Category Archives: antioch

Birthday, Moving Plans, and Commuting

Well, as I mentioned on Friday, I was hoping that we would be heading up to Antioch to hang out at roho and genet‘s place, and that’s exactly what happened. We were joined by linnaeus and datahawk, as well. We celebrated takaza‘s birthday in grand style, with dinner at the local steakhouse, and cake and drinks and good conversation afterwards. It was a delightful evening.

Saturday morning we were slow to get started (as usual), but finally made our way over to our customer brunch stop, Las Vegas Restaurant, where we had a tasty meal. We then parted ways, as Dan, Paul, and I headed back into the city. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching stuff off the Tivo. In fact, Sunday was pretty much a copy of that afternoon, as I declared that it was too freakin’ cold outside, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. So we didn’t! It was nice to have a quiet weekend in. We did get a chance to look at our financials, though, and talk about upcoming plans, and we did arrive at an important decision: we hope to move out to the ‘burbs by the middle of January or so, probably somewhere in the vicinity of Wheeling or Buffalo Grove, as those would provide a roughly equal commute for Dan and me. Obviously, we haven’t had a chance to scope out places yet, and it’s up in the air whether we’ll be renting an apartment, a townhouse, or a house; it all depends on what’s available and what fits within our budget. Once we secure a place and a date, though, look for plaintive wails for assistance to be sounding loudly here!

Yesterday kicked off what promises to be a long week. Dan’s North Carolina driver’s license expired last week and he didn’t have a Social Security card to apply for an Illinois license (he does now, having applied for one last week), but that means that until he can get to a Secretary of State’s office he’s without a license. I’m driving him into work each morning, which surprisingly only adds about 20 minutes to my commute – not bad at all, and the company is nice, even if we are minimally communicative at that hour 🙂 Yesterday was a pretty crappy day for Dan, so instead of him taking the bus/train/bus combination to get home, I went down and picked him up. A friendly face as you leave work is always a nice thing. We’ll see if he needs a lift today – it’s really not too far out of my way, surprisingly enough.

Looking ahead this week, we have my staffing agency’s holiday party on Thursday (at Gameworks! Woo!), then someone’s house (luke)warming on Friday, and on Saturday, Dan’s employer’s holiday party (dinner then a Second City show). We’ll hopefully get Dan’s license on Saturday, too, and maybe drop some stuff off at our storage unit, if we have time. And on Sunday, maybe we’ll get to sleep in, who knows?

Back to this exciting training stuff…

The Con Is Mother, The Con Is Father

As one might have guessed from my last update, Midwest FurFest is weighing heavily on my mind.

Friday I took takaza into work and took advantage of the glorious weather to take some nice pictures in and around McHenry County (well, except for the first one; that’s on Milwaukee Ave. in Niles). You’ll be seeing some of those pictures again come the convention. After driving for several hours I made a big loop and stopped back by Schaumburg and found a good place for MFF to store our stuff for the next year right near the hotel. I’ll be stopping by there later this week to nail down a contract with them. Afterwards I went to Dan’s employer and read the paper and killed some time until he was ready to leave, only about two hours after quitting time. steviemaxwell was over visiting so we had a pleasant evening of dinner from the taquiera and good conversation.

On Saturday I took off early and headed up to roho and genet‘s place where we were joined by neowolf2 and attempted to assemble all of the parts of the Registration server. Things didn’t go quite as well as we’d hoped. Computer geekery ensued, and Unix-y troubleshooting

Oh yeah, I’m still around

Yeah, no posts of note last week. I was feeling kind of down and much feel like posting.

So what did I do? Well, on Wednesday I struck out northwestwards to get some pictures for use by Midwest FurFest. This put me conveniently near the engravers who handle our staff badges every year, so I was able to stop by, chat a bit, and kick around ideas for this year’s designs. I’m pretty happy with what we decided on, and now all I have to do is e-mail him the template and the list of names and titles and we’ll be good to go (and this year I won’t forget the Guests of Honor like I did last year, with that lovely “Oh sh#t!” moment on Wednesday night). Afterwards, I drove down and picked up takaza after work. Last week was month-end for him, and between doing the work of multiple people and the stress of more and more tasks being piled on him, it was not a good week. I hope I was able to help a little bit, anyway.

