Category Archives: laff

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Oh wow, it’s been a while since a proper post here, hasn’t it? OK, here’s a quick recap of the last few weeks…

The weekend of October 10th: This was the big Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind weekend. On that Saturday I took the train into the city and wandered around a bit. I stopped by Julius Meinl Coffee House, which was delightfully civilized (and had great coffee)! After that I walked around the Lincoln Square neighborhood and stopped by The Bad Apple. While I didn’t get any of their tasty-looking food, I did have a New Holland Charkoota Rye Smoked Doppelbock which was…challenging, but interesting. You have to love a bar where you can strike up a conversation with two strangers about the relative merits of the beers your drinking. I really need to get back to this place!

From The Bad Apple it was across the street to the Half Acre Beer retail store. Alas, their offerings were a bit thin still (they had just started retail sales) but I did pick up a couple of good beers to take to dinner. I bussed it over to Andersonville and arrived at Ranalli’s Pizza in plenty of time for the LAFF get-together. I have to say that the folks at Ranalli’s were awesome to work with for our little shindig! We had about 28 people show up, and they were extremely accommodating. The pizzas just kept coming out, and the company and food was excellent. I hope that maybe we can do another LAFF event there again sometime soon.

After dinner the whole crowd trooped down to the Neo-Futurarium, where a line was just starting to form. I’m really glad we got there when we did! It was a cold night, but not too bad and the time passed quickly. We were treated to an extremely entertaining show, and I was reminded once again why it’s going to be so damn great to have the Neo-Futurists at Midwest FurFest this year.

The next day was the Midwest FurFest staff meeting, and things went really well. We nailed down some lingering details and I hope that everyone left with as good a feeling about the convention as I did.

On the weekend of October 17th, we aimed to keep things a little lower-key. takaza and I both slept in and had a lazy day around the house, slipping out late in the afternoon to stop by a restaurant supply place not too far away, then stopped by the local butcher and liquor store (where Dan had an amusing exchange with the Twitter-rep of our favorite rum). On Sunday, we welcomed roho, genet, and linnaeus over for a very tasty dinner of braised short ribs, ratatouille, and roasted potatoes with garlic vinaigrette. Very tasty dinner, supplemented by some really nice wines.

And here we are in the throes of another week. We’re going to be doing cleaning in preparation for a get-together this weekend, not that the place is all that dirty. If nothing else this gives us the impetus to put away the last few items left over from the move. Oh, and the penultimate Midwest FurFest staff meeting is this weekend! Believe it or not, plans for next year are already in high gear as well – nothing I can talk about, but I can say that folks should try to get to Closing Ceremonies at MFF, because we have a lot of cool information to share!

I Don’t Think Marble Slab Makes Rogan Josh Mix-Ins…

Now that was an entertaining weekend! First off, the week was instantly made better on Friday afternoon when takaza returned from the wilds of Indiana. Of course, not an hour after he got home we had to leave again, but it was for a good cause: dinner with friends at Bombay City Indian Restaurant. We had a lot of fun seeing familiar faces and meeting some cool new folks too (who I hope we’ll have a chance to see more of!). The food was, as always, fantabulous, though I have learned my lesson: while tandoori stuff is tasty, the sauced dishes are where it’s at. Fresh naan dipped in the chicken tikka masala sauce…heaven! Unfortunately, we’ve been there three times and each time the service has been sub-par. This time we waited about 30 minutes for our check once we were done. It might be time to investigate other Indian places in the area, sadly. For dessert, we went to Marble Slab Creamery with steviemaxwell, roho, genet, and linnaeus, which was a perfect capper for the evening.

