Category Archives: frac

Heavy cream, Chicken broth, 4-6 large lemons…

That’s from my shopping list, of course. Since I flaked yesterday and forgot a bunch of things when I went to the store, my penance is that I have to go back today. takaza‘s mom is coming over for dinner tomorrow so I need to get more pork chops, and I think I’m going to make a nice lemon sorbet for dessert.

Last night wasn’t so good. My back was killing me, even after a round of naproxen and some time on the heating pad. After waking up several times, I finally took some Tylenol 3 at about 2:30 AM to get some sound sleep and that did the trick. On the upside, last night’s episode of Heroes was quite excellent. You know it’s good when you have to pause the Tivo in the middle of the show and just stare and say, “Wow!”. One more episode to go, and it’s going to be a doozy.

Dan and I have talked a bit about FRAC (Furries Race Across Chicago) and it sounds like we’ve got some plans in place. It’s going to be on Saturday, October 13, and we’re going all-out this time. We’ll have a website for it, and we plan to have some players out at Anthrocon as well. Dan is going to set up a hotel room block for out-of-towners. For those veterans who are interested in working behind the scenes this time, we’re going to have some fun opportunities to help out, as well. We only have a very general idea of places we want to send people this time around, but we’re happy to take suggestions and also ideas for fun puzzles (privately, of course).

That’s it for now! Back to wrestling this protocol into shape…

And Now: FRAC 2!

Furries Race Across Chicago (or FRAC) is the name of a treasure hunt that we conduct periodically; the object is to visit a set number of checkpoints scattered throughout the Chicago area in the correct order and return to FRAC Headquarters in the shortest amount of time. This past weekend was the second FRAC. A summary of the first FRAC can be found over here, and here are the results from that race. Also, here are the Rules For FRAC for your perusal. In presenting the summary of FRAC 2, I’m going to post the questions and answers in sections over a the next couple of days, along with a bit of commentary. Here’s the start of the race:

This time around, we had seven teams:
Team Crossing Gates: posicat and stormdog
Team Bi-Bitches: lisagems and wooisme
Team Yuk: Linnaeus and mirkowuff
Torgo’s Angels: tincrash and Max
Minoriteam: steviemaxwell and sylverfox
Team Jonathan Hitler’s Magic Aston Martin with the Vin Diesel Hubcaps (see, this is what happens when the poet name the team): daveqat and mstegosaurus
Team Simbius: siriuswolfstar and simbalion

Teams were instructed to gather in the hotel conference room at 10 AM, which we almost accomplished (HA!). Once there, they were informed that they would be taking a quiz to determine the starting order. Teams had 15 minutes to complete the quiz, which would be graded on both the number of correct answers and how fast they were turned in. What we didn’t tell them was that the team that scored highest left last, and the team that scored lowest left first. Ostensibly this was to even out the field a bit, but in hindsight it just meant that the teams tended to bunch up a bit more. That didn’t turn out to be a problem, as you will see. So, how hard was the trivia quiz? Click below to find out…

IT’S TRIVIA TIME!

Wuffmeet 3 is done!

The weekend is done and we are pleased to report that Wuffmeet 3 was a success! Thanks so much to the wonderful folks who showed up to make the weekend so much fun: artemisfur, crim_ferret, werellama, datahawk, daveqat, dancingninny, genet, foxish, linnaeus, lisagems, Max, mirkowuff, mistletoe, wooisme, mstegosaurus, neowolf2, posicat, roho, simbalion, siriuswolfstar, steviemaxwell, stormdog, jimcyl, tincrash, tremaine, unclevlad, vidarwolf, and wyldekyttin. Many beverages were consumed, much food was eaten, and I laughed more than I have in quite a while!

