Here’s a couple of nice coupons that I just came across:
Need some cables and such? 10% off selected brands/30% off Radio Shack brand products at Radio Shack (Good 5-9 PM on 6/21-22/07 only).
Buy one smoothie, get one free at Jamba Juice, good through July 4, 2007.
Actual journal content to come…
Tip of the virtual hat to slickdeals.net for the links
What a fantastic weekend! And yes, sumatrae, this is another post all about food 🙂
On Friday, we met up with roho, genet, linnaeus, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and a host of other folks from R&G’s gaming group for dinner at Bombay City Indian Restaurant in Gurnee. takaza was pushing his boundaries a bit, but I was really happy that 1.) he was willing to try it, and 2.) he really liked it! The restaurant manager(?) approached our group of 14 and suggested we try ordering family style, and since there were a number of neophytes he suggested a set of entrees, including chicken tikka masala, rogan josh (lamb in a tomato and onion sauce), lamb badam pasanda (lamb cooked in cream and nuts), chicken biryani, and saag paneer and mutter paneer (cubes of cheese cooked with spinach and peas, respectively). The nan (bread) was yummy, and I loved my mango lassi. It was a fantastic meal, and both Dan and I look forward to visiting Bombay City again soon. To answer your question from Friday, posicat, I definitely recommend this place! Apparently it’s only been there for about a year.
The weather on Saturday was perfect. I had to fire up our new grill to season the inside of it. I figured that once we had it hot we might as well use it, so we invited Roho and Genet out to help us inaugurate the grill. They were kind enough to stop by Antioch Packing House and pick up some amazing 1.5″ thick strip steaks. I picked up some yellow and red bell peppers, onions, and corn, all of which got grilled up with the steaks. I still need to work on my charcoal grilling technique (I’m sure the hair on the back of my hand will grow back eventually), but the nice thing is that the grill has enough surface area that if I keep the coals to one side, I can position the food at various distances from them to control the cooking. The steaks came out perfectly, and the entire dinner was delicious! Dan and Roho baked up some tasty puff pastry/peanut butter/chocolate thingies for dessert to cap off a great evening.
Sunday was the very-lightly-attended Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Before the meeting, though, we had to indulge in a bit of home shopping. You see, our pantry is nice, but I hated the way that our “liquor cabinet” looked – it was really just a collection of bottles that sat precariously on the wire rack. The bottles were prone to tip over, and it was difficult to see and access what we had. We also wanted to free up the space in the pantry, so we decided to go to Ikea to find a proper liquor cabinet. I’m pleased to say that we found the perfect thing. Dan did the assembly work and I helped secure it in place, and here’s the finished product:
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Here’s the new cabinet. I wanted doors because I thought having all the bottles in plain view might suggest that we’re complete lushes. I love all the shelf space on the bottom. |
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And here it is open, showing all the boozy goodness! And hey, it’s not even completely full 🙂 |
I like it because it is shallower than the cart we had there before and it provides a lot more storage space – I now can have all my cookbooks in the kitchen!
So now we’re back to the work-week. We’re in a frenzy of listmaking in preparations for our Memorial Day weekend gathering (post on that to follow). That should be a blast too!
Neither Dan nor I felt up to cooking on Friday so we decided to seek dinner out. We stopped by Gurnee Mills to check out the tripods at Micomp that stormdog had mentioned (alas, they only had the floor model left, and that was rather beat up), then got some dinner at the taquiera at one of the food courts (they make delicious quesadillas!). After dinner, and as the mall was closing, we headed across the street and bought our first new toy of the weekend
Slowly but surely, we’re assembling our house into a home. takaza worked half-days on Monday and Tuesday and put a little more work into unpacking; the guest bedroom is close to being usable, except for the lack of any window coverings, of course. That helps because it gives us a place to put stuff – the stuff we’re not sure why we’re carrying around, but it’s gotta go somewhere.
Yesterday Ameritech SBC AT&T hooked us up, so now we have not only local phone service, but zippy-fast DSL as well! Unfortunately, after checking around it appears that the phone plates in the walls around the house are just that – plates, no wiring behind them. Wha?! This means we have one and only one active phone outlet, and that is in the kitchen. It looks like we’ll be investing in a cordless phone jack so our TiVo can call out – the only reason we have a phone line, really, since we don’t plan to give out the number. That what our cell phones are for 🙂 And speaking of the TiVo, it now works as well since the DirecTV installer came out and hooked that all up (never mind the stupidity involved in getting that done, something that required some new wiring, multiple trips, and lots of whinging on the installer’s part). It all works now, which is all I care about.
