Category Archives: anthrocon

It’s Been a Busy Month…

Right, I have a journal here. I should actually use it 🙂

Just to update a few things before they totally slip into the past: Following the craziness that was Wuffmeet, takaza and I slipped into a comfortable winter rhythm. Our cooking has improved, or at least gotten more interesting, with the addition of a Sous Vide Supreme to our kitchen. We are still experimenting and testing recipes, but we’ve been really impressed with how it cooks steaks and other meats. The fish it makes is to die for, and butter-poached chicken is simply divine. The biggest trick is that seasonings behave differently with low-temperature cooking, so we are still learning what works, what doesn’t, and what we still need to try. I’m having a ball with is, and I’m hoping to bring it to Furry Connection North to provide some interesting snacks for our parties!

Our social life has gotten a bit quieter with the departure of close friends roho and genet to the wilds of the east coast as they move to the heart of Boston. While we were very sad to see them go, I’m really glad to see Roho get his life back from his (former) evil employer. We provided some small help in moving some of their furniture out of their house (I still feel bad about what we did to the wall in their basement stairwell, but I’m told it was a relatively easy fix). Once the movers came and loaded up their stuff, Genet crashed at our place for a few days with Briana, their pretty-but-airheaded Samoyed. She and Buddy got along great (as always), and it was nice to have the extra company. Once all of the contractors were done making their place super-pretty so it could go on the market, she packed up the dog and their two cats and made the long drive to Boston. Here’s hoping they can clear all the boxes out of their new place before summer! 😉

We have been having a lot of fun planning our upcoming cruise to Alaska, coming up around Memorial Day. Somehow our group has reached 18 people from all over – even someone from Sweden! We purchased a good bit of the various parts of the trip over the last month, including flights (Frontier Airlines, MKE-DEN-ANC/SEA-MKE), reservations at a fabulous little lesbian-owned B&B in Anchorage, trains from Anchorage to Seward (where our ship departs) and Vancouver to Seattle, and various shore excursions. Dan is thinking about putting together a group chat on Saturday, March 5, for everyone in our group so we can talk about coordinating schedules and answer any questions that folks might have. We’ll be sending around emails for that. This is going to be the longest vacation we’ve had, and I’m really looking forward to it! We’re already brainstorming ideas for group trips for next year as well, including an extended weekend in New Orleans, and a ski weekend at Sugarloaf in Maine. More on that after the cruise!

I should mention that on Groundhog Day we got buried with a blizzard. Twenty inches of snow fell in a very short time, and then the 40-50 mph winds kicked in. We did the smart thing and made sure we had everything we needed and when it started coming down we sat tight at the house. Work for both of us was closed (the first time in a long time!) and we spent the snow day relaxing and Genet made cookies! Our HOA dues have never been more appreciated as we watched the snow removal company try to cope with the huge drifts, though we did get into the act a little bit by excavating Genet’s car from the snow.

Somewhere in there was our first Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year. It’s always rough to get started again after the last convention, but there’s contracts to sign and plans to get into place. The good news is that Hyatt Regency O’Hare was extremely happy with the convention last year, and now that we all know each other, the coming year will be much easier to plan. We have changed up our meeting schedule a bit, with more online meetings early in the year; this makes sense since most of the staff doesn’t really need to spring into action until the summer.

Oh, for those wondering: our conventions schedule this year is to attend Furry Connection North and Midwest FurFest and…that’s it. Since the cruise is so long and I only have ten days of vacation, Anthrocon just isn’t in the cards for us this year. I wish everyone involved with AC well, though, especially rooth and chanur2000, who will be taking over my and Dan’s staff positions there, respectively. Good luck, guys!

Finally, Dan and I will be hopping on board the Amtrak Wolverine this evening and taking the train over to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to hang out with the fine folks there for the weekend, and to help determine the beers that will be served at FCN’s sponsor lounge. It should be tough, thirsty work! Dan has planned a fun dinner for Saturday night as well. The fun doesn’t end there, as it appears that we will be visited by fordshepherd and bajahyena next weekend, when we will…well, those plans are a secret!

Off to work now – I hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Perfect Fourth of July Holiday

Right, there was a holiday weekend back there. We were still dragging from Anthrocon going into the weekend, so keeping things laid-back was definitely on the menu. On Friday night, roho and genet stopped by and we made fajitas, then just hung out. Saturday was a lovely day of relaxing, then Roho, Genet, and linnaeus came over and we made steaks Argentinean style. OMG SO GOOD! This is a method described in the latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated: you coat the steaks lightly with a salt/cornstarch mixture, then place then in the freezer for 30 minutes. You build a hotter-than-heck charcoal fire and put a couple of wood chunks around the perimeter. Then you season the steaks with pepper and put them on the grill, 2-3 minutes per side, flipping twice. They came off perfectly rare/medium-rare. Oh, wow! Those were excellent – a nicely browned crust and suffused with hickory smoke. So good.

Sunday was another day of lazing about in the morning, then chanur2000 came over and he and takaza went to work reconciling Anthrocon’s finances. As they did this, I caught a ride from Roho & Genet down to justincheetah and calapurr‘s for their “Red White and Gin” party. It was an awesome party – great food, tasty drinks, shameful performances on Rock Band, and the evening was capped off by watching the town’s fireworks from their back deck. Awesome. I was also quite pleased that the gazpacho I made seemed to go over well. Since a couple of folks asked for it, here’s the recipe

Anthrocon – Done.

So Anthrocon came and went last weekend.

I won’t be writing a full report because, honestly, it would be pretty boring. Also, Friday-Sunday would be repetitive: “Went to work in Artists Alley. Worked for 12-14 hours. Grabbed dinner. Went to bed.” And I want to stress, I’m not saying that working 12-14 hours every day was a badge of honor. Actually, it was pretty stupid. I didn’t have enough staff (as usual). I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the Alley during the day, even though I had excellent support from Rooth, my second in command. And I didn’t have the energy to really go anyplace else by the end of the weekend. All of that aside, though, the Alley was a huge success, processing over $63,000 for the artists over the course of the weekend (up from $55,000 last year).

Anyway, I do want to put together some bullet points about the convention:

  • Rooth is amazing. He put up with my stressing out, continued to be a quick study when it comes to all things technological, and was in general an excellent friend. I leave Artists Alley in his hands knowing it will not only continue to succeed, it will improve year after year. And the going-away gift of a 30-minute professional massage on Sunday was exactly what I needed.
  • The Artists Alley and Con Store staff: Baja, Delphi, Drittauge, Ford, Geemo, Shy Matsi, Stevie, Wag!, Anita (Giza’s Mom), and Gimpy Dave. You are the reason that Artists Alley and Con Store ran as well as it did, and I cannot begin to thank you enough. The work schedule was tough this year, and I know many people wound up working more hours than they would have liked. I am sure Rooth will make sure that doesn’t happen again next year. I am beyond gratified that so many of you plan to come back next year. I consider it a privilege to count you all as friends.
  • Dinner at The Sharp Edge was a mixed bag – Excellent friends, decent food, abominable service. In hindsight, I wish we’d chosen to go to Sonoma Grille on Sunday night instead, but the company more than made up for it.
  • Roho and Genet, and their roommates Tarin and Nyuni were great – even though they were not staff, they volunteered to help out with the Artists Alley lottery. More importantly, not only did Roho and Genet help carry some of our stuff to and from the con, they provided me with a much-needed oasis of sanity (and excellent beer) in their room. Thanks, guys!
  • And then there’s Takaza. It goes without saying that he was helpful and supportive, but this was on top of his own insanity running the Finance office. He was sweet enough to make sure I ate lunch each day and to look in on me during the day. All of this while working until 3:00 AM each night (and he still has a couple of days worth of work to do to get everything reconciled before July 15th).

