My goodness, what a whirlwind of a weekend!
Friday afternoon I had intended to take the train down to Chicago right after work, but Metra was having serious issues so I had to drive instead – a two-hour trip. Ugh. I met up with takaza and darkwolph (who had spent the day at a Cubs game) and linnaeus and we drove down to Smoque for dinner. Oh. My. God. It’s been years since I had such amazing BBQ (The Q Shack in North Carolina, to be precise 🙂 Amazing food, and great rough-and-ready ambience. We need to get back to this place soon.
For dessert we drove over to iCream, a fun place where you choose your ice cream base, flavors, mix-ins, and color, then they mix it up and add liquid nitrogen for instant ice cream! It was a fun experience (and surprisingly inexpensive), though I think we learned that simple is better – Dan’s banana/cinnamon ice cream with peanut butter mixed in didn’t do it for me; my cream soda/cherry with strawberries mixed in was OK, but the moisture from the strawberries made it kind of grainy. It’s a place I wouldn’t go out of my way to go back to, but if I’m in Wicker Park it’d be worth a stop.
On Saturday I up with roho, genet, Paul, and Paul’s friend Tom for lunch at The Picnic Basket in Libertyville, enjoyed al fresco in the town square. R&G had brought their Samoyed, Briana, and Paul had one of his parents’ dogs, Nita, a yellow lab. We took the dogs up to Independence Grove Dog Park and walked around the lake. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and it was a blast seeing all the dogs running around. Afterwards we retired back to our place where Dan made some very tasty burritos and we (and the dogs) relaxed and hung out.
The original goal for Sunday was to clean up the guest bedroom closet and the downstairs office. That’s not quite what happened, unfortunately. I emptied out the guest bedroom closet and sorted out what to keep, what to pitch, and what to take to Goodwill, but I still need to pack it all back in, maybe tonight. Later we wound up emptying out our downstairs storage closet in search of our GMRS radios, which only added to the mess in the office. We’ll be working on that Tuesday night, probably. After that we drove up to Roho and Genet’s. We all logged in and I led the April MFF staff meeting, which went pretty well, I think. After the meeting, we sat down to Genet’s tasty chicken and dumplings, topped off with banana-nut bread that I had made earlier. We capped off the night with a viewing of The Amazing Race, then Dan and I headed home. It was an excellent evening and we had a great time.
This week we have a good bit of stuff to do after work each day, leading up to Thursday, when we head out for Furry Connection North. I’m really looking forward to the convention; Gir, Nik, and all of the good folks at FCN have put a lot of hard work into this year’s con, and I think it is going to show. I hope to see y’all there!