Last night after work, Dan suggested we go ahead and hit Ikea, since there’s a bunch of stuff that we needed. And so off we went to the Great Swedish Consumerism Temple, and we spent a heck of a lot more than I expected. On the bright side, we now have a light for the guest room nightstand, a replacement accent light to go over the kitchen sink (the replace “the pimple” contractor-grade light that’s there), a low cabinet for our TV and A/V equipment, a new dresser (we left our old one that was falling apart in the alley and it somehow went away), a few other knickknacks. We looked at some of the blinds and curtains there, but couldn’t find anything like what we were looking for, or that we couldn’t get cheaper elsewhere. Oh, and the Ikea Cafeteria? Maybe it’s good for breakfast, but for dinner? Bleah. Not recommended.
For tonight, we have our work cut out for us, as Dan is going to assemble the entertainment cabinet, I’m going to work on de-boxing more of the kitchen, and then we’re going to both work on assembling the dresser. We’ll continue our marathon of laundry, attempting to wash every blanket we own, and somewhere in there I’ll need to cook dinner. On the bright side, I’ll have more time to do all of this, since my commute has gone from 90+ minutes each day down to 10 minutes. The free extra time is a bit of a shock, and I’m still adjusting to it (“I’ve been home for an hour, we should be cooking dinner! Oh, wait, it’s only 5:30…”)
And one more bit of good news: I wrote to the kind folks at Intelligentsia Coffee, and they supplied me with a list of places in Lake County that I can buy my coffee beans. Life is good.
So, we were faced with a dilemma: Plan out our move, give a week’s notice, and go about things in a scheduled, orderly fashion, or move into our new place in a rush, with only one day’s notice to drum up assistance, and get as much done as we possibly can in one weekend. Because we are insane, we opted for the latter 🙂
On Saturday, we met up with feren and lady_curmudgeon at our new place at around 10-ish. He had picked up a trailer (and therein lies quite a tale in itself) and I joined them in a ride back into Chicago. Takaza meanwhile was joined by posicat, tybis, roho, genet, colliedoc, nymphara, and Scott, and he led that contingent to our storage unit, where he had a rental truck waiting. Feren, linnaeus, and I emptied out the last of our furniture and 99.5% of our possessions from Paul’s place (there’s always those last few things you forget!), grabbed some lunch, then headed back up to Hainesville. Meanwhile, Dan and crew loaded about 75% of the storage locker into the truck, and met us back in Hainesville. There followed a massive unloading which took about three hours, slowed by the fact that both Feren and I had done bad things to our backs and Roho and Genet were still getting over the Creeping Martian Death Plague. Bless Tybis, Posi, and Scott – they shouldered the brunt of the heavy lifting and made sure we got everything into the house.
After we got the boxes put into the proper rooms, things kind of dissolved into a nice party. Dan whipped up some of the tasty garlic, mushroom, and butter mixture that wildmouse used to make (yum!), while Straif busied himself in our barely-unpacked kitchen making homemade pizza for everyone. Dinner was delicious, the booze did flow, Apples to Apples was played, and everyone had a great time. We got to bed at around 1 AM.
Today, Best Buy delivered our new washer, dryer, and (ginormous!) TV set. Everything was hooked up and tested, and! Posicat was kind enough to lend us the use of his van and his back (’cause my back is most certainly shot!) and we got the last of the “urgent” stuff out of the storage unit, mostly all of the kitchen boxes. We seem to have enough equipment for two kitchens, the result of slowly upgrading our kitchen over the years. This means there’s a lot of stuff that we need to get rid of one way or another. More on that later, I reckon. Anyway, we got the sofa and the boxes to our place and stowed, then Dan and I dashed out to Sam’s Club, Home Depot, and Jewel to stock the place with all of the things that a house should be stocked with. $400 later and we’re close to having all the stuff we need, though we haven’t yet touched important things like window treatments (the blanket tacked over the master bedroom window notwithstanding).
So where do we stand now? Well, we’ve got a hell of a lot of boxes to unpack. Dan’s office downstairs needs a lot of work, and we discovered today that the previous tenant (who, it turns out, was foreclosed on and they pretty much trashed the place, which explains all of the new carpet and paint) broke out the window and fixed it by screwing Plexiglas over it – poorly. So there’s quite a breeze coming in there, which explain why it’s freakin’ frigid down there. Our landlord (who bought the place from the bank and refurbished it) was unaware of this and will be taking a look at it tomorrow. There’s a few other small issues, but nothing insurmountable.
Thanks so much to all of our friends who helped us out yesterday – you’re all amazing, and we feel very lucky to have folks like you around us. To those who offered to help but couldn’t make it this weekend, thanks anyway, and maybe we’ll need you next time (may it be a long time coming!). And finally, many, many thinks to Linnaeus, who put up with us as tenants in his condo for over two years – your patience, generosity, and friendship were and are very much appreciated, and if there ever was a time there when it seemed that this wasn’t so, I am very sorry.