After nine years of working Artists Alley, I leave Anthrocon with the same feeling I had when I turned over Registration at Midwest FurFest: It was a fascinating and enjoyable logistical problem that I would like to think that I and my team solved, and left things in a far better state than they were when I came in. It is definitely something I am done with, though, and have no desire to ever do again.

As I have mentioned, we will not be at Anthrocon next year. Instead, we will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of our commitment ceremony with a cruise to Alaska (want to join us? Here’s more information). Since I only have so much vacation, something has to give – that thing being Anthrocon. After next year? Hard to say. We’ve been talking about a trip to Europe, you see 🙂

And so Anthrocon is in the books for us. Now we can look ahead to the Midwest FurFest Summer Picnic in just a few weeks, a trip to Ann Arbor in August, and of course our trip to Montreal in September. Oh, and some convention or another in November. That will come with time, though…

And Now, The Downhill Slide

And welcome to Anthrocon OMG last minute countdown for takaza and me. I need to remember to check in for our flights just before leaving work today. We drop off Buddy at Dan’s mom’s place tonight, and finish up our last bit of packing after that. Tomorrow, we both work a half-day, then it’s off to Milwaukee for our 4 PM flight. We get into Pittsburgh at 6:30 PM, and should be at the Westin by 8 PM.

As for the rest of my time at Anthrocon, since everyone else is detailing their schedule:
Thursday
7 AM – 9 AM – Breakfast someplace. Maybe Deluca’s, or someplace on The Strip?
9 AM – 6 PM – Setup Artists Alley and Con Store in Hall B. Bored? Stop by! I can always use the help 🙂
6 PM – 9:30 PM – Dinner plans are hazy. I’m not sure what we’re doing, but we’ll figure it out along the way.
9:30 PM – 10:30 PM – Staff meeting

Friday – Sunday
These days are all pretty much the same. Get up early, work in Hall B until around 8 PM. Take short breaks. Hope I can find time for food.
Each night I hope to get together with friends and relax. I won’t be looking for big social functions, but nice, small, quiet gatherings.

Monday
After an uncomfortably late meeting, we’ll be flying out at 2:30 PM. I hope we make our flight.

It’s a good thing I took next Tuesday off to recuperate…oh wait, I didn’t because I don’t have enough vacation time. Crap. Ah well…

Where’s Your Head At?

Yep, we’re down to the pre-convention head-in-a-fog period where I post even less than I usually do. We’re trying to keep things moderately low-key as we lead up to Anthrocon, which is just seven days away (for us, anyway). That doesn’t mean we’re sitting in darkened rooms all by ourselves, though…

On Friday after work takaza and I had a bit of shopping to do in McHenry, then wandered around a bit through Bull Valley (my gosh, that’s a beautiful area!) before winding up in Woodstock. We had dinner at La Petite Creperie. We eschewed crepes for their more formal dinner menu which was…something of a mixed bag. I felt strongly enough that I wrote up a review on Yelp, giving them 2 out of 5 stars. We’d go back, but only for the crepes.

Saturday we worked around the house a bit, then drove up to Antioch to visit with roho and genet and linnaeus. It was a pleasant evening, nice and laid back (though clearly we hadn’t had enough mind-altering substances to fully appreciate “Sita Sings the Blues” 🙂 On Sunday was spent working on Anthrocon stuff and generally just puttering around the house. Not a bad thing at all!

This brings me to the specter hanging over our heads right now – Anthrocon. It was with a bit of astonishment that I realized last week that I’ve been working in the Artists Alley at Anthrocon for the last nine years, and been in charge of it for the last seven years. Dan started in the Alley with me, then graduated to write the at-convention newsletter, then to create and run the Finance Office. Nine years is a long time, and we have both reached the point where we are burned out and it just isn’t fun anymore. It’s an insane amount of work to run these departments, and I know that at least for me serving as chairman of Midwest FurFest was easy compared to the time spent preparing for and running Artists Alley.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve enjoyed my time managing Artists Alley. I have gotten to work with some really wonderful people, and as I wrap up my final year on Anthrocon staff I leave knowing that the Alley is in excellent hands. rooth, my second-in-command is taking over the position from me, and I have every confidence he will do an excellent job. We haven’t always agreed on philosophical matters, but that’s a good thing – it’s good to challenge and understand why we do what we do. He’s got a great head for logistics, and between us I think that we’ve created a pretty awesome purchasing system in the Alley. And I know he has a ton of new ideas that will be implemented over the next few years that will make the Alley even better.

As for us? We’ll be giving Anthrocon a miss next year, I’m afraid. We’re planning on a cruise to Alaska to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our commitment ceremony; I only have two weeks of vacation, and the cruise is going to consume a large chunk of that. We’ll still be active with Furry Connection North and Midwest FurFest, though, and the many and various smaller events throughout the year!

A Call For Help At Anthrocon!

We’ve got a bit of a crisis in the Anthrocon Artists Alley/Con Store and we need YOUR help! Through no fault of their own, we have lost three experienced and hard-working staffers this year, creating a huge hole in our staffing. I need your help! I need folks who don’t mind giving up 4-5 hours of their day each day during the convention, between 9 AM until 6 PM. You would be running a cash register and helping to staff either the Artists Alley or the Con Store. The duties are well-documented and easy to learn.

What do you get in exchange? Well, that’s the good part. You’ll get FREE admission to Anthrocon, easy registration (bypass the huge lines!), a free T-Shirt, and a free delicious dinner on Sunday night. Additionally, you’ll get to work with some really fun and amazing people and enjoy a great feeling of accomplishment when the convention is over.

I need at least three people, and four or five would be even better. If you know someone who might be interested, send them my way as well! If this sounds like something you might enjoy, you can comment on this post or e-mail me directly at alley-2010@anthrocon.org. Thanks!

-Duncan

Anthrocon 2009 Con Report, Part 1

I’ve mentioned this before, but some folks have asked why I write up such long and detailed convention reports. The biggest reason is so that I have something to look back on in future years to remind me of what went wrong, what went right, and how to make each year better than the last. Granted, as some might have gathered this year’s Anthrocon wasn’t as great for me as past years have been. I’ll come to that in a bit, but let’s start with:

Monday

We’re Home from Anthrocon

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Well, long, strange, stressful, at times unpleasant, and physically painful. With a few pleasant times thrown in, though not nearly enough.

