Category Archives: irishfest

Quiet week, and planning ahead

Just some random bits of goings-on this week…

takaza‘s glasses broke (the bridge snapped at one of the lenses) on Friday morning, which is a bit problematic. He made many calls all over and the bottom line is that, with the eye care insurance we have, you get a choice of about 20 frames and it takes no less than a week to get new glasses. One-hour places? Sure, if you want to do it on your own dime. Now, it’s worth noting that if you’re OK with these limitations, you can get a new pair of glasses for about $30-40. Dan opted for anti-glare coating as well, so his will be $60, and they come in (hopefully) on Friday. This tells me that it would probably be a good idea for me to get a new pair of glasses sooner than later, too, since mine are about three years old and pretty scratched up anyway.

In the meantime, since he needs his glasses to drive, we’ve been car-pooling every day. This adds about 20 minutes to my commute each way, which isn’t too bad. There’s also the added benefit of time spent together, which is really pleasant. It’s especially nice on nights like tonight, when we don’t really have any dinner plans. We can get dinner anywhere we want and don’t have to rush home, then head back out (if you live in a city, you understand, I’m sure) if we so desire.

Last night’s dinner was quite tasty: rigatoni with a bacon-tomato sauce, baked under lots of mozzarella. Yum! We’re definitely going to have to make that again. Not sure what we’ll be doing for dinner tomorrow, and it sounds like we’ll be going out with friends on Friday; I predict many brain cells will be killed before that night is over 🙂 The weekend will be spent taking Dan’s mom out to lunch for her birthday, then it’s over to Antioch, with tasty grilling and other fun stuff going on there. I’m thinking about making a dessert involving strawberries for that – we’ll have to see what recipes I can find.

Finally, looking ahead two weeks, I see that Milwaukee Irishfest is already upon us! mirkowuff may be coming up for the fest; anyone else interested in joining in? I intend to go up on Saturday the 19th (yeah, it’s the day of LAFF softball, sorry). With any luck the weather will cool off by then.

“Play the one that goes deedly-deedly-deedly!”

I seem to be drifting a bit this morning, having trouble focusing on one project at any given time. I do hope this passes soon. Not that I have any huge plans for the day besides stopping at the grocery store for dinner, but it is a trifle disconcerting.

So on Saturday Dan and I drove up to Irishfest in Milwaukee. For all that it was their 25th anniversary and they brought back a lot of fine performers, I found the schedule strangely unappealing. The company was good, though, as we were joined by datahawk and linnaeus, and even briefly by roho‘s sort-of-cousin Laurie. I did get to see brief flashes of some excellent performers, but there was a lot of dreck there too; there’s only so many times I’m going to hear “Danny Boy” before I start wanting to beat someone with a mic stand.

While it was a pleasant surprise to see Schooner Fare there, that too was something of a letdown. I first saw them a good eighteen years ago, performing at Wolf Trap in Virginia. They were amazing, and a real treat to see live. To their credit, they’re still in fine voice after all these years, but one of their members passed away last year and as a duo they really lack of the punch they once had. We did see the majority of the performance by Wolfstone and as always their instrumentals far outshone their songs. I could rant about the annoying woman and her even more annoying child who were sitting next to me, but the less said about them the better.The joys of festival seating. Ugh. Dan and I packed it in at around 7 PM and went home and crashed.

Sunday was the August Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Planning continues apace, and the meeting went well. A lot of unresolved questions were answered, and we worked through some outstanding issues. Dinner afterwards at Fuddrucker’s was quite tasty, too! After dinner, Dan, Paul, and I drove to one of the possible hotels for an upcoming shindig and it looks like we might have a real winner. After a brief stop, we headed home and crashed for the evening.

More to write about, but it’s lunchtime now!

Sort of back and IRISHFEST!

Well, the good news is that they finally got the work computers back up. The bad news is that my laptop goes out today via FedEx so any computer access I have at home is on borrowed equipment. Safe to say, don’t look for me on ICQ or AIM anytime for the next week or so.

So this coming weekend is Irishfest in Milwaukee. I’m planning on heading up there on Saturday, leaving Chicago at around 10 or 10:30. Anyone interested in joining me, or meeting up at the Fest? Tickets are $12. I’ll be sticking around until at least 10 PM or so.

Good News All Around

A couple of things at random…

First off, it is with much relief that I can report that father’s surgery yesterday went well. For those who didn’t know, over the last 4-6 months he’s been having terrible pain in his lower back, to the point where he wasn’t able to walk. It was diagnosed as spinal stenosis, which means that there were bone spurs on his spine that were compressing the spinal cord. Yesterday morning he went in for a decompressive laminectomy and when I talked to him last night (!) he said he had been up walking around and it really seems to have worked. Amazingly, he’ll be out of the hospital this afternoon (barring complications) and then it’s several weeks of convalescence and physical therapy. The prognosis is pretty good, though, and I have really high hopes. I’m hoping to make a weekend visit to Mom and Dad’s in South Carolina the weekend of August 27th – it’s been far too long since I’ve been down there.

Secondly, Dan and I were looking ahead later this month and it looks like the weekend of August 20 is Milwaukee Irishfest! Woohoo! I will definitely be going on Saturday the 20th – anyone interested in joining me? This will be my third year going and if you like Celtic music at all this is THE PLACE to go. The lineup on Saturday includes some of the biggest names in Celtic music: Schooner Fare, Tommy Makem, Danu, Green Fields of America, Cherish the Ladies, Gaelic Storm, Leahy, Seven Nations, Black 47, Young Dubliners, Wolfstone, Liz Carroll, and the list goes on. The only problem is going to try to figure out who to see among the great stuff that’s all scheduled on top of each other!

Finally, I can say that in regards to the event I mentioned last week – we’re going to have some good news in the next few days, I think.