Things kicked off Friday with some tasty food for dinner: beef stew, chicken white chili, and kielbasa, kraut, and potatoes. Judging from the alacrity with which the food disappeared, I gather it was of acceptable quality (or everyone was really hungry). As requested, I’ll post the recipe for the white chili here in the next few days. Saturday was FRAC (Furries Race Across Chicago), followed by a pizza feast and socializing into the wee hours. Sunday was a late start for some reason (gee, where’s all those empty bottles come from?) 🙂 We took a sizable crowd over to Emmett’s Tavern, where we had a delicious lunch and enjoyed a sampling of their beers. Later, we sent out for various cuisines for dinner, which were all distinguished by being pretty much awful. And this morning, once we got everyone rousted up and checked out of their rooms, we grabbed a late brunch at Apple Villa, which turned out to be an excellent alternative to the dreadful IHOP which was next to the hotel. From there, everyone scattered to the winds, to head home and crash.

Planning this event was a world of fun, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. I was pretty stressed on Friday hoping that everything would work out right and that takaza and I had budgeted properly, but I should have trusted my wonderful wolf – everything worked well, with the exception that we came up a few cans short of diet sodas on Sunday. Dan and I came up with a good approach this year: I took the early shift and he took the late shift. That meant that I was up early to make sure that everyone had their coffee, kringles, and oatmeal, and Dan stayed up late to clean up and lock up when everyone went to bed. The downside of this is that he got to bed at 5:30 AM this morning; needless to say, he’s taking a nap as I write this. We hope that everyone enjoyed themselves, and we look forward to the next Wuffmeet!

And what about FRAC, you say? How did it go, and who won this time? You’ll have to wait for that! I’ll be putting up some lengthy posts tomorrow detailing the clues, the hints, the answers, and the winners (with pictures!). But for now…time to collapse and relax.

And they’re off!

At 10:46 AM, the first team left FRAC HQ to start FRAC 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s noon now, and all seven teams are in the field. Let’s see whose navigation will reign supreme…

Busy weekend, but busier week ahead!

That was a very satisfying weekend. On Friday I took takaza to work (it means I don’t get in until 7 AM, when I usually get here at 6:45 – no loss). This meant that when I got out from work, I was able to spend a lovely half-hour alternately reading and dozing in the sun while waiting for him to finish work. We walked around to Randhurst Mall (which is very, very sad) before meeting up with linnaeus and Dan’s cow-orker nymphara to see Over the Hedge. The verdict from me: Not great, but it had some very funny moments. Bruce Willis played Bruce Willis, which bores me. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as the porcupines cracked me the hell up and really made the movie (OK, Steve Carrell’s Sammy was good too).

On Saturday I was up and motivated on the early side, so I walked the two miles or so over to where wooisme was participating in a garage sale. I had a pleasant time chatting, and Paul joined us not long after. Paul and I ducked out at around 11:30 and in the interest of time caught a bus back to our place. Dan was feeling under the weather, so he opted to stay in while I picked up mirkowuff from O’Hare and we headed out to LAFF softball. Thanks so much to woodychitwn for providing the comfy viewing arrangements! That was perfect way to chat with friends, enjoy the beautiful weather, and be completely and utterly lazy 🙂 After the game we had ambitious plans to go out to dinner at a nice place in Andersonville and see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Unfortunately, we were all tired and that devolved into dinner from the taquiera around the corner, some family Guy from the TiVo and an early bedtime.

I woke up at 6:30 AM on Sunday and couldn’t get back to sleep. Curse being a morning person! On the bright side, this allowed me to go out and enjoy the crisp, breezy morning. I drove over to the Broadway location of Intelligentsia and picked up a couple of pounds of beans for this week and Wuffmeet, then took my (free!) cup of coffee over to the lakeshore at Foster Beach and spent some time watching the lake and admiring the skyline. Truly, a wonderful way to start the day! We had a nice morning of coffee, newspaper, and a bit of video games before Mirko, Paul, and I headed out to the MFF staff meeting (Dan was still feeling pretty oogy, unfortunately. He’s doing much better now!). The meeting was quite useful, and we accomplished quite a bit. Afterwards, the dinner at Portillo’s was enjoyable as well. I picked up some dinner for Dan on the way home and we had a quiet evening in, though we stayed up a bit later than I would have liked nailing down more FRAC stuff.

