Category Archives: gifts

You Say It’s Your Birthday

And so my birthday came and went yesterday. A little anti-climactic after last year’s trip to Napa Valley, but then again it isn’t every year you turn forty. On the bright side I’m now 41 which means, um, it’ll be a prime year for me?

Anyway, takaza gave me my birthday gifts on Tuesday night. First was a book that I had come across and really enjoyed flipping through at the bookstore, The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. Tucked in among the pages was a card labeled “But wait, there’s more…” And so there was – a note informing me that I have been signed up for a 6-hour class on knife skills and butchering. This is awesome – while I can get by with knives in the kitchen, I feel a bit clunky with them sometimes. I’m excited that I’ll get to find out how to use them right.

Oh, and I really need to get my knives sharpened again (and I know where to go to get them done properly this time).

Last night we celebrated my birthday with dinner with friends. We had a lovely meal with roho, genet, linnaeus, daveqat, and jimcyl at Emmett’s Tavern in Palatine. I had a great selection of beers and the food was quite tasty. The downside is that I paid for those beers later when a nasty bit of reflux kicked in at about 2:30 AM this morning. I didn’t really get back to sleep after that and so I’ve been dragging badly all day. I may hit the grocery store after work, or I may go home and grab a nap. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

Hittin’ the Road

And here we are at launch day, so to speak. In a few hours, takaza and I will be getting into his car and heading southwards. Our tentative itinerary will take us through Chambana and Effingham, then down to Nashville, TN for the night. Then tomorrow morning, we’ll continue through Chattanooga, Atlanta, then up to Anderson, South Carolina. (Apparently many Chicago furries migrate to South Carolina at Christmastime. Who knew?) I do hope that we’ll be able to hit some back roads along the way, and I grabbed a subscription to Roadfood in hopes of discovering some nifty little out-of-the-way restaurants along the way.

Dan and I did our gift-giving last night. As I had mentioned before, since we bought ourselves a freezer we were just going to get each other small gifts for Christmas. Anyway, I did succeed in getting two of Dan’s presents to him: a book on digital photography, and the collected Firefly miniseries “Serenity: Those Left Behind”. Dan surprised me with something that has been in the back of my head but I had been holding off on: a whole new set of brewing equipment! This was an awesome surprise and I’m looking forward to getting back into brewing after the holidays. Unfortunately, one of Dan’s packages is still en route, and at this point it appears that it’s going to be delivered after we leave. Awesome! As I was writing this the package was delivered. He has to wait until I get home to open it, though 🙂

Looking ahead, it sounds like this is going to be a busy holiday for us. Dan, my sister, and I will be in charge of cooking while we’re in South Carolina, and coming up with a selection of foods that pleases everyone. Tuesday night will of course be the traditional Christmas Turkey (a la Alton Brown, natch). Then Wednesday the 26th we’ll be driving all the way back to Chicago in one shot – won’t that be fun? Dan has to work the 27th and 28th, but I have those days off for a change. I suspect I’ll be quite busy those days, cooking and shopping for the weekend. We’ll deal with that later, though.

Time to Play Catch-Up!

My goodness, where to begin. I’ve been remiss in updating things (yes Mom, I know 🙂 so I have quite a bit to write about.

Last week was a bit of a blur – mainly just getting back into the swing of things after the previous short work week. Saturday was takaza‘s birthday party! After kicking around ideas of how to celebrate his birthday, he finally settled on spending time with friends, so a party it was. I was a bit worried about the weather – a nasty mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain – but most everyone got to us OK and everyone got home safely (sorry you got lost, awfulhorrid and bookwurm! We’ll see you again soon, though, I hope. Barbarian, check your e-mail!). We had about 20 folks, various snacks and desserts, and three huge pots of chicken and dumplings. We got in some Lupus in Tabula, which was fun, but not quite enough games – we’ll need to work on that at New Year’s.

On Sunday I had lunch with unclevlad and datahawk at Osteria di Tramonto (yum! The roasted duck cavatelli is to die for!) then we toured the Westin Chicago North Shore to give them an idea of the Security challenges for the coming year. It was a great meeting and there was a lot of good discussion. I’m feeling really good about Security for next year, and I hope that Vlad is feeling a bit more comfortable with me in the chairman role. Afterwards I stopped by the Hyatt Woodfield to pick up a bag of mine that they found after MFF (yay!), then picked up some dinner for Dan and me on the way home.

Yesterday Dan took a day off to celebrate his birthday with a little time away from work. We had agreed that this Christmas we would get a single big item for ourselves, then get each other a smaller gift. Dan went out and bought that item yesterday: an 8 cubic foot chest freezer. We got a good deal through Best Buy on a Frigidaire that Consumer Reports recommended. To go with that he also got a Food Saver vacuum bag sealer, which will be a big help if we’re going to be laying in a supply of frozen stuff. We started things out by breaking up a 4-lb. tray of chicken breasts into small packages, and I’m pleased to say that everything worked splendidly! I expect that the 20 feet of bag stock that they supply probably won’t last very long, though, so we’ll need to pick up more of that.
Now we need to experiment a bit and see what other fun stuff we can do with the Food Saver (sous-vide, anyone?).