On Thursday, after I took Dan in to work, I stopped by the MFF storage locker and picked up a few things, and dropped off a few things that had been sitting in linnaeus‘s garage since Anthrocon, as well. I stopped by a printer and got a quote for the attendee badges for this year – we’re going to a new, faster system, but wow, the price of badge blanks just got a lot more expensive! I need to call a couple more places for quotations and see if I can get the price down at all. That was also an especially tough day for Dan at work, so I drove back out and picked up dinner for him (and a tasty milkshake as a special treat), and after we ate I sat at the desk across from him and read the paper while he finished up; he finished up and we left $employer a little after 9 PM.

Dan got out of work surprisingly close to on time on Friday, and in much better spirits too. After I picked him up, we took back roads up to Antioch and had a lovely evening with roho, genet, and the visiting-from-Maryland ottr. We had a delightful evening filled with tasty burgers at Charcoal Grill, a hysterical shopping trip in the liquor department of Woodman’s, drunken Apples to Apples, and the alarmingly rapid consumption of a bottle of Pucker (“How does it taste?” “Blue.”). The next morning, following a typically delicious breakfast at Las Vegas Restaurant (mmm, chocolate chip pancakes…), we all went our separate ways.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on MFF-related stuff: preparing last-minute orders for promotional materials, Dan working on the con book, me helping Dan work on the con book, and other fun stuff. I’ve got a stack of confirmation postcards to go out (and I need to print more of them and buy more postage – great googly moogly, that’s a lot of registrations!) We also took some amusing pictures to accompany the Chairman’s Welcome (I’ll be keeping those for future blackmail material, Paul 😉 Dinner Sunday night was some tasty steaks, and catching up with “The Amazing Race.”

Lots to do this week – hopefully some good stuff going on tomorrow, but in the meantime there’s a ton of orders I need to place and phone calls I need to make. Never a dull moment…

Apple-y Goodness!

It was such a great weekend, it took me a day to recover from it before I could write this! (Or I’m lazy. One of the two…)

We had a fabulous weekend, though! On Friday I picked takaza up after work and we headed north to Antioch to hang out with roho and genet. Traffic being what it is, our 6 PM arrival became 7:15 PM, but that’s OK – we weren’t in too much of a hurry and I always enjoy the time spent with Dan. We chatted a bit once we got there and then headed out to a Mexican joint that was…well, a wee bit underwhelming. We need to take R&G to the taquiera around the corner from our place for something a little more authentic. Following a stop by Armanetti’s Liquors, we chatted for a while back at the house and tested some of the Tasty Beverages we had purchased. After a bit, I was shocked by the arrival of datahawk! Yeah, she lives there, but it’s not like they ever actually see her 🙂

The next morning was the usual slow start, but pleasantly so. Eventually we motivated enough to head down to BD’s in Vernon Hills to meet up with linnaeus, feren, and lady_curmudgeon. Tasty stir-fried food was consumed and we had a great time chatting. Afterwards, we returned to Antioch for a quick stop by Antioch Packing House for dinner grillables, then a stop by the house for pit stops. As we were leaving there, I unfortunately managed to step approximately in the same place that Feren did and twisted my left ankle. I imagine I looked pretty impressive staggering around a bit before collapsing to the grass. Ack! I was still able to walk, though, so we pressed on, though somewhat slowly.

And press on we did, to Brightonwood Orchards! This fabulous place is just north of Richard Bong State Recreation Area and only about a 20-minute drive from Antioch. When we pulled in, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the orchard also had a winery! The winery made apple wines and hard ciders, and they had a tour – well, not so much a tour as one of the guys who makes the wines and ciders who just loves talking about it and showing off their shop. I took several pictures, some of which should amuse you homebrewers out there. After the tour, we had a great time tasting their wares and picking up a few bottles of the drinkable apple-y goodness. We were joined by grabstein_69, silverwind, and their daughter Chayla right around then, too.

We walked (well, I hobbled) over to the apple barn where they had a respectable variety of heirloom apples. I grabbed a variety of different apples, though of course now I have no idea which are which but hey – it should be an unusual eating experience. As we were leaving I remembered that neowolf2 had mentioned how good Northern Spy apples were. I hadn’t seen any on display, so I asked the cashier and she said they had some in the cooler. I bought four of them and tore into one as we were hanging around while Giles fed Chayla. OH MY GOD that apple was so good! Slightly tart, slightly sweet, and nice and firm. Just excellent, and very flavorful. I’m glad I bought them!