But after all that, we’re home, safe and sound. The house is cooling down so I’ll likely be up for a while yet. Dan doesn’t have to work tomorrow, the lucky sod, but I’ll be up at 5 AM. Egad. Lots to talk about, but it’ll have to wait a few days.

Pre-Convention Stress Weekend!

Right, one last real post before I fall down the rabbit hole…

The weekend started with a bang as takaza and I met some of the western suburbs crowds for drinks and dinner at The Bank in Wheaton. We had an awesome time, and it was a real hoot chatting with Patrick, the chef there. I had the antelope appetizer, served on fried plantains. It was extremely tasty! And the pistachio gelato in espresso for dessert was amazing. The company was outstanding as well. We had to leave far too early, but that 5 AM wakeup call takes a toll on you on late Friday nights.

Saturday I had to work. yay. I was in longer than I had intended, but got a good bit of work done. When I got home, Dan and I ran some errands and did some pre-Anthrocon shopping. Sunday was spent doing more prep work (printing paperwork, setting up the Artists Alley cash register programming, and putting the finishing touches on some policies). We still have a few things to do between now and when we leave, but I’m feeling pretty good about things.

And back to work I go…

Updata

Whoa, what a crazy week. Work has had me slammed all week, and it will probably be more of the same into next week. Still, it’s manageable, just doesn’t leave a lot of time for things like LiveJournal updates.

Waaay back on Friday we met up with daveqat, linnaeus, perro and darkwolph to see the Pride Edition of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was a fun show, though not one of their best overall. We still had a good time. Afterward we walked over to Big Jones for what turned out to be a really enjoyable dinner. We worked our way through their cocktails menu, and my shrimp and grits was fabulous (if this sounds weird, imagine the grits being served more like polenta). Dan’s country fried steak was tasty as well, up to Heaven on Seven standards.

Saturday was pretty low-key. I went in to work in the morning, then that afternoon we had Paul, roho and genet over for dinner. We grilled up some steaks, chatted a good bit, sampled some mighty fine beers, and played the new Boom Blox game. And Sunday? On Sunday we didn’t do anything – just stayed in and relaxed. That was nice.

This week has been busy on the housing front. The home inspection for the new place was on Tuesday, and everything looked pretty good. There are a couple of exterior GFCI outlets that need to be replaced, but we’ll have the seller take care of that prior to closing. I’ll be meeting with our mortgage broker today at lunch to sign off on paperwork and hopefully secure as good a rate as possible.

Last night we got the letter we’d been expecting, a Notice of Motion to the Court of Lake County setting a trial date for the foreclosure of the townhouse we’re living in. The good news is that this is just another step in a long process, and the bank won’t take over the property for at least another four or five months – we’ll be long gone by then. The other good news is that in lieu of refunding our security deposit, our landlord told us we don’t have to pay rent in August. This is awesome!

In the meantime, planning is still going ahead full steam for the Midwest FurFest Summer Picnic, which right now has about 100 RSVP’s. Yikes! We’ll definitely have free strip steak for everyone (and some chicken breasts for non-beef-eaters); I’m working with a local caterer to figure out what the sides and desserts will be. I’ll be posting the menu next week as soon as we get it locked down.

And finally, there’s Anthrocon looming large on the near horizon. I need to deal with some items on my to-do list for that this weekend, and make sure that everything is ready to go. One advantage to having done this for so many years is that I’ve got lots of notes about things that need to be done before the convention. That will definitely save my sanity (what little I have left). OK, back to the grind!

Anthrocon 2008 Report, Part 1: Preparations, Tuesday, and Wednesday

Yes, it’s time for another one of Duncan’s exhaustive, verbose Anthrocon reports! This is the personal report; I have the “official” department report outlined. I’ll get that written up and posted by the end of the week.

I’ll preface this by saying that my Anthrocon reports (both personal and departmental) are long and detailed. This is mainly for my own benefit, as it’s very handy to look back just before the convention at past reports for reminders of what we did in prior years, what worked, what didn’t, and handy things like which pizza joints were good and which were not. Feel free to read along, though!
Preparations and Tuesday – The Drive Out

And We’re Home

We rolled in about an hour ago. Unpacked what needed to be unpacked, and we’re relaxing now. takaza is blessed with more vacation each year so he’s taking tomorrow off. Lucky me, I get to go in to work tomorrow. It’s gonna be a long day.

Heading Home From Anthrocon

Anthrocon was a huge success. $40,000 paid out to artists in Artists Alley. All that preparation, worrying, and stress paid off as the Alley worked flawlessly. My staff was top-notch and I spent the weekend much more relaxed than in past years.

We’re already making plans for next year, of course. The biggest change: Never mind Hall C, we’re going to be in Hall B. That’s twice the size of Hall C. Great googly moogly. Rooth and I have worked up a short (ha!) list of improvements for next year, too.

We left Pittsburgh at 1 PM ET; we’re just east of Toledo now. With luck we’ll be home by 9 PM CT.

Thanks so much to everyone who made this such a great year. Exhaustively detailed report(s) to follow, naturally.

Good AC so far

It’s 7:30 AM an I’m at Steel City Diner enjoying some chocolate chip pancakes and coffee. Yesterday went well – stupendously, actually. We paid 50% more artists than last year in half the time it has usually taken on Fridays. Over $18,000 has gone to the artists so far, and much more to come today and tomorrow. I am fortunate to have a kick-ass staff that is helping to make this all happen, and Takaza and his staff are doing amazingly well too. Here’s hoping today rocks as much as yesterday!

Packed and Ready To Go! And Some Links

Last night we got takaza‘s car packed (stuffed to the gills, actually – we had to remove the back seats of his Element. Three cash registers take up a lot of space!) and it’s parked in the garage. I dropped him off at the train station this morning, so all I need to do when I leave here at 2 PM is go home and toss a few final things into his car (like my laptop). I pick him up from work at 3 PM and then we’re off! We’re driving as far as Independence, OH tonight, then we’ll be arriving in Pittsburgh at around noon tomorrow.

All that’s left now if for me to try to be productive until 2 PM. Yeah, wish me luck on that.

To distract and amuse myself, I give you…links!
All You Can Eat Bacon? It’s a heart attack waiting to happen and yet heavenly at the same time! Sounds like a fun place to visit in Chicago, though.

You know what the world needs? It needs a bacon cheeseburger sausage!

Keeping with the theme, there’s something to be said for “bacon textiles” – it’s delicious!

OK, enough with the bacon. Let’s talk about Monopoly + nukes.

Finally, because Anthrocon is so much on my mind, I’ll point out the handy Official Anthrocon Map to those who will be attending. I just added a couple of interesting nearby restaurants yesterday (as recommended by roadfood.com!). linnaeus, if you get some time, you might want to check out Robert Wholey & Co., located only a few blocks from the hotel towards the Strip District – it looks like an interesting food market with great seafood dishes. Heck, if I’m free I want to go with you! If I get a chance, I also wouldn’t mind going to DeLuca’s (“best breakfast in Pittsburgh”).

Four hours to go! Time to look busy…

Livin’ the Suite Life

Now that was a truly amazing weekend, and exactly what I needed!

