Category Archives: gatherings

TGIF? Yeah, Close Enough

Man, am I tired. That has something to do with last night’s late bedtime, but it was worth it!

Last night was takaza monthly Game Night. We were joined by Dan’s mom, todd_riverden, serinthia, rustitobuck, steviemaxwell, roho, linnaeus, and genet. Pizza was ordered, and we got in not only several entertaining rounds of Wits and Wagers, but also a couple of rounds of Lupus in Tabula, which is always entertaining (and also, apparently, our sofa breeds werewolves. Who knew?). Wits and Wagers is a fun game, though I think once we involve more people, to the point where we have teams, it will be much more fun – a bit more chaotic, too, which makes it all the more entertaining. Keep an eye on Dan’s LJ for the announcement for next month’s Game Night!

In other news, we got the audiobook for Harry Potter and the Giant Wads of Cash (that Amazon had originally promised to deliver on Saturday, then said, “Oops, did we say Saturday? We meant Wednesday”). Even better, Genet was kind enough to lend me her copy of the hardcover last night (even before giving it to her husband! What a great friend 🙂 so my work for the next few days is cut out for me.

A bit of bad news: last night after everyone left we noticed a high-pitched humming sound, like a computer working in overdrive. We traced it down to our TiVo, and after a bit of checking found out that it was in an endless rebooting loop. Well, hell. That’s no good at all, particularly since we have 16 episodes of Doctor Who on there waiting to be watched. Reading through the online communities, it appears there’s typically three possible culprits: bad guide data (though that typically only causes a single reboot, or occasional reboot), bad hard drive, or bad power supply. Dan and Roho are going to try swapping out the hard drive (and while they’re at it, up the drive capacity to 500 Gb or so), but I’m not sure what the timeline is on that – hopefully by the end of the weekend, though. If we lose data, I refuse to get upset. It’s only TV, and if I really want something, there are ways to get it 🙂 Besides, I seem to have a book to keep me occupied while we’re offline…

As for the coming weekend, we have nothing planned for Saturday, and I hope that we keep it that way. We’re overdue for a “cat weekend” after Anthrocon, and the idea of sleeping in (as much as I can, anyway) and lounging around at home sounds deliciously decadent. As for Sunday we hope to make it to a birthday gathering, though a lot depends on how early we can get out of bed and get moving. We’ll be in touch about that when we can.

I’m going in search of caffeine now…

Our House Is Now Fully Warmed!

Wow, what a weekend!

After a week of preparations and a morning of frantic cleaning, by 3 PM or so on Saturday we finally had the house ready for our Housewarming Party. I decided to commemorate that fact by taking the camera out and creating a virtual tour of our new home.

siriuswolfstar and simbalion showed up early, followed shortly after by roho, genet, and steviemaxwell (welcome back, Stevie!). Shortly thereafter followed a slew of other folks, and lots and lots of food, booze, sodas, and more food. For the entree, I made up about ten pounds of stuffed pork roast (see the following entry for this). We started things at about 5 PM and eventually kicked the last few folks out at 2 AM. We had a lot of fun, played games of Fluxx, Apples to Apples, and Lupus in Tabula, packed entirely too many people into our tiny living room, and everyone ate really, really well. Thanks to everyone who attended!

On Sunday, I woke up far too early at 7:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Unfortunately, the drapes in the master bedroom aren’t nearly as light-blocking as we had hoped, so we’re going to supplement them with some inexpensive blinds from Home Depot or someplace similar, the theory being that since the drapes will usually be closed, it doesn’t much matter what the blinds look like, so long as they block as much light as possible. Anyway, eventually we got everyone up and moving by noon and made the (short) pilgrimage up to Antioch to indulge in breakfast at my favorite diner in the area, Las Vegas. After an excellent meal, we dropped Sirius and Simba off at the train station and spent the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening hanging out at our place and watching TV with Roho and Genet. We caught up on a few episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”, “Dinner Impossible”, and the first episode of the BBC’s new Robin Hood series (great casting, great sets, crappy modern editing. At least they kept it to only one “You’ve got to be kidding me!” moment). Then, since they were there anyway, R&G stayed and watched the latest episode of “The Amazing Race” as well. It was a deliciously lazy and unproductive afternoon.

And now we have a new week. We have dinner engagements on Tuesday and Friday of this week, at a Brazilian steakhouse (note to self: don’t eat breakfast or lunch tomorrow) and at a new steakhouse in Wheeling. It’s gonna be a carnivorous kind of week!

I’m thinking that napping at my desk would be bad, but man I sure wish I could!

In cerevisia veritas

Last night was quite enjoyable. Since perro and darkwolph were off playing with Chaos, it wound up just being me, linnaeus, siriuswolfstar, and simbalion at The Hopleaf. That’s OK, though – good beer and good conversation ensued. I am now a fan of Brother Thelonius! After we wrapped up I walked down to the Lawrence bus and hit a taqueria a few blocks from our place (not our usual one) to try them out. The verdict? The carne asada was only so-so, but their horchata was better than what I’m used to.