After the orchard, we had a nice evening relaxing back at R&G’s place, enjoying grilled meat, mojitos, and good company. We capped off the night by surprising Roho with a birthday cake I had made the day before. Yay for surprises! The cake was tasty, too, though a bit dry due to a little overbaking. The dark chocolate frosting made up for that though. Yum!

On Sunday Genet made a tasty breakfast for us, then we said our goodbyes. Dan and I headed south, all the way down to Glen Ellyn, where we helped crim_ferret and wyldekyttin move some of their possessions to their new place in Naperville (if anyone wants to know where it is: Conveniently located just south of The Big N). Unfortunately, between the fact that my ankle was shot and we had an online Midwest FurFest staff meeting that night. we weren’t as helpful as I would have hoped. We got some of their bookcases over, at least. We returned to The City by about 5 PM, which gave us time to grab dinner from the taquieria before the meeting. The meeting was moderately useful and mercifully short, and we spent the rest of the evening working on con-related stuff.

And Monday? The usual – apply to a bunch of jobs, go to the grocery store, run some errands, that sort of thing. Today was more of the same. You see why I don’t write much about my weekdays? They’re boring as heck!

Run Silent, Run Deep

Man, you know it’s getting time to post in your journal when your mom complains about she hasn’t read anything new there lately 😉

Well, on Saturday we started out by taking takaza‘s mom to lunch for her birthday. I understand that she’s just happy to spend time with us, but I admit that I’m used to making a bit more of a to-do over such things; she was just fine with us going to Steak and Shake, which she’d never been to before. Dan and I grew up with very different family dynamics. Neither is better or worse than the other, but sometimes it can be a bit weird. We had fun, though, and it was a pleasant lunch. Afterwards we went to roho and genet‘s place and had a fun evening with them and datahawk, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and linnaeus. A surprisingly small amount of alcohol was consumed, and we all were feeling pretty tired before midnight even rolled around. Ah well.

Sunday began with the traditional trip to Las Vegas Restaurant, where I had their always-fabulous Las Vegas skillet. From there we headed back into the city and lazed around the house for a while. For dinner, Dan and I tried to come up with something new and different to do with the large amount of fresh corn that we purchased. Dan cut the kernels off the cobs, then I sautéed up some garlic and added the corn to the pan. A little salt, a little pepper, some paprika, and…bleah. It’s not often that our culinary experiments go awry, but this one was to neither of our liking; the sweetness of the corn was a weird match for the garlic, and while the paprika started to bridge the gap, it just wasn’t enough.

Monday and Tuesday were unremarkable, except that the weather cooled down enough to make going outside actually a pleasant prospect. I took the bus down to Lincoln Square and spent about an hour and a half outside of The Grind reading The Reader and enjoying a tasty blueberry smoothie. the weather was nice enough (low 70’s and low humidity) that I decided to walk back. My stroll took me past Kempf Plaza where tango tunes from the 40’s and 50’s were being played on a tinny speaker while older couples danced around the plaza (please pardon my lousy cameraphone quality). I had to stop for a while and enjoy the music and the spectacle – it was a magical thing on a cool summer evening. The rest of the walk home, the music played in my head and provided a moody background to the quiet neighborhoods.

When I called Dan after work on Wednesday he mentioned that parking was going to be limited on the street in front of Linnaeus‘s place for the next four days while they re-pave, so we decided that it would be better for him to just leave his car at work and we can car-pool for a few days. After I picked him up, we drove over to the Renaissance Schaumburg and Convention Center to check them out. They just opened the place six weeks ago, and they’re still a bit rough around the edges (missing signage, lights missing on the elevators, wallpaper edges still showing a bit). Once they get everything ironed out, though, the place is going to be nothing short of amazing. And huge, too! I’ll be curious to compare that against the still-under-construction Westin Lombard Yorktown Center once that is complete. (No one should read this as an indication that MFF is moving anywhere, but it’s always good to know all of the available venues in the area.)

And so, tonight. Linnaeus is hosting a Happy Hour at The Red Lion, and I hope to make it to that. Hope to see some of y’all there!

