much describes this week, though there have been a few notable spots. The first is that I’m getting back into the swing of going to the gym on a regular basis, though I discovered last night that the days that I do my full workout (i.e. cardio + strength training, vs. just cardio) it’s going to take me a good two hours between leaving home and when I return. Which is fine if I get home at 4:15; if I don’t get home until 5, well that kind of sucks. I’ll need to see if I can streamline things, or something. The downside of going back to a full workout routine, of course, is that my entire body aches today. Ah well, the price of progress…

Last night takaza and I stopped by to say hi to daveqat and jimcyl. Jim is definitely looking better, though there’s still some swelling a week after surgery. His jaw is wired shut, though, and will be for the next seven weeks – that’s just brutal. He and Dave have good communication set up between charades, pointing, and a handy Pocket PC. I think I would go insane. We talked about dinner and Jim urged us to go out without him (eating and drinking is a bit of chore for him these days), so we collected siriuswolfstar, and perro and drove down to The Celtic Knot in Evanston for dinner. woodychitwn joined us at the restaurant shortly after. The food was so-so (at least they had Magner’s Cider, though not on tap), but the company was excellent, and it was a very enjoyable meal. For all of my Irish dining needs, though, I’ll still stick with The Curragh in Schaumburg. We took our leave shortly after dinner and wound up going to bed far too late, something for which I am suffering this morning.

Since I’ll be leaving work at 11 AM tomorrow, I’ve been coming in each day at 6 AM. There’s a nice tranquility here at that time. No one else shows up until 6:45 or so, and the cafeteria opens for breakfast at 6:30. The only drawback is that by 2 PM I’m ready to go home. Ah well, one more day and I’ll be done with it.

So tonight, we’ll be finishing off the week’s laundry, packing, and maybe doing a spot of housecleaning. datahawk and moryssa will be crashing with us tonight since they’ll be in the city to see Great Big Sea. We’re passing on GBS this time – they play a great live show but their last two albums haven’t really excited me, and I’m sure they’ll be pulling heavily from them. Plus, very late night at a concert + waking up at 5 AM = very sad Tom. I’m sure they’ll have a great time, though I don’t expect I’ll see much of them.

OK, back to making billions of Visio drawings…