And so this week: it’s going to be pretty crazy. We have a lot of prep for Wuffmeet to do, I need to run a good number of errands, and on top of that I’ll be going with Dan, Woody, and perro to see a White Sox game tomorrow night. Oh, and I need to cook two full meals for Friday night, too. Whee!

How did midweek suddenly get this busy?

So, as predicted, we did spend a delightful evening at roho and genet‘s in the company of ottr and riecka. Charcoal Grill in Kenosha provided tasty burgers and so-so drinks (note to self: next time stick to the mai tais – the Long Islands there suck), then back to R&G’s where Diesel proceeded to clean our clocks at Texas hold ’em. It was a lot of fun, and many thanks to R&G for putting us up for the night!

Tuesday was going to be a quiet evening at home, but a call from a friend who had locked their keys in their car prompted a pre-emption of dinner plans and a trip out to the burbs. Dinner became Potbelly Sandwiches, which I must admit I’m starting to like. Unfortunately, I was reminded of the perils of raw onions too soon before bedtime as I had one of the worst attacks of reflux that I’ve had in quite a while that night, after midnight. I stayed up for almost an hour waiting for things to settle down, and still have a nasty “scorched” throat to show for it. We really need to make an attempt to eat earlier, I think, and I need to watch what I eat a bit more closely.

Last night I was feeling terrible when I got home from work – a pounding headache just this side of a migraine. I forewent the gym and instead lay down for an hour or so, though even with ibuprofen the headache wouldn’t go away. Dan came home and, after seeing the state I was in, grabbed some massage oil and administered a heavenly neck and shoulder massage that drove the headache away. I’m so fortunate to have a husband as wonderful as him! Not long after, we were graced by the presence of datahawk, who crashed with us for the night so we could watch the finale of The Amazing Race. The hippies won, yay! It was a great ending to a so-so season; I’m just glad that they renewed it for next year, though I’m not sure how I feel about a Sunday time slot for the show. On the other hand, it’ll be right after 60 Minutes, which is a hell of a lead-in. We stayed up a bit too late hammering out some details on FRAC, and I’m pleased to say we now have a good two-thirds of the clues done and ready to go. And just so I can get my reality double-doe, I see that the Top Chef finale (Part 1) recorded last night. That’ll be some good Tivo fodder for tonight.

And so today I need to make a quick stop by the grocery store on the way home, then it’ll be back to the gym after too many days away.

Hmm…we need to make some plans for the weekend. Stay tuned for a post about that…

I Need a Weekend to Recover From My Weekend

Weekend. Right. Yeah, we had one of those, I think.

On Friday, I picked takaza up at work and we braved the insane Friday traffic to drive down to visit a friend who was in the hospital (good news, though – he was discharged the following day). We were pretty tired afterwards, so we grabbed dinner from Charcoal Delight and I crashed on the early side.

Saturday found me up and awake at 8 AM, as per usual, but that left me time to read the paper and have my coffee. I woke Dan up and we headed out the door to spend the day nailing down a route for FRAC. I’m happy to say that after a few false starts and some disagreements on where to go when, I think we’ve got a good course for the race in hand. We still need to work out several elements, but hey, we’ve got twelve days to go, right? After all that traipsing around, we met siriuswolfstar and simbalion for dinner at The Grafton, a place I had visited before with Linnaeus. I regret to report that the place has not improved on my initial dismal opinion of it, and we won’t be returning. The food was uninspiring at best, and the service was quite poor. Ah we.. We capped the night off with a nice chat back at our place, then I stumbled off to bed, though Dan stayed up quite a bit later.