With Anthrocon quickly coming up, I admit I was not the most pleasant company for much of last week. Worries about preparations compounded with concerns about projects that were hitting at work right after the convention had me irritable and sleeping quite poorly. takaza, as always, was a saint and put up with me somehow. Then on Friday, I realized that 95% of what I needed for the convention was done and what wasn’t done could be handled at the con. At the same time, I found out that due to equipment and material delivery issues, my projects were being pushed back to late July. All of this set the tone for me to be very relaxed for the weekend.

We kicked off the weekend by checking into the Westin Chicago North Shore. You see, Dan won a free weekend in the Wheeling Suite there (yes, the suite which will be home to the Con Suite at Midwest FurFest) and he suggested that this would be the ideal weekend for it. So after we got settled in, he had to go have lunch with his cow-orkers. I met up with daveqat, jimcyl, and linnaeus and we had dinner at Wakaba, a Japanese restaurant just up the road from the hotel. It was…underwhelming. Standard suburban strip-mall sushi, at slightly inflated prices. I don’t see us going back there. After dinner we relaxed on the suite balcony (15 floors up) and relaxed. That was a nice end to the evening.

Saturday brought Dan’s company picnic. He was in an organizational role this year (yeah, imagine that) and so I was left to run bingo myself. Fortunately, Paul, roho, and genet volunteered to lend a hand, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon calling bingo to several hundred people and giving away over a thousand dollars in gift cards. It was surprisingly entertaining. Afterwards, we had a quick but refreshing swim in the hotel pool, then it was time for the party.

What’s the fun of having a ritzy suite if you can’t have a party? We welcomes a small group of friends up to the suite, ordered pizza, and mixed up some drinks. The weather was perfect as we chatted out on the balconies, admiring the views and watching fireworks set off in distant towns. We took a break at about 10 PM and everyone went down and swam for an hour until the pool closed, then it was back upstairs to chat and refill our drinks. I had a fantastic time and the party really let me relax and not worry about work or Anthrocon.

On Sunday it was time to check out (after sleeping relatively late). jet_der_hund had spent the night with us, and he kindly assisted us in carrying all of our stuff down. Dan took a nap in the afternoon while I puttered with Anthrocon preparations. Following a reasonably short online MFF staff meeting, we both worked on AC stuff while I introduced Dan to some of Big Blue Fox’s outstanding megamixes.

And now it’s Monday and I’m back at work. I’m going to struggle to maintain focus and get stuff done here, but I leave here at 2 PM tomorrow, pick up Dan from work, and then we head for a brief overnight in Cleveland, then Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. By the way, A note to folks in general: if you e-mail me between now and the coming weekend, don’t expect any response until after Anthrocon at the earliest!

I Hear Some People Relax On Weekends…

Yuck. I woke up a few times last night so I’m really dragging this afternoon. Fun.

Not a bad weekend overall. We were up far too early Saturday to drive down to Naperville to meet up with unclekage, who was in town for Duckon. Breakfast was acquired at Juicy-O (missed you by 24 hours, perro!). As always, the meal was excellent and we had a great time discussing last-minute Anthrocon business. We hung out and talked a bit more (and complained about Anthrocon’s stealing Midwest FurFest‘s ideas on a certain nifty tidbit, though really it was just that they hit on an idea at the same time we did 🙂 then we took our leave. On the way home we picked up a few things from the MFF storage locker and ran a few errands, then takaza took a short nap once we got back home.

A short while later it was down to Lincolnshire to see Kung Fu Panda on the biiiiig IMAX screen with linnaeus, genet, and midwestcougar. The movie was technically excellent – they did a really great job on the textures and the character design, and that was really highlighted on the ginormous screen. The content of the movie…Eh. I’d call it adequately entertaining, but nothing too fantastic. My biggest problem is the same one I always have with stars cast in voice roles – Jack Black spoke and I didn’t see a giant panda, I saw Jack Black. Others may not have a problem with this and may enjoy the movie more, but it didn’t really blow me away.

After the movie Jaycee had to take her leave, but the rest of us drove through a sudden thunderstorm up to Gurnee to meet roho for a tasty Indian meal at Bombay City. Nom naan nom!

Sunday was stressful, even though we didn’t even leave the house. I spent the day working on Artists Alley stuff, programming registers, finalizing documentation, and other fun stuff like that. I got most of what I wanted to accomplish done, but I still have several documents to write up. Dan was working on similar things for the finance office and I think we both got stressed out and started annoying each other. We got it worked out, though, and were able to relax later in the evening.

And here we are, eight days before we hit the road for Pittsburgh. I still have a lot to do, including making the Artists Alley/Con Store staff schedule. It looks like we’ll be getting together with some friends on Wednesday, then next weekend is pretty much shot with Dan’s company picnic and other stuff going on. I should be able to take a breather sometime around July 4th. Yowza!

Crazy times ahead

It’s been a while since my last substantial update. Obviously, I made it home from South Carolina OK. My flights were on Midwest Airlines from Milwaukee to Atlanta. Now, Midwest’s prices are usually more expensive than most, but in this case it was only an extra $10 or so. For that I got nice wide leather seats (the equivalent of business class on United or American) on a comfy Boeing 717, free sodas (two rounds), and of course the vaunted chocolate chip cookies (which weren’t all that great, but they were free!). I’m sad to hear that they’re rolling out “Saver” service, which will convert the majority of the 717 cabins from 2 x 2 seating to 2 x 3 seating, which will make them a lot less attractive to me. One thing I did learn in all this, though: Milwaukee Airport is a hell of a lot easier to fly in and out of than O’Hare! Given that MKE is just another 10 miles’ drive for us vs. ORD, MKE is now my airport of choice when fares allow.

So anyway, I got back very late on Monday night. Tuesday I was dragging at work, but got a lot of stuff done. When I started the week, things were looking hectic: two projects that MUST be done by June 30, and we were going to be scrambling especially since I’ll be gone to Anthrocon from June 24-30. As the week went on, though, things started to fall apart. The one project that could have had me working weekends until Anthrocon ran into regulatory delays and is now pushed back to mid-July at the earliest, more likely August. As for the other project, a new packaging line, the equipment won’t be delivered until June 27th at the earliest. Given that I’m not comfortable writing a protocol without the equipment in front of me, and that the following week is Summer Shutdown (meaning that while I have to be there, most of the people who need to sign off on the protocol won’t be there), I don’t expect that we’ll be able to start the validation until July 7th at the earliest. So, now it looks like July is going to be busy, but at least my June has opened up a whole lot!

Also, a funny thing about my trip down South: originally, I was supposed to visit a vendor in Atlanta who is supplying software for the packaging line on Tuesday and Wednesday. I changed my ticket accordingly, and life was good. Except they weren’t ready, and needed to reschedule. So I changed my ticket back. Net result: my employer paid $250 for me not to visit the vendor 🙂 Such is the way of business travel. However, they rescheduled the vendor visit to this Tuesday and Wednesday. So guess who’s flying BACK to Atlanta? The engineer I’m flying with booked a United flight out of O’Hare, but I was able to get a cheaper flight at the same times from Milwaukee (alas, on Delta not Midwest – Midwest’s fare was $600 vs. Delta’s $300). Granted, although we’re supposed to take off and land at roughly the same times, any guesses who I expect will be first to arrive in each case? Hint: O’Hare on a summer weekday afternoon is approximately the fourth circle of Hell.

