Category Archives: football

What Have I Been Up To?

So, what have I been up to these last few weeks (besides, you know, answering questions)?

Well, back on January 17th we had the first staff meeting of the year for Midwest FurFest. Time to start it all over again! It was a good meeting, recapping some of last year’s activities, and including a walk-through of the new hotel space. We’ve got a lot of big plans, but it’s going to take some time to bring everything to fruition. I’ve got some items for the website that I need to take care of, and I need to get some information posted. That’ll come this week, I hope.

On January 23rd we braved some freakishly dense fog to visit aureth and jenwolf‘s lovely place in Hebron. Excellent company, some very tasty beer, and entertaining games followed. The next day I finished up my taxes and arrived at some very happy numbers (yay for first-time homebuyer’s tax credit, boo for not being able to e-file if you claim that credit!).

That week kicked off what may be my most stressful week at work since I started with $employer, and it’s been pretty crazy ever since. This has really put a damper on my time that I would be able to post to this journal, or even to think about posting anything since when I get home from work I just want to de-stress. Unfortunately, this trend will continue at least until the end of February, though I’m hoping that things will ease off a bit after that. It’s all but certain that I’ll be working Saturdays for the rest of the month, though.

At the end of January I squeaked out of work on Friday the 29th and takaza gave me a ride down to O’Hare Airport, where I caught a flight to Columbus to spend the weekend hanging out with fordshepherd. The ostensible purpose of the trip was to give him a weekend to relax and not stress, but we all know the futility of this – it would be like someone wanting to do the same for me 🙂 Anyway, it was a delightful weekend, with dinners with roby_panther and kai_darkwolf, cooking up a storm (and a lot of smoke) with crappy recipes from Jamie Oliver, and generally just hanging out and chatting. I had an excellent time!

This brings me up to this past weekend. On Saturday, Dan’s mom and sister joined us, along with roho and genet for a joint early-birthday celebration for me and Dan’s sister. We had a delicious turkey dinner, and I made a butternut squash risotto that turned out really well. Afterward we watched “Julie & Julie”, which is a really fun movie. Last night we took all those leftovers (along with a freshly-made bread pudding) to Genet and Roho’s place where they hosted a Super Bowl party. We were joined by linnaeus, Aureth, and Jenne. We had a whole lot of fun and I really enjoyed the game. The couple of beers I had didn’t sit well with me, though, and as expected I had reflux issues all night long. I’m dragging a bit right now with the combined lack of sleep and lack of caffeine, since I can’t face the acid of coffee right now. Maybe a soda before I head off to work…

Speaking of which, time to shower. Hope everyone has a great day!

Chili and Football and Bookmarks, Oh My!

After all that hemming and hawing about what to serve on Saturday, we wound up punting and changing the proposed menu completely. takaza got up shockingly early (9 AM) and by 11 AM we were on the road running errands. We decided to make a big ol’ pot of chili and supplement it with tasty accoutrements like rice, queso fresco, and chopped onions. I made a batch of homemade cornbread that unfortunately not only turned out dry and flavorless but, when I was trying to get it out of the Pyrex glass pan, the pan slipped and landed on the inside of my forearm, giving me a large, nasty-looking burn (fortunately, it only looks nasty – it’s about as painful as a sunburn).

We wound up with 12 guests in attendance, including Dan’s family. We had a really fun time, and there was good food, good beer, good wine, and good company. The evening seemed to fly by. We finally said good night to everyone by midnight. As usual, we didn’t get to play as many games as Dan would have liked – next time, we need to focus less on the food and more on the games.

Sunday was delightfully lazy. We snacked off leftovers, and finally got around to watching the Super Bowl about an hour after it had started, Tivo-style. That made the game (and the commercials) much more enjoyable, and since I didn’t really have a favorite to win, it was nice to just watch and appreciate some good football.

This week has been crawling by, as I knew it would – don’t the weeks before vacations always slow down? I fully intend to take some work home with me this afternoon, though, since the forecast is for 8″-12″ of snow up here, with the worst of it falling between 4 AM and noon tomorrow. If it’s really bad, I have no intention of trying to get in to work. That’s fine, though – I have a stack of about 50 SOP’s I need to read by the end of the week, and I can do it at home or here.

By the way, on a complete tangent: Does anyone else use Del.icio.us? I can be found on there under the username DuncanHusky. I tend to use it to bookmark good recipes that I want to come back to, funny comics, and other random things (random example: the amusing comic “I Am a Host at The Olive Garden”).

Well, That Bowl Wasn’t So Super (But Who Cares?)