Dancing Huskies? Not Likely.

Time to play ketchup…and mustard! Nah, just catch-up.

For all that I was hoping to kick off the weekend with a bang, takaza and I agreed on Friday afternoon that we were both tired and we’d just stay in. That was a good thing, since Dan didn’t get home from work until close to 7 PM anyway.

On Saturday, I vowed to get a nice, early start. I got up at 7 and, after morning coffee, headed over to the gym for a full workout. I got back later than I would have liked but almost on time anyway, since siriuswolfstar and rustitobuck were already waiting and chatting with Dan and linnaeus. The five of us walked the few blocks to Tre Kronor, the wonderful little Swedish restaurant near our place. Several different kinds of eggs benedict were ordered (traditional, crabcake, and salmon), and Rusty’s corned beef hash was amazingly tasty (lots of fresh thyme in there helped, I think). All that and fresh-made danishes and strong coffee. Man, I love that place!

Afterwards, Sirius, Dan, and I drove up to Antioch to meet Roho and Genet. We went to see Eight Below (short review: awful script, awful actors, extremely unlikely and over-anthropomorphized canine behavior, but at least the dogs were pretty), then adjourned to their place for the usual pizza and Drunken Apples to Apples. Sunday morning we made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for their Skillets O’ Doom, and then came home and zoned out for the rest of the afternoon.

Yesterday, Dan attempted to start a regimen of going in an hour early to try to avoid having to stay late each might – still get the overtime, just make it a little more bearable. Unfortunately he picked the wrong day to do it, as that was when the monthly forecasts were due, which meant he didn’t get home until a little before 9 PM. Thirteen-hour days suck, indeed. Here’s hoping that the rest of the week won’t be nearly as bad. For tonight, it’s back to the gym for me, and with luck a tasty dinner for us both.

Well, we didn’t have any plans, but…

You know, you go into a weekend with no plans, and stuff just kind of happens. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you!

After a quiet night in on Friday, takaza and I slept in (I got up at 9:15! Woo!). I enjoyed a nice morning of coffee, newspaper, and laptop, with some mellow music playing in the background. Once Dan was up and we had showered, linnaeus joined us and we drove up to the bustling metropolis of Antioch, IL, where we met up with roho and genet to see Hoodwinked (My favorite review: “Finally, a Rashomon for the whole family. This cartoon version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ tells and retells its story from a variety of perspectives, all of them boring”). It wasn’t quite that bad – it had random moments of humor – but the animation was substandard and all in all I’m really glad I only paid $2 to see it.

After the movie, we went to the Antioch Armanetti’s liquor store (motto: “Better stocked than we have any right to be!”), where we found that we arrived about five minutes to late to take part in the huge beer and wine sampling event they were staging. Phooey. We made a couple of good purchases, though. They had a good price on Apfelkorn (take note, lisagems!) so I got a bottle of that, as well as a bottle of Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka. Dan picked up a bottle of Thin Mint Liqueur and a bottle of Sgt. Peppermint. The best buy of the night was a Grey Goose Vodka gift set that was a box big enough to hold two bottles and included two martini glasses, a shaker, and a pony/jigger. Normally it sold with two bottles of vodka but without the bottles it was $5.99. Score! We now have a nice portable bar 🙂 (This may sound like a huge booze purchase, but for those of you who know us, this is enough liquor to last us for the next six or eight months!)

After a quick stop by the grocery store, we headed back to Roho and Genet’s place. A tasty dinner of burgers followed, and feren eventually joined us as well. We determined that while Drunken Apples to Apples is a very fun game, Drunken Cranium is not quite as much fun. We had fun anyway, though. The next morning we made our usual pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for a delicious breakfast, then it was back to the house for an orgy of Nintendo DS gaming. We left at around 3 or so to head back to the city. Siriuswolfstar came by later once he got off from work and we capped off an excellent weekend with some sushi and some Family Guy.

After a restless night’s sleep, I’m trudging forward this morning. We have a lot to get done with week – errands to run after work, and some cleaning around the house as well – and on Friday we head towards Pittsburgh for some pre-Anthrocon strategizing. Since Friday will be a half-day, that means I’ll be coming in extra early Tuesday through Friday to make up for the lost time, yay. And now, off to see what joys my inbox has for me…