Planning for our Maine trip continues apace. We’re looking into various vacation rental places since splitting a place with a group of people will be far cheaper than the rather high hotel rates for the area (Motel 6 notwithstanding 🙂 I’ve learned all about how to read vacation rental ads, too:
“Sleeps 6-8” = “Sleeps four comfortably, or 6-8 stacked in layers”
“Near ocean” = “Within 20 miles of the ocean”
“Quaint” = “Dilapidated”
“Cozy” = “200 square foot house”
Also, apparently summer lasts a lot longer in Maine, because Summer Rates appear to extend into October, typically. Yowza. Ah well – we’ve got some good prospects, and hopefully we can figure out how to keep things affordable.

And then there’s tonight. As I mentioned earlier, we’ll be having dinner at Potbelly’s on Southport, then going across the street to hang out at Bobtail and enjoy their tasty ice cream and coffee. Everyone is welcome, but if you want for us to save you a seat, let me know here or by e-mail!

Lovely weekend!

Well, that was a really enjoyable weekend, for all that we didn’t really have much plans initially.

We were just thinking about putting together some kind of dinner on Friday when I got a call from jimcyl asking if we’d be interested in coming over to their place for burgers and poker. Well, heck yeah! takaza and I CTA’ed it over there and enjoyed a great evening of wine, poker, wine, burgers, good conversation, and wine. I’m a complete novice at Texas Hold ‘Em but I acquitted myself quiet well, mainly due to Jim’s going all in on his three queens against my four tens in the first hand. Yeah, that was ugly 🙂

On Saturday Dan and I had a nice, lazy morning then eventually got motivated enough to head out to Hot Doug’s for a late lunch. The selection of gourmet “encased meats” is always fabulous, but I chose the cognac-infused smoked pheasant sausage with truffle sauce moutarde and foie gras “butter” (the latter a nice tweak at the Chicago City Council). I also opted for the duck fat fries of course. It was a delicious meal, but it always is at Hot Doug’s. (Oh, a side note: I came across a cool bookmarklet that lets you tag pictures on Flickr with a link to where they were taken. It’s geeky, but cool!)

After lunch we met up with siriuswolfstar and simbalion and wandered around Boystown for a while. We didn’t have any real destination in mind, we were just enjoying the marvelously cool evening and window shopping. After a while, Dan began to feel a bit ill, so linnaeus was kind enough to drive down to meet us and let Dan take the car back while Linnaeus walked a bit more with us. We found a great (and oh-so-gay) pet shop, where I got to spend time with a very laid-back and amiable black lab and the cutest tortoiseshell kitten, who was having a ball playing with all the cat toys on the counter by the cash register. We walked a bit more down to Reckless Records, which is always a neat place to browse, and then stopped by Intelligentsia Coffee and just sat around and chatted some more. We headed home after that, but it was a really great way to spend the evening.

On Sunday we drove out to meet with wyldekyttin, crim_ferret, and foxish; Crim is thinking about a new car and wanted to test drive my Element to see how he liked it. We took this as a great excuse to grab brunch with friends! We went over to Juicy-O, the restaurant opened recently by Heaven on Seven owner Jimmy Banos. I was hoping for an experience as good as Ho7 and I wasn’t disappointed – the complimentary homemade doughnuts were delicious, and my strip steak skillet was to die for. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the place, and I’m confident we’ll be going back soon. Afterwards we chatted over at Crim and Kyttin’s place as we suffered through our food comas. Eventually, though, Dan and I headed back home and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching some TV.

This coming week looks to be a bit busy. Tomorrow we’ll be hitting The Hopleaf with friends, then on Wednesday it’s the August Coffee Night at Bobtail, which I’m sure will be a lot of fun. This coming weekend is the Milwaukee Irishfest, and then on Sunday is the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Busy busy busy!

August Coffee Night!

We had so much fun last month, let’s do it again!

What: Coffee (And Ice Cream) Night!
When: 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM, Wednesday, August 16 (this coming Wednesday)
Where: Bobtail Soda Fountain, 3425 N. Southport, Chicago, IL
That’s a half-block north of the Brown Line Southport station, and the El is by far the easiest way to get there. Street parking is available, though you may have to hunt a bit (the Cubs are on the road that night). Bobtail has very tasty (Intelligentsia) coffee, and excellent ice cream as well. They don’t serve much in the way of non-dessert food, but there is a Potbelly Sandwich Works right across the street. takaza and I will probably hit Potbelly at around 7 PM for a quick dinner if anyone wants to join us there. If you’d like us to save you a seat, just let me know, here or by e-mail!