On Mother’s Day we drove up to Dan’s mom’s place in McHenry County. On the way there we stopped by our storage unit to visit our stuff (“Hi! Did you miss us?”) and we dug out our 32″ television. After our last visit to his mom’s I had noticed that her TV was in terrible shape, and ours has just been sitting in storage for the last year and a half. Plus, I suspect that when we do get our own place we’ll be in the market for something a bit bigger and shinier (curse you, feren! Curse you and your 52″ flat-panel HDTV!). After we dropped off the TV, We headed over to Woodstock to the Tip Top Bistro for their Mother’s Day brunch. It’s a pleasant little place, and the staff there were friendly and helpful (which must have been tough on a crazy day like Mother’s Day!). They had a nice brunch buffet with a tasty Waldorf salad, seafood paella, fettuccine puttanesca, leg of lamb, eggs benedict, and bananas French toast. The complimentary champagne (well, prosecco, technically) with free refills was nice too 🙂 After brunch we returned to Dan’s mom’s house where Dan spent the next hour rearranging her A/V equipment, making sure the VCR(s), Tivo, and TVs all were connected properly. I…well, I fell asleep on the sofa 🙂 Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I think. We headed home and made a stop by the corner taquiera for a light dinner. We stayed up too late to catch the Survivor finale (Bleah. I’m skipping next season, and this time I mean it!) and then I went off to bed, though again Dan stayed up too late (silly wolf!).

So tonight we’re going to be hanging out in Antioch, spending time with roho and genet and the visiting ottr and his wife, riecka. I foresee a wee bit of alcohol, some tasty food, and me getting the bejesus beaten out of me at poker…

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 🙂

What We Did On Our Weekend Vacation

As promised, takaza and I retreated to the Hoffman Estates La Quinta on Friday after work for a weekend of relaxation and planning. Once we had a chance to decompress a bit we took to the car and went in search of dinner. Our wanderings took us to Woodfield Mall, and while we briefly considered trying out the new meat faucet there, we instead opted to cheap it out and resorted to the food court instead. After that it was back to the hotel to relax and sleep, eventually.

We were up relatively early on Saturday. The plan was to research the FRAC route, though we were racing the weather to do it since the forecast predicted incoming steady rain starting that afternoon. We had a couple of funny things happen that I can’t really talk about since people who will be participating in FRAC will be reading this 🙂 Maybe later. Anyway, the rain started to pick up at about 2 PM so we called off the scouting (we got about 75% of the work done, I’d say) and instead went in search of what is alleged to be the best hot chocolate in Chicago. We tried it, and we’d have to agree – extremely tasty!

Since the rest of the day was shot for FRAC research, we gave siriuswolfstar to see what he and simbalion were up to. It turns out they were just a few blocks north of us, so we met up at North Bridge Mall and amused ourselves with a bit of window shopping (and taking some amusing pictures in the process). We wound up grabbing a table and just chatting for a good hour or more, which was a nice break after all the walking we had done all day. After we parted ways, we headed back to the hotel. We weren’t feeling hungry until late, plus we were too lazy to actually drive anywhere, so we ordered pizza and pasta for a local joint. We have a winner for Wuffmeet, I think. The tortellini alfredo that I had was enough for three people, and I think it would nicely supplement any pizza we order.

On Sunday I snuck out early in the driving rain and spent some time at a nearby Panera having breakfast and reading the paper. Around 11:30 I went back to the hotel to find that Dan had just woken up. We got packed up and checked out and talked to the front desk folks to make sure that everything was in order for Wuffmeet. We then went made a Sam’s Club run to check prices for Wuffmeet budgeting, then a stop at American Science and Surplus to see if there were any useful knickknacks that might come in handy at our upcoming conventions. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing at home and catching up on Tivo.

Not too exciting for a weekend away from home, but that’s just fine by me!

I hear the voices in my head/I swear to god I think they were snoring

Well, it’s been a real up-and-down week. On Wednesday, I heard from takaza that things weren’t going well at work. I skipped the gym and met him after work and we had a nice walk in a nearby park and talked some of his stress out. After that, we drove around a bit, exploring some of the northern burbs that we hadn’t seen before, and then wound up at Old Orchard Mall where we splurged a bit for some not-bad hot cocoa and some excellent chocolates. I’d like to think that helped Dan a lot and made the rest of his week a little better. We capped off the evening with a nice episode of The Amazing Race, though we’re bummed that the oldsters got bounced. They seemed like genuinely nice people.