Another busy weekend passes by…

You know folks who say they’ve lived someplace for years and are still unpacking from moving? That would make me insane. On an unrelated note, we invited a small group of friends over to watch the Super Bowl. Couple the desire for getting the place unpacked and into some semblance of order with a mania to have the house look perfect when company comes over and you get a sense of urgency that just won’t quit. (This is the part of the entry where I nominate takaza for sainthood for putting up with me when I get like this 🙂

On Saturday I was up far too early (before 6 AM), and by 11 AM had run various errands, including a sizeable grocery store run. We spent the afternoon putting up blinds in the kitchen and living room and I am pleased to say that we now can have privacy in our house. Hooray! We finished out the day with a little more unpacking and sorting. We briefly considered going out to check out a little Mexican joint in Round Lake I read about but instead ordered pizza and salad in because neither of us wanted to face the sub-zero temperatures and wind.

Sunday I was up early again and doing some preparatory cooking. After making too darn many crepes, I took a break from the kitchen and Dan and I cleaned the house from top to bottom, stowing any remaining boxes, vacuuming, and generally whipping the place into shape. We finished right as folks were expected to show up. I was expecting a night of food and boozing, but it was a lot of the former and not much of the latter. The amount of food we had was crazy: cheeseburger dip, monkey bread (both herb and cinnamon sugar), guacamole, and chicken tenders. My contribution was a pair of baked crepe dishes. One was crepes stacked with béchamel sauce, spinach, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese and baked together, the other was similar only with a fresh tomato and garlic sauce, prosciutto, Parmesan, and fresh mozzarella cheese. We finished off the meal with a pair of homemade frozen treats: Dan made cinnamon ice cream, and I made a green apple sorbet (aka “booplesauce!”). Though good individually, the two combined to be quite yummy.

Oh yeah, and there was some football game on, and the Bears lost. Eh. Nobody was particularly upset about the loss, and watching the game on TiVo made the game move SO much faster. Of course we watched the commercials, and though there were some funny ones, overall we were generally unimpressed. We sent folks on their way on the late side, and as a result I’m dragging badly this afternoon, something not helped by the fact that I’m fighting off some kind of upper respiratory ick. I’ve got an appointment with the doctor at 5 PM today, and even if she can just treat the symptoms, that will be an improvement.

datahawk spent the night last night, with the intention of just heading to work from our place this morning. As cold as the night was (-12 degrees F), it’s no surprise that her car didn’t start this morning, and as far as I know hasn’t started yet. She’s instead suffering through the torture of relaxing in the living room and cuddling up with our TiVo. It’s a tough life 🙂

It was lovely having folks over and getting the house into shape, though we still have some stuff that we need to figure out where it goes (mainly that’s all in the garage). Dan and I are thinking about throwing a housewarming party sometime in March; we’ll be sure to give plenty of notice once we figure out a date.

Unearthing the Kitchen, Suburban Explorations, and Entertaining

As expected, the majority of the weekend was spent unpacking, cleaning, and sorting.

Saturday I worked on the kitchen for a bit, then takaza and I went out to run some errands. First we stopped by Cafe’ Barista in Lake Villa, one of the sources of Intelligentsia coffee beans in the area. I give them two stars out of five; Dan’s hot chocolate was watery, and my cappuccino was tepid and had too much milk. That, combined with the fact that they’re charging $13.99/pound for my favorite kind of beans, leads me to think that I’ll be seeking out other places to buy coffee beans. The next place I’ll try will be Honey Hill Coffee Company in Wauconda – we’ll see how that goes.

We then headed south to Garden Fresh Market – not the one in Round Lake Beach, which doesn’t open until Wednesday, but the one in Mundelein (which is scheduled to move to the bigger Cub Foods space next door next month). Before we went there, though, we were distracted by the shop next door, which had a large sign that read “Sausage and Deli”. Well, that sounded promising, so in we went.

It’s a very strange thing to walk out of the middle of suburbia into unfamiliar surroundings. I realized as I looked over the items on the shelves that I couldn’t read a dang one of the labels – they were all in Cyrillic! After walking around a bit, we realized that we may have been the only people in the shop speaking English. As we waited at the deli case to order (they have Irish bacon! woo!), the woman behind the counter repeated something we didn’t understand a few times, as people glanced at us, and eventually motioned us over to speak with her. She had been saying “Next!” in Russian. Once we established that we were ignorant monolingual Americans, though, we got things sorted out. After that adventure, we went nuts in Garden Fresh Market, picking up a lot of staples and some nice produce. I can see why they’re moving – their current store is tiny and since it was a busy Saturday afternoon, the place was packed!

Just as we got home, we passed Dan’s mom, who was calling us for directions. She helped us put away a few more things, then we relaxed while Dan made his wonderful homemade macaroni and cheese. It was an enjoyable evening all around.

