A relatively busy weekend and a very busy week.

On Saturday we went to a St. Patrick’s Day party; I had wanted to make something in advance but just couldn’t muster the motivation, and as it turned out there was more than enough food. The corned beef and cabbage was excellent, and the shepherd’s pie was really yummy too. Unfortunately, the evening was clearly taking a turn towards very heavy drinking, something that isn’t really a lot of fun to be around when you’re not doing the same (usually three drinks over an evening is good enough for me), so we bowed out early. Not that it’s any judgment on the people involved, just…not our scene, y’know? (and even less so takaza‘s, since he rarely drinks at all)

Sunday was the second in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year at the Westin Chicago North Shore. I was pretty happy with my preparation going into the meeting, and looking at the meeting notes so kindly provided by linnaeus, I see that we managed to keep the meeting to exactly an hour. This makes me happy. Over eight years, I think I’ve learned that 60 minutes is just about right for our meetings; any more than that and people get restive and the meetings become more of a trial for everyone involved. I think we had a good balance of stuff addressed during the meeting and stuff addressed in smaller groups afterwards. Several staff members who hadn’t seen the hotel got a tour of the place, and everyone seemed suitably impressed.

After the meeting and attendant after-meetings, we adjourned to Claim Jumper, which is located right next door to the hotel. Granted, we had a group of 16 people, but still – 2.5 hours from seating to paying and leaving seems a bit excessive. I will also say (and I preface this by saying that I’m very picky about my restaurants), I don’t have much interest in going to Claim Jumper again (sorry little_wolf!). I’ve eaten once at the Lombard location and twice at the Wheeling location and I have yet to really be happy with the food there. The prices are a bit high, but that’s because you are literally getting two portions (or more!) on your plate; if you don’t take the other half home you’re really losing out. Sadly, my fish and chips were more batter than fish, and the in-house beers were merely “meh”. Oh well – I have two months to try to find the next option for our after-meeting meal.

This week has been a little nuts at work for me. On Friday my boss dropped a quick project in my lap that had me running all over on Monday getting signatures and talking with other departments. Then yesterday, I spent the day across campus implementing a laboratory instrument that I’ve been trying to get validated for fifteen months now. Maybe now I can finally get it and all of the associated paperwork off my plate! Today will be spent back over there making sure all the lab techs are comfortable using the instrument, then I’ve got meetings for much of the afternoon. Fun.

Last night brought an enjoyable surprise, though. We got a call from Linnaeus asking if we wanted to join him for dinner. He had to meet up with roho and genet to return Briana, their floofy, brainless Samoyed, after R&G had spent the weekend skiing in Maine. We met up at BW3 in Vernon Hills and had an extremely tasty dinner (I tried the mango habanero sauce, which was really tasty but very burn-y too!). We also had a lot of fun playing NTN Buzztime, where I proved I still have my old College Bowl chops 🙂 Sadly, Roho was detained by his evil employer and unable to join us; this just means that we will need to get everyone together again and drink beer and play NTN. Oh darn!