Yesterday was relatively unexciting – work, then a cardio workout at the gym. Because of my knees, I’m sort of limited in the cardio I can do, so I vary between the treadmill and the recumbent stationary bike. If I ride the bike, I can definitely get my heart rate up, even though I top out at about twenty minutes and about 130 calories burned. If I use the treadmill I can go twenty-five minutes (and longer – I need to push that a bit) and that theoretically burns 320 calories or so, but my heart rate doesn’t really get into the “cardio” range. I need to figure out how to better balance these. I’m alternating those with one day of shoulder and abdominals exercises and one day of arm and leg exercises; that seems to work pretty well, but I’m having a hard time sticking with the five-times-a-week schedule my doctor has suggested. Well, some is better than none, anyway.

This weekend we’re rewarding Dan a bit for the two weeks from hell that he’s had by spending it at the La Quinta in Hoffman Estates. It isn’t all fun, though – we’re checking out the hotel to make sure they’re ready for Wuffmeet, and on Saturday we’ll be scouting the FRAC course, taking pictures, making notes, and making evil plots 🙂 On Sunday we’ll be hitting Sam’s Club to check prices for food and drinks and play with budgeting a bit more. In between, though, we’ll be doing a lot of relaxing, which I’m looking forward to.

Gotta get some work done, but look out for some links coming up this afternoon!

Wednesday? What happened to Monday and Tuesday?

Man, am I getting slack at updating or what? I do try to make up for it in comments in other people’s journals, though.

Not a whole lot happened last week, so it’s not really worth mentioning. We were going to try to do some scouting for FRAC but takaza was feeling a bit under the weather so we got a late start. We were able to drive around and nail down a few locations, though. This edition is going to be a real hoot, I think, and folks are going to have a lot of fun. Look for some announcements on this very soon.

On Sunday we took things kind of slow, though we did eventually get out to make the rounds of shopping. The Suncoast Video store at Randhurst Mall is closing so we stopped by there to look at the store fixtures and see what was left in the picked-over DVD inventory. I got a copy of Passion in the Desert and we picked up a copy of Escanaba in da Moonlight for Linnaeus, both for about four bucks. We also picked up a nice shelving unit that will be helpful for MFF, possibly for holding stuff on the freebie table, and some small plastic sign holders (that they threw in for free) that will be handy at Anthrocon. Dan’s going to go back on Friday to see if he can get a deal on the registers – the main units are crap, and beat all to hell, but the cash drawers aren’t bad and could be useful for a future POS system at Anthrocon. They’ll have to be extremely cheap, though.

Dan and I broke our usual after-work routine on Monday by going to the volunteers meeting for Night of 100 Champions, a fundraiser for Gay Games Chicago. It was amusing that, while they were expecting two, maybe three hours out of their volunteers, we pretty much said we’d be available all day and into the evening, plus we’d help out at the brunch the following day. It sounds like we’ll be helping with setup, “entertainment assistance” (still to be determined, but helping out with the evening’s musical entertainment somehow), and possibly even welcoming people into the Soldier Field parking lots on “Segway patrol” (though that depends on whether they’ll waive the 260-pound Segway limit). It’s going to be a really impressive event, and the raffle and silent auction items are quite impressive (15 round trip airline tickets donated by Orbitz, complete cruises for eight donated by Olivia, and a lot of other cool stuff). Dan is trying to get his employer (a certain large German multinational corporation) involved as a sponsor for the Gay Games, and thinks that there’s a good chance of that. Incidentally, if anyone is interested in helping out, they still need volunteers! There will be a last-minute planning meeting on Monday, April 17 (at DeVry at Belmont and Western, I think?) where you can show up. We’ll be there, and it would be great to see some of our other friends involved.

