Ugh. It appears that both takaza and I were afflicted with insomnia last night, during different parts of the night. That make for slow canines this morning!

The weekend was quite entertaining, for all that it started inauspiciously. On Saturday morning I had to make another visit to my podiatrist. I have had a painful spot at the base of the toenail on my big toe where the doctor had performed a bilateral matricectomy. The doctor took a look at it and agreed with me that it was showing signs of infection, but he also introduced another unpleasant possibility: that a part of the nail still remained under the cuticle. He put me a course of antibiotics for the week and set up and appointment for me to see him next Saturday morning. If the infection has cleared up and everything is copasetic, great. If the spot remains red, inflamed, and painful he’ll have to cut another strip from the nail in hopes of taking any residual nail with it. Yeah, I’m hoping the antibiotics clear things up, because another week of hobbling around would suck. After that, Dan and I puttered around the house for a while before heading out to dancingninny and artemisfur‘s place in Dekalb for their “Flood Party” (it hadn’t started out to be a flood party, but due to the weather it kind of got that way).

The drive there was interesting – between detours for construction and random roads being closed due to flooding, it was something of a challenge to get to the house. And what a house! They’ve got some awesome digs there, hidden in the blandness of a suburban neighborhood. My only addition to the place would be a nice spacious deck on the back, but I can understand their priorities (and the delays, as well!). The party was a blast, and it was great to see so many of our friends there (and the burgers were quite tasty!). Alas, we had to head out early, once again having to hit the road before the party really gets started. Bleah.

The drive home is worth mentioning as well. We learned that while you might be able to drive around the “Road Closed” signs to carefully ford the water across the road in the daytime, if you try that at night you’ll get a $300 ticket. Fortunately, we witnessed this happening as we stopped for directions around the closed road and were not the recipients of said ticket. Once we pingponged around Dekalb County a bit we finally got to IL 47 and headed home. I wasn’t quite tired and I suggested something that we haven’t done in ages (for me, in decades!): midnight breakfast! So we stopped at Around the Clock in Crystal Lake (the only 24-hour joint we passed on the way home) and I had pancakes while Dan had bacon and eggs. We amused ourselves by eavesdropping on the drunk people around us. We got home at about 1:30 AM and got to bed at about 2.

Sunday was intended to be spent working on Midwest FurFest-related stuff, but it didn’t work out that way. We wound up making a circuit of Lake and McHenry Counties. First we took an extensive tour of some townhomes being built right near my employer. They are quite lovely, but they won’t be building any more with basements until early 2009. We found just the model that we liked, and with a basement it would be a killer floor plan (think 12′ x 16′ kitchen with a nice big island!). The biggest problem is that, with the expected $20,000 – 30,000 of upgrades we’d probably want, I expect the price would come in at around $260,000. The good news is that we’d be better equipped to deal with a home purchase (at ANY price) come 2009, but will we be equipped to handle that much? We’ll have to see.

After that, we drove over to the grand opening of Wickes Furniture in McHenry where we drooled over sectionals with recliners and sleigh beds. Alas, having looked at real estate immediately before, I was reminded that extending our debt with still more revolving credit is probably not a good idea, so we’ll see if we can keep our sofas alive for a little bit longer. Toward the end of our shopping there, we stopped by the customer service counter to pick up tickets for the pig roast they were hosting outside. Taking in Dan’s Hawaiian shirt and my T-shirt, the woman there (obviously) lied and said they were running out of food and declined to give us tickets as we walked out they were setting out more food from the grill). OK then. If we ever should purchase anything from Wickes Furniture, we’ll be buying from some other store than that one.

After a quick bite for lunch and a disappointing stop by a farmstand, we circled back to Garden Fresh Market and picked up the week’s groceries. I was supposed to make chicken tikka masala for dinner, but we had eaten lunch late enough that neither of us were hungry, so that got deferred to later in the week. The evening was spent relaxing and watching Alton Brown, which is always entertaining!

And now, this week: Not too much going on, though we’ll be needing to make some decisions by Wednesday about what we’ll be grilling up this weekend for friends and family; that will probably entail a trip to Antioch Packing House. Other than that, the usual grind, which is just fine.