Category Archives: carbon leaf

More Than You Ever Needed To Know About Donkey Shows

Traffic in Chicago on Friday afternoons sucks; traffic on Friday afternoons when it’s raining is just downright retarded. This would explain why it took us two hours to get from Mount Prospect to Naperville last Friday afternoon. The trip was worth it, though! We had an OK dinner at Famous Dave’s (thereby scratching my yen for BBQ – almost. Now I just want some good BBQ). The company was excellent, though, as we were joined by wyldekyttin, foxish, emrldgirrl, datahawk, and linnaeus. After dinner we headed over to the theater and saw Clerks 2, which was a lot funnier than I expected it to be. Like most of Smith’s movies, it’s very quotable, and educational, too (hence the title of this post 🙂

On Saturday we had a pleasant morning and early afternoon of bumming around the house, then headed out to Sheffield Walk to see Carbon Leaf. That was a heck of a lot more people in too small a space than I was prepared to deal with. The sound mix, alas, was abominable, and between the crowds and incoming rain, Dan and I bailed about halfway through the set. We retreated to Bobtail for tasty ice cream, and were joined there by Linnaeus. Devin and Data picked up Kyttin and met us in Lincoln Square, but we eventually opted to adjourn back to Linnaeus’ place for dinner from the taquiera on the corner nearby. Dinner was yummy, and it’s always fun to hang out with friends.

Sunday found us driving up to McHenry County to visit with Dan’s mom. Her Tivo wasn’t connecting and we suspected we knew the problem but had to be there to fix it. Sure enough, the Netgear wireless router had somehow completely reset itself; fixing it was a two-minute thing, very simple. We got a delicious lunch out of the deal, though, and a nice afternoon of familial socializing. We headed home and lazed around the house for the rest of the evening, watching a little more Tivo.

And here we are at today. Ever since Friday, I’ve had a pain in my right ear that has gotten worse and worse. I suspected I knew the problem, and I just got back from the doctor who confirmed it: Otitis Externa, or Swimmer’s Ear. A round of levofloxacin (a relative of Cipro) should take care of it, and the Tylenol with codeine to help the pain at night won’t hurt either 🙂 Having taken care of that, I’m off in a few minutes to pick up Dan and then we’ll wander our way down to Lombard to celebrate rustitobuck‘s birthday. Yay!

Oh, and for locals: if you haven’t seen it, there’s a coffee get-together in the city on Wednesday!

It’s Just Right

Some weekends are too busy…some are too lazy. This one was juuuuust right.

On Saturday I left takaza hugging his pillow and mumbling “G’way!” and struck out for Vernon Hills to join roho, genet, feren, and datahawk for lunch at BD’s. The lamb there is just delicious, and really lends itself to my favorite combination of soy, ginger, and garlic. After lunch Data and I headed back to our place where we bummed around for a bit then took the El down to the Lincoln Park Fest (which, it turns out, was right outside the Zoo. We probably still missed you by an hour or so, Quasi). We were joined by chouette and Ed and saw moryssa as well. Carbon Leaf just flat-out rocked. We were standing front and center in front of the stage and I really enjoyed the 90-minute show. There was a huge crowd of fans and it seemed like everyone knew the words to the songs, which is always cool and must be really gratifying to the band. I took some okay pictures of the show with my cell phone – at least you can make out who’s who.

After the show we repaired to the Golden Nugget at Clark and Diversey. We speculated whether this was the diner that was featured on This American Life (it wasn’t) and had a so-so dinner. At least the company was good. Linnaeus, having freed himself from his familial obligations, joined us to mill about a bit and figure out what to do for dessert, but eventually we just decided we were too tired and headed home. We watched a bit of “I’m Alan Partridge” which strikes me (like “Father Ted”) as one of those Britcoms that I should probably find hilarious but I just, well, don’t. Eh. I dozed a bit while we were watching it and eventually was ordered off to bed.

We puttered around a bit on Sunday, relaxing and watching TV a good part of the morning. Eventually we got motivated and Data and I did some shopping while Dan worked on preparations for Anthrocon. I picked up a dandy charcoal chimney at Home Depot and was able to get a lovely bed of coals going in the grill in about 20 minutes. I cooked up some delicious cheeseburgers (garlic overload! woo!), which we finished just in time for the Midwest FurFest online staff meeting to start. We’ve got a lot of work to get done in a short period time (like, before Anthrocon!), so it’s going to be a challenging week or so ahead. After the meeting we chatted and Dan and I talked out a disagreement that we had, much to Data’s amusement. Finally, laundry was folded and we were off to bed.

And so we’re at a new week. Manpower has been prodded that yes, I would in fact like a new job at the end of the month, thank you. I applied for a couple of positions on Careerbuilder, and got a call from Aerotek Scientific about a 6-12 month contract position in the O’Hare area. At this point, there’s no a question of turning down contract positions in hopes of something permanent – I’m all about the paycheck. We’ll see if I can poke this along to fruition. Additionally, I hope to be meeting with unclevlad sometime this week to work out some Registration issues for MFF. But for now I need to figure out what we’re doing for dinner and get ready to head on home. Whee!

It’s been a roller coaster of a week (and not in a good way!). My employment is still very much in limbo but I’m attacking the problem on several different fronts. I’ve applied to a couple of positions at Hospira, a couple at Abbott, and Manpower is pursuing at least one for me as well. I also sent resumes off to a number of places in the Chicago area. With any luck I’ll see some things come to fruition next week.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking I see some steaks in the immediate future for dinner tonight. As for the weekend, it looks like we’re doing the weekly Lunch at BD’s with the usuals, then we’ll be going to see Carbon Leaf at Lincoln Park Fest. Sunday we don’t have too much planned besides the online MFF staff meeting. I’d like to maybe do some grilling on Sunday, too.

Oh, by the way – here’s a couple of fun links for folks to amuse themselves:

Do you think is a good start but would like to see more? Check out flickrDogs for more fun pics.

This is a short, screamingly funny ad. I won’t say what it’s for because that gives it away, but it’s worth seeing.

If you have a Sirius Satellite Radio subscription and want to listen at your computer but don’t want to use Sirius’ crapass player, check out Siriusly. As a bonus, it can be combined with ConRec (CONtinuous RECorder) to act as a Tivo for Sirius! (Well, for the streams they put over the net, anyway)

Oooh, I get to go home in an hour! Guess I’ll get some work done in the meantime…
…and maybe drink another Monster…