So work his kept me quite busy this week, as you can see. In my spare (!) time I’ve been working on Artists Alley stuff for Anthrocon, programming the cash registers and working on documentation. rooth, I’ll be e-mailing you this weekend about spreadsheet applications. I found out last week that instead of the 100 seats we were going to have in the Alley this year (compared to last year’s 80), the number looks closer to 120. This explains my panicked post seeking more staff. I’m pleased to say that delphi_of_clf and tecknow have signed on, along with the rest of the Artists Alley/Con Store staff: frostyw98, woodychitwn, ramalion, shy_matsi, chanur2000, rooth, space-dingo, and of course Grandma and Grandpa Kage. As soon as the programming schedule is released (something I’ve heard will be happening Very Soon Now) I’ll be contacting folks to see when they will be available, then build a staff schedule around that. Gosh, the things we do for fun!

So, what’s going on this weekend for takaza and I? Nothing. Absolutely, gloriously nothing. No plans. It’s quite lovely, really 🙂 I expect we’ll venture out and do something, perhaps, but we’ll see what the days bring.

The last day to pre-register for Anthrocon is TODAY!

(Copied from mongologue‘s post to the Anthrocon website)

Pre-Registration for Anthrocon 2008 will be coming to a close today on June 6th, at 11:59 PM EST. Pre-Registration not only gets you in a line which moves at least twice as fast as On-Site Registration, but it’s $5 cheaper for Attending memberships, and only Pre-Registered SuperSponsors can attend the luncheon with Floyd Norman. Over 2,150 people have pre-registered already for Anthrocon 2008; these folks know the advantage to quick lines, discounts, and one less thing to worry about at the convention.

http://www.anthrocon.org/registration is the URL.

So Pre-Register! It’s great for Anthrocon, and okay for you!

–Chiaroscuro

Seriously, I recommend pre-registering. You will be happy you did!

URGENT Anthrocon Help Needed: Artists Alley/Con Store

Talk about your good news/bad news situations. I recently found out that the Artists Alley at Anthrocon is going to have a lot more seats than I had originally thought. That’s great! Except that my staffing levels were based on a smaller Alley. That’s not so great. So here’s the deal: I need two more people for the Artists Alley/Con Store staff, and I need firm commitments by June 1st! What’s in it for you? You get a free membership to Anthrocon, a free 2008 Anthrocon T-shirt, admission to the (very tasty!) staff dinner on Sunday night, and admission to the Super Sponsor Lounge for the whole weekend.

What am I asking in return? 12-15 hours of your time over the course of the weekend. You would be running a cash register in the Artists Alley or the Con Store, as well as assisting with end-of-day artist payout as well as setup and teardown (as your schedule allows). Plus, you’ll have an ideal seat in Hall C to watch the entire convention walk by and be in a single place that makes it easy for your friends to find you! I create a set schedule that you will have in hand a week before the convention, and I am willing to work with you to make sure you don’t miss any panels or events that you want to see.

Interested? You can either leave a comment here or e-mail me at alley-2008@anthrocon.org no later than June 1!

Lots To Do, Lots To Do…

Another quiet week rolls past. Still, I’ve gotten a lot done, particularly with Anthrocon stuff.

The new registers for Artists Alley are mostly programmed; we just need to replicate the changes out across all three registers. I’ve revamped my spreadsheets to incorporate changes we’re going to need to upload each day’s artist names into the registers, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes each morning. I’ve also started to document some of the processes required in the off chance that I’m pulled away or hit by a bus or something. And I’ve firmed up my staff, as well. Last year I had seven people on Artists Alley/Con Store staff; this year I’ve got nine people with two others available part-time. That’s going to make scheduling a lot easier.

There’s still a lot to do, though. Takaza and I need to revise the receipt forms and get those to uncle_kage by the end of the weekend. I need to figure out how to put together a map of the Alley on a whiteboard so we can write who’s sitting where (legibly!) each morning to help people find artists, and I need to make up a similar template that we can print out so it can be easily and quickly filled in once artists are seated and then transfer the information to the whiteboard. I need to pick up supplies for the Alley as well, and print and laminate the barcodes for the Con Store once I get them from Kage, and…and…

Man, it’s amazing the stuff we do for fun, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, we’ve been having a blast playing with our new Wii. The only game I’m really playing a lot of so far is Wii Sports, but I’m sure in the near future we’ll be thinking about buying another game. Whether that’s Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Boom Blox, or something else, we’ll see…

Public Service Announcement: Rooms for Anthrocon Are Available!

This is a reminder that today is the day that the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center charges the first night on all reservations that have been booked for Anthrocon (presumably, those who have reserved have gotten e-mails about this already). The Omni will be doing something similar on May 2. All of this is well-documented on Anthrocon’s hotel page.

A by-product of these facts is that all the people who booked rooms when they were unsure of whether they would attend or not are being forced to decide, and those that aren’t going are cancelling their reservations. This is good news for people who didn’t get a room, though! Right now rooms are available at both the Westin and the Omni! Make your reservation now! (though be prepared to pay for your first night when you reserve, at least at the Westin.)

Oh yeah, LiveJournal. I remember this thing…

I’m late with my weekend recap, but there’s not too much to say. Saturday we spent over at takaza‘s mom’s house with his family, playing various games and enjoying the mountain of food she cooked up for the occasion. On Sunday we didn’t do too much, mainly just relaxed around the house. I had gotten a very specific pain on Saturday night that was causing a bit of concern (on my back, just over the right kidney) that left me feeling rather blah and playing havoc with sleeping that night; that has since dwindled to nothing, so I’m hoping it was just a passing thing. Other than that, a rather unremarkable weekend.

This week finds me in statistics class (yes, again), this time learning about Design of Experiments and Variation Transmission Analysis (not Variable Transmission Analysis, which makes a lot more sense to my mind, but probably a bit too automotive). The glorious thing is that I don’t have to be in at work until 8:15 AM or so, compared to the usual 7 AM, though I’m still waking up at 5:30 AM with Dan. I’m able to enjoy my mornings a bit more, so that’s nice.

It’s still two months away, but Anthrocon is weighing heavily on our minds right now. Part of that is the fact that we have three large cash registers sitting on our dining room table. Both Dan and I are teaching ourselves how to program these for the Artists Alley; we’re hoping that these will help streamline the process a bit and make things easier for everyone involved. I’m still waiting to hear back from a few potential staff recruits; I need at least two or three more folks before I can stem the rising panic I’m feeling.

Which brings me to this: I am taking volunteers for Anthrocon Artists Alley/Con Store. In exchange for at least fifteen hours of your time, you will get free entry into Anthrocon, a free T-shirt, dinner on Sunday night (a nice dinner, too!), and the luxury of bypassing the registration lines and picking up your registration materials in Operations! If you’re interested, leave a comment here or e-mail me at alley-2008 [at] anthrocon.org.

