Category Archives: hot dougs

Oh Yeah, Updates…

It’s Wednesday already? Wasn’t it just Wednesday last week? Man, someone should do something about these calendars.

So last weekend was halfway stress-free. On Saturday we had takaza‘s family over to celebrate his mother’s birthday, albeit belatedly. We all went together and bought her a Wii. She’s a big fan of old-school games like Zelda and Final Fantasy stuff, so the online purchase thing is nifty for her. Plus, we played Boom Blox and I think we sold his mother on the game as well as his brother on buying a Wii period. The damn game is like a virus, I swear.

On Sunday I carpooled with roho and genet down to meet with a prospect for our charity for Midwest FurFest this year (Dan went to see The Dark Knight with his family and worked on Anthrocon tax stuff). The meeting went extremely well and I hope to have an announcement on that front later this week. They’re very excited to work with us and I think we’re going to have a lot of fun and make them a lot of money. From there, we drove over to Linnaeus‘s place where we were joined by siriuswolfstar, simbalion, feren, and lady_curmudgeon. We all enjoyed an excellent dinner of burgers and tasty sausages (mmm, andouille!) and some excellent beers. It was a very enjoyable evening!

Work has been more than a little crazy of late. I just wrapped up a big project yesterday which is a big relief, though I’ve got another project next week that will take up all of my time for the first three days of the week. We’ve also had a slew of new hires and I’m helping out occasionally to get them settled as well.

This weekend should be fun – I’ll be at LAFF softball on Saturday to hang out and chat with folks. Not a lot of plans on Sunday, but we’ll wing it and see how things go.

I’ll leave you with two interesting links: If anyone is in Los Angeles and likes food and The Amazing Race, well, the Food Network is looking for you! Granted, being the Food Network, I’m sure they’ll take a good idea and screw it up royally.

Also, it’s about damn time. Anthony Bourdain has been touring around Chicago as he finally films an episode of No Reservations here. I don’t know most of the places he mentions, but I’m glad to see that one of the highlights will be Hot Doug’s, a true Chicago original. (Though I wonder about his choice of local guides. Mancow Mueller? Really?) Anyway, it should be a great episode when it airs.

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!

Coffee, Sausages, and Cider: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things!

Right then: The weekend.

We had all kinds of plans for Friday night; rasslor was going to have dinner with friends, we were going to join linnaeus for dinner, and we were just rarin’ to go…until we actually got home. Traffic was sucky, it was cold and windy outside, and Rasslor’s plans fell through. None of us were motivated in the least, so we wound up huddling ’round the TiVo and ordering pizza. Not a bad alternative, though.

On Saturday I was up moderately early to face the day. Rasslor, Linnaeus and I drove down to the so-hidden-don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it Intelligencia Roasting Works (seriously – they only put a sign outside their door when they give tours) for a tour of their facilities. Naturally they supplied copious coffee to drink, and walked us through roasting a batch of coffee (Guatamalan El Cuervo, to be specific), then we all got a half-pound of the fresh-roasted El Cuervo at the end of the tour. We also got a nice look at their barista training room and QA/QC lab, where they not only test the roasted coffees for quality, they also review samples of green beans sent by farmers from all over the world for quality and suitability. I came away extremely impressed by Intelligencia; they’re a small company (75 employees, including their two – soon to be three – coffee shops) who care about doing things right. I’ll be buying my beans from Intelligencia in the foreseeable future.

After the tour, we drove over to Hot Doug’s, where we were joined by sabotlours, carol_kitty, and takaza. mstegosaurus, fritzywolf, and circafox were there as well (Sorry we couldn’t socialize more, guys! Unfortunately Hot Doug’s is about the food and not so much about the sitting and chatting). I had the Italian-seasoned wild boar sausage with sun-dried tomato mustard and Romano cheese, as well as the merguez lamb sausage with spicy harissa and goat cheese. Both were quite tasty, but definitely not the best I’d ever had there. After lunch we adjourned back to Linnaeus’ place to wallow a bit in postprandial torpor before getting back into the car and driving out to datahawk and posicat place for their annual St. Patrick’s Day party. Much fun and socializing ensued, and I had a really good time.

Sunday morning, I awoke to find Rasslor plotting out various bus routes to get himself back to Midway. Given that he had a huge, heavy suitcase and several changes of transportation were to be involved, I volunteered to just drive him down – it was a beautiful day out, anyway. After seeing him off, Paul, Dan and I went to the Midwest FurFest staff meeting which, due to various illnesses and schedule conflicts, was rather lightly attended. This made for a fast meeting, though, and we migrated to the Curragh for one last meal before it closes at the end of the month. The meal reminded me that the best thing about going there on the Monday after MFF has always been that it was the Monday after MFF – the food has never really been all that. The Magner’s Cider on tap helped a good bit, though. Still, it was fun to hang out and chat with hartree, taren_, Puma, mirkowuff, wyldekyttin and Datahawk. After the meeting Paul, Dan and I headed home to lay about and be generally useless for the rest of the evening.

I was a bad boy and skipped going to the gym yesterday, this after skipping all of last week due to some nasty blisters on my heels. Those are all healed up, now, and I intend to go tonight and tomorrow. Thursday night, we’ll be up in Racine since Dan has to work in Milwaukee on Friday and he wanted my company 🙂 Then after work on Friday it’s time for Congenial! I intend to revel in the spirit of the convention, doing exceedingly little and relaxing. Maybe some nice swimming and relaxing in the hot tub, too. I’m quite looking forward to it.

And now, it’s back to making Visio do things that it’s not meant to do. What fun!