As an aside, a nice bit of Gay-Games-related news: The Crystal Lake City Council voted 6-1 last night to allow Gay Games Chicago to use Crystal Lake for their rowing competition. I especially liked this quote: “This issue, for some reason, has become quite an emotional issue in our community,” [Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron] Shepley told residents before the public comment. “We will treat each other with the respect we owe each other as human beings.” Awesome! The next step is that the request has to go before the Lakewood Village Board next week (hopefully) for approval.

Yesterday Paul and I both had our annual physical exams (we go to the same doctor), so we decided to meet up for dinner with datahawk (Dan opted for a quiet night in). We wound up going to Froggy’s, a fabulous French restaurant in Highwood. Unfortunately, compared to the previous two times that we’ve been, the chef’s choice menu wasn’t quite up to snuff. While the rabbit casserole was tasty, the venison (though tender) was prepared in a way that gave it an acidic taste (not unlike sauerbraten) and the pheasant mousse stuffed with spinach wasn’t particularly flavorful or exciting. It wasn’t a bad mean, mind you, and it may just be that it was a Tuesday and the chef was off, or some such. Nevertheless this has spurred me into seeking out more restaurants in the area that have nifty (and inexpensive) tasting menus, and also to investigate other French restaurants on the North Side.

Tonight it’s back to the gym for an extended workout; to make up for the awful schedule I’ve been keeping there I’m going to have to go this Saturday and Sunday mornings to get back into the swing of things. It sounds like Dan’s going to be working late, so the grocery run may be put off one more day. Even though I’m out of milk for my cereal, I’m not missing it much (note to self: don’t ever buy Sugar-Smacks knockoffs again. Ick). I also need to start making lists for the weekend, since it looks like I’m going to be making quite a bit of chicken and dumplings for Saturday. Oh darn.

Well, time to get some work done!

Well, that was a fun weekend!

Another weekend, another party. After much planning and preparations, Wuffmeet II came and went last weekend, and everyone seemed to have a great time. This time around we were at the Courtyard By Marriott in Glenview, IL. It was a nice hotel, but the general agreement seemed to be that the La Quinta in Hoffman Estates had more comfortable rooms. Unlike the La Quinta, which only has an outdoor pool, the Courtyard had a nice indoor pool and hot tub which was quite lovely, especially on Saturday night when our group was the only one in the place (the three(!) wedding parties that we were sharing the hotel with were partying hard elsewhere, I guess. Fine by me). This time around we tried a conference room as the general gathering area, and which it worked OK, certainly a space with sofas and more comfortable furniture would be preferred. We’ll look into that for future gatherings.

Thanks to everyone who attended: Aeto, Cheetah, Cobaltfox, Datahawk, DaveQat, Hartree, jimcyl, Linnaeus, Mirkowuff, moryssa, Mistletoe, wooisme, Neowolf2, Posicat, Ralkor, rcking, Rolliebear, Rustitobuck, Siriuswolfstar, steviemaxwell, Stormdog, UncleVlad, werellama, and Wyldekyttin. As usual, takaza did a fabulous job planning and purchasing all of the food and drink, and I’m happy to report that we pretty much broke even, which is exactly where we wanted to be. Takaza also did a fantastic job of keeping me sane 🙂

After seeing the walking dead attempting to have breakfast yesterday morning, we’re considering only holding these parties on three-day weekends, though. After staying up late on Saturday night (or well into Sunday morning, for some), check-out time on Sunday morning comes punishingly early. Plus, two days is just too short! Well, we learn as we go, and each party gets better.

In addition to the party, we introduced FRAC: Furries Race Across Chicago!, a combination race, scavenger hunt, and puzzle game. I’ll post more about that later today…

I Love the Smell of Toner in the Morning!

Wow, I just love these mornings when I come in at 6 AM. Well, usually. This morning the lovely hour before anyone else shows up was spent fighting network printers and trying to print up the 160 (!) postcards I need to send out. Well, I got the job half-done, anyway – the rest I’ll have to do at home, on our laser printer that isn’t really fond of cardstock. Oh well.