Not much else going on this week. We may have a wah crashing at our place for a day or two during his transition to life behind the Cheddar Curtain, but other than that there’s not too much is going on.

Games, Cooking, and Constuff

It’s been pretty quiet over the last few days, which might explain the lack of updates – not a lot of exciting stuff going on.

takaza and I had a pleasant weekend together at home. On Friday Dan was feeling like a bit of retail therapy and between gift cards and Reward Zone credits we had $75 of credit for Best Buy, so we headed down to the BB in Mundelein. We stopped by the Gamestop there to look at their used PS2 games and I picked up a couple of games I hadn’t played before: God of War and Destroy All Humans! (I’m about five hours into God of War and it’s a whole lot of fun. A little more gory than a lot of games I’ve played, but the puzzles are fun and the action keeps things interesting.) As for Best Buy…well, we never did find anything that looked interesting. On the bright side, the next item that comes up on sale, we’ve got a $75 discount waiting to be used.

On Saturday, we bummed around the house most of the day, except for a run to the grocery store. Sunday I made Dan the chicken and dumplings I promised him for Valentine’s Day (a few days late), as well as the delicious semolina bread from Cookwise. Mostly we just sat around the house and enjoyed doing gloriously nothing.

This week has been pretty interesting. Dan will be transitioning from his old job to his new job until the end of the month (gotta love those internal transfers) so he was at the old location in Mount Prospect Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, then he’ll be at the new location in Buffalo Grove this afternoon and for the rest of the week. As for me, I got a couple of important reports turned in and I’m at a momentary lull until everything gets signed off and we’re working against the clock to finish a couple of projects. In the meantime I’m catching up on accumulated Midwest FurFest correspondence, and trying to resolve an annoying lingering issue with the house rental out in California (they’re trying to charge us for damage that we’re not responsible for).

Looking ahead to this weekend, we’ll be going by the MFF storage locker on Saturday to try to track down some convention assets and answer a couple of questions. Since we’ll be out and about, we’ll probably make a couple of stops (I want to swing by Ikea) and maybe even be social. No plans yet, but we’ll see what happens. Sunday evening is the online MFF staff meeting, and we also need to put together all the numbers for the Point of Sale hardware and software for Anthrocon’s Artists Alley. Oh, and speaking of conventions, congratulations to tozier_wah for signing on to run the Information Desk at Midwest FurFest. We own your soul I’m sure you’ll have a great time!

Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!

As of this morning, you can reserve at the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center for Anthrocon 2008 (Omni William Penn reservations to come).

Read the instructions carefully! Note that a non-refundable deposit for your first room night will be charged to your credit card approximately 62 days before the convention (typically around April 25).

If you want to know why these measures were necessary, read the background here.

Edit to Add: It has been noted that the Anthrocon pages are experiencing high traffic (funny thing, that) and therefore might be running a bit slow. Also, I found that the Westin’s reservation page barfed when I tried to reserve with FireFox, but it worked OK with IE.

Anthrocon Report, Part 6: Final Thoughts

So, how to summarize Anthrocon 2007?

It was a big year for me. We put a lot of plans into place and I think they came off rather well, a few technical glitches notwithstanding. I didn’t have enough time to socialize, which isn’t too surprising given how I was tethered to the Alley, but I don’t really regret that too much. Standing in the empty Artists Alley at 4:45 PM on Sunday, after everyone had been paid and left, I was left with a feeling of accomplishment.

One thing that I think is worth mentioning, and something that very few people know, unless they were involved with staff in Hall C. I wouldn’t be able to do my job if it weren’t for the efforts of my husband, takaza. Yes, I know – he’s my husband and it’s expected that I would give him credit. But were it not for him and his staff (daveqat, jimcyl, and wild_rhythm) we wouldn’t have had the cash for our cash registers or to pay the artists at the end of the day, and Anthrocon’s finances would be a mess. Dan put in a lot of time preparing for the con, and during the con put in even longer hours than I did. Unfortunately, the nature of his job keeps him out of the public eye, and it’s often rather thankless. So I want to publicly thank him for all of his hard work, and remind him that I love him very much!

Looking ahead to 2008, I see a lot of challenges ahead of us. If we expand the Alley by 50%, our registers and our payout system are going to be stretched to the breaking point. We need to investigate how to improve the artist tracking system (possibly with a Point-of-Sale system, and making the Con Store register able to take Artists Alley purchases during busy periods) and how to speed up payout. I need at least two or three more staff members, as well. We’ve got some other innovative ideas that we need to pitch to the Anthrocon board that could help dealers as well. In short, we have some exciting opportunities ahead of us, and amazingly enough I’m looking forward to next year already.

Among other things for next year, I hope to finally set foot in the Steel City Diner. I hope to host another Fine Potables Tasting (and actually get invitations to everyone I want to invite!). I hope to make it back to the Dorsai debriefing on Sunday night. And finally, I hope that, when Anthrocon 2008 is over, I’m looking forward to 2009 with the excitement I feel now for 2008.

Anthrocon Report, Part 1: Tuesday and Wednesday

I’ll start out by saying that this is going to be a long, multi-part report. The main reason I write these (and so many of my other “went-here, did-this” entries) is because I find that it’s nice to be able to come back months or years later and revisit these entries and be reminded of what went wrong, what went right, who I spent time with, and what exactly happened. I invite everyone to come along for the ride, but if it’s not your thing, I understand completely.

That having been said, let’s start at the beginning, on Tuesday, shall we?

For obvious reasons I’m afraid I didn’t get much accomplished on Tuesday at work, since my mind was very much on the coming trip. I was able to get away from work at 2 PM. This gave me time to stop at Subway and grab some lunch, then go home and eat before piling part of our luggage into the car and heading to the train station for the 3:13 PM Metra train. Takaza had the rest of the luggage and was going to meet me at O’Hare, having gotten a ride from a co-worker. The train ride was uneventful, and the transfer from the train to the bus to the O’Hare ATS was very simple. I met Dan at the United E-Ticketing baggage check-in in Terminal 1 and we cruised through the security checkpoint.

The flight out was unremarkable, save that on what appeared to be a very full flight, an unoccupied row was available so Dan grabbed the window seat and I grabbed the aisle, thus freeing us both of the packed three-person rows we were in before. We got to Pittsburgh International Airport at about 10:30 PM and after a bit of an extended wait for our luggage, went out to meet the shuttle that Dan had called while we waited. The shuttle (with the World’s Most Surly Driver, who didn’t even make a move to help load our bags into the van) took us over to the La Quinta Pittsburgh Airport. It was…adequate. Definitely a mid-to-lower range La Quinta, but it was only $15 with Dan’s LQ points. We watched a bit of TV then went to sleep at around midnight.

Wednesday

I woke up with a coughing fit (something that was to become standard for the week) at about 6 AM and after about a half-hour of trying to get back to sleep, I got up and showered, then went down to get some breakfast and read the paper. I thought something was a bit odd with the free newspaper the hotel supplied (the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review), but it wasn’t until I read the uncritical quote from a Washington Times reporter and saw Mallard Fillmore on the editorial page that I decided I needed to get a real newspaper and walked next door to the Bob Evans and bought a copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I knew I was going into a news black hole (I don’t have time to read a newspaper during a con!) so I figured I’d enjoy it while I could.