Sunday was even crazier. I was bound and determined to finish off the kitchen, and got it about 95% complete when I had to run to Target for a few things…which turned into a trip to Home Depot as well, then a return to Target for a few things I forgot. While I was gone, Dan did a great job of hooking up the stereo (which is now tied into the TV, the TiVo, a DVD player, the PS2, and the Airport Express. The Slingbox is the last thing to be added, but that will take some configuring). Thank heavens I got him a Harmony all-in-one remote to control all this stuff.

We made a mad dash to get everything presentable by 4 PM (we were close – it took until 4:30), when roho and genet arrived, fortuitously arriving at 4:30 🙂 I got to use and abuse our new kitchen, and I was very happy. We had a lovely dinner consisting of two bottles of wine (a North Carolina sweet red as an apertif, and an Australian merlot), homemade buttermilk bread, herb-crusted roast pork, steamed broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes a la Buca di Beppo’s. For dessert, we had a chocolate-orange torte that Dan’s mom brought over from Le Vichyssoise. In between cooking and chatting, we watched both playoff games and had a good time cheering for the Bears. We had a great time, and I can’t wait to have friends over again so I can show off cook for them 🙂

And here we are back to the work week. Tonight, I think we’re going to take it easy and enjoy the fruits of our weekend labors – perhaps enjoy some leftovers for dinner, and have a nice lazy evening.

Mascots and Psychonauts!

I was feeling a bit blah after work on Friday – nothing serious, just a series of reminders of why life sucks when you’re a contractor. I found that a good workout at the gym helped – yay for endorphins! It didn’t hurt that it was a lovely day out so the walk back was quite pleasant. Takaza saw that I was restless and we went out to do a little shopping, with a stop by EBGames (fruitless, but for some reason the store at Lincoln Village always sucks) and Target. We grabbed dinner at Hub’s on Dempster in Skokie, which was pronounced to be undistinguished.

I got an early start on Saturday and went down to the EBGames on Elston, where I found what I was looking for: Psychonauts, allegedly the best platform game from 2005, and a very fun and playable game. It happened that that was right near the Edward Don Outlet (a restaurant supply store) that I had heard was closing. I stopped by and was impressed by two things: first, all the cool merchandise marked down by 70%, and second, the HUGE line waiting to check out – like a good 20-30 minute wait. I looked all through the store but I didn’t see anything that I HAD to have; I saw some nice stuff at great prices, but the kitchen is crammed full now, and I couldn’t see anything that would merit the major project of making space for it. More’s the pity. Quasiskunk, I did think of the stuff you might need for Con Suite this year, but I knew you were off in the boonies for the weekend, so…oh well. I passed the afternoon playing Psychonauts (it’s one of those games where you sit down to play and suddenly it’s three hours later!) then it was time to go.

A friend of our had given us complimentary tickets to the final home game of the season for the Chicago Rush arena football team. We took the CTA out to the Allstate Arena and got in just before the game started. It was a good game, once I got used to the arena football rules, and Chicago kicked the butt of the Utah Blaze. The highlight of the game was actually halftime, when they had a game of “mascot football” – yes, sixteen mascots from all around the Chicago area turned out, including Staley the Bear (who gets points for being the most willing to take a hard fall), Benny the Bull (definitely the most personality), Skates (the home-arena favorite), Tommy Hawk (from the Blackhawks), Sparky (from the Chicago Fire), plus mascots from Loyola, Northwestern, and several other schools and companies. The highlights were Benny laying out “celebrity quarterback” Mike Adamle, and a bee mascot putting a shoulder in the gut of the Rush’s mascot Grabowski (yeesh, what a costume). He needed a sec outside the huddle to catch his breath. The “game” was a disorganized wreck, of course, but extremely entertaining from the stands. We took off in the middle of the third quarter with the Rush up something like 76 to 24 and found ourselves with no way back to the CTA. We opted to walk to the ATS at O’Hare and take that in to the CTA station at the airport, getting home at around 11 PM. Datahawk and Linnaeus were watching Rent when we got home, but we were too tired to watch, so we headed off to bed.

On Sunday I puttered around a bit while Data slept through me grinding coffee, the dishwasher running, and the cat meowing. I only wish I could sleep that soundly. Dan and I drove up to check on my wedding band (more about that in my next post) and sat down at a nearby Potbelly Sandwiches to make use of the free wi-fi and try to hammer out the final details of FRAC. Unfortunately, what we determined was that, while we had a set course, neither of us was happy with it. We kicked around ideas on the way home and I think we have some solid plans on how things are going to go, but we’re going to need to do some research this Saturday. We got home and had a quiet evening of video games and laptops.

Not a lot of plans for the week, though we’re going to have dinner with partran tonight. I’m sure stuff will come up, as it always does 🙂