So, it’s been a few days since I last posted, it would appear. On Friday, we joined linnaeus, rustitobuck, and muganga in seeing Serenity. The experience was much-improved over the preview that we saw earlier this year – much better music, and improved effects. I thought that they changed around one of the scenes at the end, but I may be wrong.

Saturday, we bummed around the house and worked on some party planning and MFF stuff, then Hartree showed up. We grabbed a tasty dinner at Charcoal Delight, then bummed around the house for the rest of the evening, chatting. Sunday brought sparsely-attended MFF staff meeting, but we nailed down a few useful things there. Afterwards, mirkowuff came back to the apartment and we ordered some sammitches. Tasty.

This week has been so-so. I finally shook off the cold/whatever I had picked up, but I had a lingering cough that was kicking my butt and keeping me awake at night. That finally seems to be subsiding, though, much to my relief. So now it’s back to planning for the upcoming gathering this weekend and MFF stuff as well. I’ll be much happier once I can get all of the stuff I need to get ordered for MFF taken care of, which should be by this time next week. I hope.

Back to work!

Run Silent, Run Deep?

I’ve been accused of running silent for the past few days (hi Mom!) so I guess it’s time to bring everyone up to speed on what’s going on in my life.

First and foremost, I’ve been worrying about my Dad. As I mentioned in my last entry, he’s in the hospital recovering from a repair of a repair of a repair to his back surgery. The good news is that he seems to be recovering nicely, and I’m hoping may be out of the hospital as early as next week. My mom and my sister have been busting their butts keeping him in good spirits, cooking dinners for him, and generally making sure he’s got the best possible care. It kills me that I can’t be there helping, but time and money and circumstances prohibit.

We actually had a pretty busy weekend. Takaza, Linnaeus and I spent Saturday walking around a whole lot in preparation for a event we’re working on in October. Preparations went well and I’m confident that folks will really have a good time. We had a lot of fun but unfortunately I’ve confirmed that I have weak arches or some such because my back was a complete mess by the end of the day (and my left knee wasn’t so hot either). I’m going to need to see a doctor about this sooner than later, and I’m hoping the resolution isn’t going to be more of the “Lose weight ya fat bastard” sort of thing.

I spent a good portion of the day Sunday resting my back, but Dan and I finally headed out late in the afternoon and spent the better part of four hours doing research for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. The idea was to pare the radius of restaurants listed from five miles down to two miles. Just lopping off the list at the two-mile mark cut about 20 restaurants, though a few were added back (Outback, Gameworks, etc.). We covered about 75% of the area (still need to do Woodfield Mall and its environs) and wound up crossing off 3 or 4 restaurants that closed and added a good 20-30 restaurants that hadn’t been listed before. Yikes! We’re going to have to take a hard look at that list and decide either to cut back the radius or be more selective about the restaurants we list (probably the latter – do we really need to list all four Quizno’s in the area?).

Last night was a nice change of pace. I got a call on the way home from daveqat informing me that I really needed to stop by their place to pick up something. That something turned out to be a belated birthday present, a very nice cheese board, a nice set of knives and little cheese label thingies. It was a lovely gift, and very thoughtful of them. We hung out and chatted at their place for a while, then were joined by tecknow. We all went out to Tom Yum, a little sushi/Thai restaurant a few blocks from our apartment (though Dan and Paul bowed out from dinner). The food was pretty good, the service appalling. A nice reminder of why I only get take-out from there. Fortunately, the dinner conversation was entertaining and I had a really nice time.

As for the rest of the week, we don’t have a lot planned. I might have to work late on Friday (yay overtime!) and Dan might have to work this weekend – we’ll see. I’m hoping to maybe hang out with friends, because I feel like I’ve been a bit of a hermit of late. Who knows? We might even show up at LAFF Bowling this month. And of course there’s also the Midwest FurFest staff meeting on Sunday – lots of fun to be had there!

Well, back to work I go…