I returned to the room to find Dan already up and showered. We packed everything up and took it down to the lobby where Dan had some breakfast while we waited for the shuttle back to the airport at 9:30 AM. Once we got back to the airport (courtesy of our MUCH friendlier and helpful driver), we walked all of 100 feet down the curb to wait for the 28X bus to take us downtown. As we waited we were joined by Mach, which made the ride much more pleasant and a really nice start to our con experience. The bus let us off about three blocks from the Westin, and we had no problems finding it. We were able to check in immediately, which was a very nice surprise. We took our luggage up to the room and I got the clothes put away and shirts and pants hung up while we had the chance.

Once we were fully settled in, it was time to dive into the convention! We stopped by Operations, but except for various staff members filtering in, there wasn’t a lot going on, especially since they hadn’t dispatched the truck to the storage unit yet. We hung out there for a while, and then decided to get some lunch. Unfortunately, we found that downtown Pittsburgh on a holiday (July 4th, in this case) was a ghost town. Nothing was open, and we wound up walking about eight blocks down to Gateway Center before coming on a McDonalds that was open. Any port in a storm, I guess. We had a quick lunch, and then returned to the hotel to find that the troops had been marshaled and dispatched to the storage unit in our absence.

Dan, kellicjtigerKellic, and I worked to get the radios set up, identifying the faulty ones and verifying the programming on all of them. I think we wound up with a couple of duds (like last year) but overall everything seemed OK. I had an excellent discussion with Bigtig about the Anthrocon Registration system, and what he’s done to improve it over the years. I continue to be impressed with the work that he’s done, and I think he has every right to be very proud of the improvements he has made to the system. The proof is how smoothly things went this year as he and his staff registered 2,849 people. Well done!

We took a break from Ops and I went outside and hung out with Datahawk, Emrldgrrl, Artemisfur, Dancingninny, and the rest of the Dekalb crew. We had a lot of fun chatting, watching the crowds coming in, and making snarky comments. After a time, I went back into find that the hordes had come and gone and emptied the truck very quickly into the Operations office. I helped Dan get his office’s equipment sorted out, and then we started to talk about dinner.

We wound up taking orders from most of the Dorsai on site as well as a couple of others and ordering from Ephesus Pizza. Dan and I ordered a chicken alfredo pizza (with bacon!) that was delicious, if a bit salty for my taste. We hung out in Ops for a few hours, helping out here and there and sharing some of our pizza. The fireworks were quite pretty, what little we could see in the gap between the office buildings. Afterwards, we trundled up to bed and watched a bit of TV before sleep claimed us at around midnight.

Back from Anthrocon

We’re home safe. Apparently we just dodged the thunderstorms that delayed flights into O’Hare for up to three hours, and caught the northbound Metra train with seconds to spare. I’m almost done catching up on 300+ LJ posts. takaza went to bed at about 6:30, and I don’t see myself staying up too late tonight, either

In summary: It was completely exhausting. It was fun. We’ll be back.

P.S. – I’d like copies of any pictures taken at the Fine Potables party, please 🙂

Now Is Not The Time To Be Sick

Still fighting this summer cold. The good news is, all indications are that no infection is present so it’s just your garden-variety Upper Respiratory Ick; hopefully it’ll pass within the next day or so.

Saturday was a crazy day. We met up with datahawk then met justincheetah at the MFF storage locker and unearthed the cable protectors and power distribution panel he needed for Anthrocon. A very pleasant lunch at Chipotle followed (mmm, burritos). We don’t get to see enough of that kitty, something we’ll need to work on after Anthrocon. From there we headed into Chicago to drop off a few things with linnaeus which he will be graciously ferrying to Anthrocon for us. Then we fought our way through downtown traffic to Merrillville, Indiana where we saw Weird Al Yankovic in concert. It was a fun show (and eventually I’ll download the pictures off my cell phone, including a close-up of Al crooning to Data :-), though I admit that it hit my pet peeve of concerts, where the show sounds exactly like the songs on the albums. Sure, something is added in the performance (and Al is nothing if not expressive!). That was a minor complaint, though; overall the concert was a blast. The drive home was long, and we didn’t get to bed until 2 AM.

Sunday morning I woke up at 6 AM, of course, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Bless his heart, takaza put up with my barely-functioning, grumpy self. A midday nap helped a good bit, but the migration of the sinus stuffiness to my chest with some mild coughing didn’t help much. We did accomplish a good bit of the laundry and packing the we needed to do, though in the course we figured out that Dan needs a new dress shirt and I need a new pair of khaki pants. We closed out the evening with some Flip This House and Dirty Jobs, then stumbled off to bed.

And here we are today. I’m feeling a good bit better. My sinuses still hate me, but at least the headache I woke up has receded. I’ve got the cough-syrup-with-codeine in my bag if I need it, but hopefully I won’t. I’m off to Gurnee Mills after work to pick up the pants I need, then we’ll put the finishing touches on the packing tonight. I’ll be taking off from work tomorrow at 2:30 PM, then parking at the Grayslake train station and catching the train down to O’Hare, where I’ll meet up with Dan. Our flight out is at 7:05 PM. I’ve hit the long downhill slide before the con where I just want it to start – months of planning has gone into this, so now it’s time to see how well those plans work.

It’s Been a Quiet Week In, um, Hainesville…

I know I’ve been quiet here this week, but I have excuses! You see, much of our week has been consumed with preparations for Anthrocon; even when we weren’t actively working on convention planning, we were thinking about it and that kind of wears on you. Add to that the fact that I’m fighting off a mild summer cold. Yuck.

In general update terms, though, things have been going well. If I didn’t mention it earlier, I haven’t been hired on full-time at my employer yet since they were still working out which positions were open and which they were going to fill with whom. I have been assured, multiple times, that it is a matter of “when” and not “if” I get hired, though. My contract was extended to the end of July, and that’s OK by me. While that means my three days off for Anthrocon will be unpaid, the good news is that I still come out ahead in net salary. I had a good talk with my boss this week and he is satisfied with my performance and seems willing to put a bit more on my plate, which makes me happy.

Work for takaza continues to be stressful; I worry about him and I know that all of this stress takes its toll on his health. Things got a little more difficult this week (I won’t go into it here, but my heart does go out to those involved), but he’s been assured that it won’t affect his vacation time. He is justifiably skeptical and unfortunately probably will have to log in from Pittsburgh to do some work for some part of the time that we’re there.

We did find time to relax a bit last night. We had a pleasant dinner with roho and genet at a frozen custard place in Antioch (good sandwiches, not so good frozen custard), then we caught the late showing of Ratatouille at the Antioch Theater. GO SEE THIS MOVIE! It was so much fun! Great character design, a nifty score, and a really great expression of the love of food and cooking. I adored it, and wouldn’t mind seeing it again. As an aside, I also love the Antioch Theater – $4 admission, popcorn for a couple of bucks (and free refills on popcorn and sodas, provided by roving ushers), a trivia quiz by a real live employee before the show. When we went to see Waitress a few weeks ago we went to the Regal theater in Round Lake; tickets, plus popcorn and soda came to over $30 (and that’s at matinee prices!). That’s just plain offensive.

