Man, what a crazy few days, and this week is shaping up to be pretty crazy too.

After work on Friday, I sped out slightly early and picked up takaza at his employer in Buffalo Grove. Then it was a stressful drive through Friday rush-hour traffic down to Lisle, where we checked into the Hyatt Lisle. After a short break it was back into the car for a short drive to Bolingbrook and BD’s Mongolian Grill. There we met up with ottr, datahawk, feren, lady_curmudgeon, roho, genet, linnaeus, wyldekyttin, and unclevlad for a fun dinner and drinks. Alas, I agree with Dan – I am kind of over BD’s. For one thing, it seems that no matter what I do, everything I put together there ends up tasting the same. I’ll freely admit that’s my own fault. The drinks were pretty weak, too, which was unfortunate. Ah well, at least the company was good.

After dinner we retired back to the Hyatt with Roho, Genet, and Linnaeus and had a lovely swim before bed. On Saturday morning, the five of us had a delicious brunch at Juicy-O then went our separate ways. Dan and I stopped by perro and darkwolph‘s place to drop off some MFF stuff and we wound up talking shop for a bit.

Then it was off to Dan’s mom’s place to try to get her Wii hooked up to wi-fi. I’m not even sure if what we were trying to do can be done: She has a laptop running Vista with built-in wireless as well as a Sprint EVDO card connected via USB. We were trying to create a bridge so the wireless would receive the Wii signal and go out through the EVDO. No joy, though. Instead, she brought her Wii over to our place and we downloaded a bunch of older games for her. She left after a bit and Linnaeus arrived shortly thereafter.

After a bit of chatting we jumped in the car and drove up to Kenosha, where we met the crowd from the previous night (as well as several new faces) for dinner at Charcoal Grill. The phrase that pays is “half-price appetizers and drinks after 8 PM”. Holy cow! So good, and those Long Island iced teas had a kick!

On Sunday…we did nothing. And it was good. OK, actually, we finally showered late in the afternoon and went out to Target at about 7 PM to pick up a few groceries and things for the house.

And here we are back in the middle of the work week. I’m really looking forward to Friday – I just got the OK from my boss to take off early, so Dan and I will be leaving at noon or before for Columbus, OH, where we will abuse the hospitality of fordshepherd and kai_darkwolf. I have only a vague idea of what the plans might be, but I’m sure we’ll be in good hands. I promise to take lots of pictures 🙂