So today, Dan is flying off to Detroit for a few days of training, weather permitting. Although it’ll be weird being around the house alone, the quiet time can be nice, too. I have a couple of projects I want to work on, and maybe a bit of shopping as well. So, not a very exciting week, but after last month who needs excitement?

Morning Excitement

takaza and I made our usual 5:45 AM departure from the city this morning in the middle of a driving rain storm. It wasn’t too bad – all the nasty wind and lightning stayed off to the south – but it was enough to make the drive a little slower and annoying. After I dropped Dan off and got in to work myself, I got a call from him: he had dropped his phone somewhere. As near as we can guess, he probably dropped it while trying to navigate the large puddles outside of our place, and someone picked it up off the street (thanks so much to linnaeus for actually turning around and returning home in the middle of his morning commute to search for the phone there!).

The insurance that we’ve been paying on since we started subscribing to Sprint is, of course, all but useless: $50 deductible, get a refurbished phone. Bleah. So now we’re at a transition point: Come October I get a $150 credit for a new phone, and I’ve got my eye on the Treo 700w, which should be available from Sprint by then. Or, we could jump to Verizon and pick up the Motorola Q, which is mighty purty and shiny, but at a cost of breaking our contract with Sprint (ka-ching!), or paying it through October but just not using it, which would actually be cheaper. We’re going to visit the Sprint and Verizon stores after work today and see what options are available to us. In the interim, if you want to reach Dan, the best thing to do is call me and I’ll pass you along.

On a happier note, the lovely and talented genet surprised me with a wonderful gift last night:
It’s Duncan! And he’s ky00t!

On the Road to Anderson (without Hope and Crosby)

And so, five days and approximately 1,800 miles later, we’re home again. A quick recap:

On Thursday, we left for my parents’ place in Anderson, South Carolina. We only drove about two-thirds of the way there, stopping for the night in Knoxville, Tennessee (sorry we didn’t call, partran, but we got in pretty late). We got up early the next morning and drove the last five hours down to my parents’. We tried to stop in Canton, North Carolina, to return the NC license plates for the Alero and Dan’s old plates for his Element, but first we found that the DMV office had moved, and then that it was closed for the day. We shrugged and continued on, getting in at around 12:30 PM. My sister, her husband, and my two nephews were already there, having driven in from St. Louis the day before.

It was a great weekend, and it was really good to spend time with my family. takaza seemed to have a good time as well, and got along well with Chris (age 10) and Tim (age 8). Ruth and I did most of the cooking during the weekend, which I’m sure was a welcome break for my mom, and Dan and Marvin (my brother-in-law) did yeoman work with cleanup detail. Dad was looking fantastic for someone who had had back surgery just a few weeks prior. I was glad to see him up and standing for hours at a time, when before the surgery he was able to remain upright for less than a minute.

We did the traditional gift-giving on Christmas morning. Chris and Tim, of course, got a pile of loot; they seemed to enjoy the Legos and video games they received, and judging from the background noise from last night’s phone call, Dan’s choice for Apples to Apples Junior for the family was a huge hit. Ruth and Marvin will get a lot of use out of the accessories we got for their new digital camera, and Mom and Dad seemed to like our gift to them: a Tivo. I think they’re still figuring out how to work it and why it’s such a wonderful thing, but I suspect they’ll come around with time. We had some fun trying to set it up since they had no telephone jack in the room we put it and even if they did, all they have is Vonage, which does not play well with Tivo. We wound up having to take the Tivo back to our hotel room for it to dial in and get all of the program updates. Fortunately, we had prepared for the possibility and we had picked up a wireless router and adapter for the Tivo; once we had all the program updates it was a breeze to get it hooked into the network. They should be good to go!

For Dan, I got a gift that I know he will enjoy: A night out on the town, with gift certificates for dinner at Heaven on Seven and two tickets for Blue Man Group (I’ll point out those are to be used for him and anyone of his choosing – it’s tacky to buy someone gifts that you’ll use yourself 🙂 I won’t list all the gifts I received except to say that they were all wonderful, and all very much appreciated. (OK, I will mention that I’m going to really enjoy the Thermapen that Dan got me, though!)

Christmas was over all too soon and yesterday we hit the road at 5:45 AM Central Time. We made great time; the only bad weather we ran into was some light rain/snow flurries and high winds through the NC mountains. Surprisingly, the traffic into Chicago wasn’t horrible and we pulled into the garage right around 6:00 PM – darned good time!

Today, Dan is off from work, but I’m here like a good worker drone. Naturally, about half of the office is out until next week, but that makes things a bit more bearable. Linnaeus, who is already babysitting a surprisingly well-behaved large, white bird (I thought it was a cockatiel, but looking at pictures of them now I’m not so sure), surprised me this morning with another friend that he’s keeping an eye on: Nita (she’s in the center of that pic). She’s a real cutie, but alas, only visiting for one day. But hey, any dog time is always good.

I slept poorly, so I suspect today is going to drag. Nevertheless, it should be pretty mellow – I’ve got some projects I’m working on, and it’s nice to have some peace and quiet in which to do it. Looking ahead, Dan and I are going to see the Blackhawks tomorrow night, and then there’s the LAFF New Year’s Party this weekend. I’ll be in touch with those of you who have volunteered to help out at the door – with luck, we can keep it down to 30 minutes apiece, leaving folks time to go and have fun with other stuff. But now, back to work!