And us? We’re exhausted. My back is a mess, and Dan isn’t doing too much better. But even so, we’re glad to have our own place again. It’s going to take a lot of work to get this place arranged to our satisfaction, but it’ll be worth it. We’ll announce our housewarming soon, I’m sure 🙂
Well, I said we were gonna do it and we did it – we now have a shiny new washer, a shiny new dryer, and a shiny new TV. Yeah, High Definition would have been nice, but considering that the cost of HD only starts with the TV – then you have the extra fees for the satellite, the tuner, the extra-spiffy DVR – we decided we can wait a little while. The best part? They all get delivered and installed on Sunday! (barring any snowstorms, of course)
Well, I’ve got some good news to report on the wedding band front. I took takaza‘s ring by the store after work yesterday and we agreed that, yes, it was indeed different from the ring that they had sent. Amanda (who, by the way has been fabulously helpful) checked against their catalog and we found the problem: someone had fumble-fingered the model number when typing in the order. She called the manufacturer and they said they had the correct ring in my size in stock, so they’re priority shipping it; it should be at the store by Wednesday, and Amanda wills end it out the same day for engraving. With luck, it’ll be in my hands by Thursday or Friday at the latest. Yay!
Oh, and in reference to my last entry, my mom asked what’s so great about a Thermapen? Well, it’s a very nice, very accurate instant-read thermometer with a nice big digital readout. What I like is that the hinge gives you a good angle to stick the thermocouple into roasts, chicken, etc. Theoretically, it’s very durable as well, but obviously they need a bit of work there. I’m pretty confident they can resolve the issue quickly, though.
Hmm. Need to make a grocery list and plan out the menu for the week. We’ve been eating out a lot, which gets a bit pricey sometimes…
Been sort of quiet here for the last few days, hasn’t it? Let’s see, what’s been going on?
On Friday we belatedly celebrated datahawk‘s birthday by going with a whole crowd of folks down to tour Macy’s Marshall Field’s Christmas displays. The general consensus was that they intentionally made the displays suck so that people won’t miss them when they don’t do them next year. We spent a very entertaining time critiquing the other displays while the cancer-addicts of the group got their smoke fix, then we adjourned up to Heaven on Seven. Although they have other locations, this location, on Wabash on the seventh floor of an old office building, is the original. They’re only open for dinner one night out of the month, and we were lucky enough it was the night we planned on going downtown. The meal was absolutely amazing! They are a New Orleans-style restaurant, and I (a former Tulane student) and genet (a Louisiana native) gave it an emphatic thumbs up! The hurricanes were fabulous. My shrimp po’ boy was quite tasty, and roho‘s shrimp and cheddar grits were yummy as well. takaza‘s country-fried steak and mashed potatoes were by far the best, though. We ate ourselves silly, then came the tasty chocolate-caramel cake that siriuswolfstar had picked up at Bittersweet. It was the perfect end to a wonderful evening.
The original plan for Saturday was to stay at home and relax. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, Dan and I drove up to Antioch to have brunch with Roho, Genet, feren, and neowolf2 at the always-tasty Las Vegas. Afterwards, we walked over to the surprisingly-well-stocked game shop where Feren picked up a bunch of Christmas gifts, then stopped next door at the small shop that sold record players and old vinyl albums and Feren got a new turntable. Then it was back to Roho and Genet’s place where we filled the afternoon with chatting and then a bit of shopping at Wal Mart. We also used their nice, heated garage to park my car so we could finally install my Sirius radio in it, which had been sitting idle since I took it out of my Alero when I sold it back in August. Linnaeus joined us not long after and we ordered pizza and got down to a serious game of Drunken Apples to Apples. It was very, very funny, even if I didn’t do very well until right up at the end of the game. Somehow, Neowolf skunked us all. I also learned that Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka is very tasty, particularly when mixed with Cruzan Rum Cream. It’s also very potent (woo!).
We got a late start on Sunday – no surprise there. We spent the afternoon doing some Christmas shopping, and we finally picked up a replacement electric blanket, since the one we bought earlier this year was going haywire (the center third of the blanket was getting far too warm for comfort). The evening was spent catching up on TiVo and being all domestic and stuff.
This is a short week for me. I have one more day at work then on Thursday, right after rush hour, we hit the road for South Carolina. We’ll be making a stop somewhere along the way Thursday night, then getting in on Friday morning. After a far-too-brief stay, we’ll be driving home on Monday, making the entire 14-hour trip in one day. It sucks, but I have to be at work on Tuesday, so that’s the way it is. Hope everyone’s holiday preparations are going well!