Ahem. Movie theater ranting aside, it looks like the next few days are going to be pretty nuts for us. I can’t even guarantee that I’ll be posting between now and Anthrocon, so here’s a quick rundown:

Today, once datahawk gets up here, we’ll all head down to Arlington Heights to meet justincheetah at the MFF storage locker to get a power distribution panel for him (I hope it’s not buried too far under everything!). Then it’s over to linnaeus‘s place in the city to drop off some stuff that he is kindly carrying to Anthrocon for us. After that, it’s down to Merrillville, Indiana where we have tickets to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert!

Tomorrow will be con packing and (more) planning, and staging everything as best we can. Oh, and relaxing somewhat, since that’ll be our last chance before the con. Monday will be work as usual.

Tuesday, we fly out from O’Hare at 7:05 PM, arriving in Pittsburgh at 9:32 PM (supposedly). Give that it’s an evening flight in the summer out of O’Hare, I figure if we get to PIT before 11:30 PM we’ll be doing good. We’ll spend the night at the La Quinta Pittsburgh Airport, then on Wednesday morning catch the 28X bus downtown to the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center. We hope to be at the Westin by 11 AM or 12 noon.

And after that? Madness and chaos. With any luck I’ll be able to document some of that…at some point.

Booze, Bingo, and, um…Man, I Fail At Alliteration

Let’s get up to speed, shall we?

After work on Friday takaza and I stopped by Gurnee Mills to pick up a few things. We were just looking for a new belt for me but wandered into the game store only to find that they were having a buy-one-get-half-off-another sale on games. We walked out with two games that look like they’re going to be a lot of fun at our next party: Malarkey and Wits and Wagers. When we finished shopping we drove up to Antioch to our favorite liquor store to stock up on a few things for Anthrocon (a couple of new Scotches and a bottle of Grey Goose, ’cause I likes me some good sipping vodka). We met up with genet (roho was under the weather) and had a pleasant dinner at Las Vegas Restaurant.

Saturday was craziness, but in a fun way. For the second year in a row we ran the bingo games for Dan’s company picnic. It’s a good thing that Dan thought to bring our bingo set (purchased for use last year, but not used) because we found that the provided bingo set was missing four bingo balls. That would have sucked. We ran two sessions, each 90 minutes long, and gave away a little over $2,000 in gift cards to Target, Wal Mart, and various restaurants. People seemed to enjoy it. Dan had bought a huge chunk for tickets for the charity raffle (to benefit Gilda’s Club) and for the second year in a row he won an iPod, this time a 4 Gb iPod Nano. Which would be nice except that we both have 30 Gb Video iPods. Ah well, we had fun, at least, and the day’s surreal moment was provided by the CEO of Dan’s company inquiring if we’re brothers. I guess it’s true that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to look alike 🙂

After the picnic we headed into the city, where we met up with datahawk and emrldgrrl to see the GLBT Pride edition of Too Much Light makes the Baby Go Blind (“30 queer plays in 60 straight minutes”). As always, the show was amazing – funny, poignant, and thought-provoking. I admit, it’s the silly stuff that I remember most, including “Two Minute Strip Rock Paper Scissors” and “All The Boys in the Frat House Say Ho(mosexual)!” Because it was a benefit show, even though they ran out of time on play #25 everyone agreed that we should see the last five plays, so we did! After the show, we drove down to linnaeus‘s place and got dinner from our favorite taquiera. It was great ending to a great day.

And on Sunday? We rested. Well, we did a little work on Anthrocon stuff, but mostly we just rested. And it was good.

Games, Family, and Cons

Hmm, I’m getting slack about updating again. That’s not so good.

Last week we had to get both of our Honda Elements serviced, mine to have the upholstery repaired before the warranty expired and takaza‘s for its 60,000 mile service. Rosen Honda in Gurnee proved a mixed bag in terms of getting this accomplished. Just setting up the service was difficult, as it took no less than four calls just to get through to the service department, including getting hung up on twice. I dropped my car off on Wednesday night, and got a call on Thursday that they had completely disassembled the driver’s seat and opened the box with the new seat cover only to find that it was the wrong color. We therefore had to leave the care there Thursday night as well. I picked it up on Friday afternoon after work, dropping off Dan’s car in the process with the request that the service be completed by noon on Saturday.

I stopped to get gas before heading down to pick up Dan and it’s a good thing I did, because while filling up I saw that in the process of putting the car through the car wash just before giving it back to me, they had torn off the rear windshield wiper and it was hanging by a wire. I high-tailed it back to the dealership and arrived just as the parts department closed. The service guy was very apologetic and fixed things up enough that the car wouldn’t be damaged until I could bring it back the next day to get the wiper assembly replaced.

From there I headed south to meet Dan at the Buffalo Grove Metra station (gods, I hate Lake-Cook Road on Friday afternoons). We killed some time playing minigolf at my favorite place in the area, Par King, then met up with daveqat and synicism for dinner at Osteria di Tramonto. Dinner was fabulous, as always; I had the cavatelli with roasted escarole and chicken; Dan had chicken Parmesan, Dave went with the hanger steak, and Jim had rack of lamb. All were excellent, and my chocolate torte after dinner was superb.

On Saturday, Dan and I went to pick up his car. $520 later – ouch! – the car is in excellent shape, though I’m told the front brake pads need replacing soon. Somehow I’m certain that I can get it done cheaper than the $289 they’re offering; heck, from what I understand, if I had the service manual and a couple more tools I could do it myself. It’s something to consider after Anthrocon, perhaps; in the meantime, since he’s putting all of maybe four miles a day on the car going to and from the train station, it’s not hugely urgent.

We stopped by Lovin’ Over Cakery for some tasty dessert stuff, then headed over to Dan’s mom’s place for an afternoon of games and lots and lots of food. She had roasted a 20+ pound turkey (!) and had made all of the trappings. This just for me, Dan, Dan’s brother and sister, and her. We had a great time playing Scene It! Squabble (truly annoying, with offensive gender stereotypes for all!), Apples to Apples, and Balderdash. I enjoyed Balderdash the most, though I’m thinking that we need to pick up a copy of Malarky, which encourages a little more elaborate tale-spinning. We capped off the evening with a family portrait, which Dan posted in his journal.

On Sunday, Dan and I worked on various Anthrocon and Midwest FurFest tasks, taking a break to hit the grocery store. Dan made a tasty turkey and rice dish with kielbasa using the huge amount of leftover turkey his mom gave us before we left the night before. We “attended” the MFF online staff meeting, then I edited the log and sent the notes out shortly afterwards. The rest of the evening, we watched a bit of TiVo and the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special, then headed off to bed.

So, this week: Poker Night on Wednesday, and I need to run various errands after work on Wednesday and Thursday. Next weekend is Dan’s employer’s company picnic, and we’re going to be running the bingo games again this year. Should be…um, fun. Yeah, that’s it. Fun. 🙂