On Saturday, after a very quick follow-up visit with the doctor about my toe (it’s healing nicely, thank you), I returned home and Dan woke up not long after. I knew that I needed to go to laffsoftballLAFF Softball to drop off the badge holders for Mephit Furmeet to ramalion, but it was up in the air if Dan would be joining me. Between a couple of calls to Stevie, making some lists, and having some cool ideas for grilling, it suddenly transpired that he had talked himself into going and we were going to be grilling for the picnic after the softball game. We stopped by Sam’s Club and picked up a huge amount of food (as well as a nifty new portable table) and then headed over to the softball game. Aeto was kind enough to make a quick store run for us for a few things we couldn’t get at Sam’s Club and to lend us the use of his cooler – thanks, Aeto! We watched some of the game and chatted with the various folks who were there (too many to name!). At about 4 PM we took all of the supplies over to the cooking area and fired up the (one, very small) grill and set to work prepping the food. Dan and I had agreed that we were going to make “Jucy Lucy” burgers (sic), and we set to work making the patties. Perro and Darkwolph let us store some of the perishables in their refrigerator, which was a huge help! I learned that the grill didn’t put out as much heat as I had hoped as I limped along with the first batch of bratwurst, but once we got a handle on it (and added another chimney full of charcoal!) we got things working properly. We wound up feeding 25 people or so, and even managed to break even in costs! Dan and I are kicking around ideas for the end-of-the-season picnic, possibly including steaks. We’ll see if we can make that work, though.

After grilling, we were both drained, so we drove home and crashed. We were both silly and didn’t put on sunscreen (not too bad – we were mostly in the shade) or bug spray (bad – I’ve got multiple unpleasant welts!), so we’ve got some tokens of the day to remind us to properly prepare next time!

Dan’s sister came over Sunday afternoon and they worked on her computer for several hours while I puttered around the house doing laundry and cleaning. That unfortunately meant that Dan had to stay home to work on work-related stuff while I headed out to have dinner with Roho, Genet, chebuytkin and CAJones at Dave and Busters. The company was excellent, with much smoffage and comparisons of conventions (I like the idea of road-tripping to Minneapolis next July 4 for Convergence!). The food was surprisingly good as well, as was my strawberry margarita. The games afterwards…not so much. If you like shooting or driving games, D&B’s is the place to go. Unfortunately, shooting games have zero interest for me and my passion for driving games is limited at best. I left with credit still on my card, but the night was getting late. I got home just as Dan was wrapping up for the evening, so it all worked out.

It’s a new week now, and it looks like it’ll be a busy one at work. We don’t have much planned during the week, though at the end of the week is the Chicago Air and Water Show. Also, keep an eye out here because plans are in the works for another game night at our place next week!

Your Weekend Recap {tm}

…only a day late.

So Friday afternoon I picked up takaza from work; because it was a Friday afternoon and it was raining slightly, traffic was of course a complete wreck. We opted to take our time heading back into the city, stopping by the Mount Prospect post office and checking out a cute little ice cream parlor nearby. The rest of the evening was a quiet affair, watching some Tivo and laptop-geeking.

On Saturday, mirkowuff came by, and we debated whether or not we would try to attend Irishfest. While it no doubt would have been fun, there was no one on the schedule who I just had to see, plus I wasn’t looking forward to the three-hour round trip. In the end, we bagged Irishfest and instead had lunch at Juicy-O’s (again) with crim_ferret, wyldekyttin, and Linnaeus. The place was as fabulous as it had been the week before, and I again ate way too much. Oog. The chicken and mushroom skillet was quite tasty, though.

After lunch Mirko and I headed over to LAFF Softball, where we wound up just hanging out and chatting with folks. Quite fun. And because we hadn’t had enough punishment, we went to LAFF Bowling, though I mainly just hung out with some friends and chatted (and enjoyed some Tasty Beverages). It’s not quite how I had envisioned spending the day but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I had fun chatting with ramalion, quasiskunk, rcfoot, bullethc, perro and darkwolph.

Sunday brought the Midwest FurFest Board Meeting, followed by the staff meeting. Useful meetings, and we got a good bit of stuff taken care of. Afterwards Dan and I had lunch with roho and genet, making plans for their upcoming wedding, where Dan will be acting as their photographer and I will be providing the music. When we got home, Dan laid down for a nap that became a very long night’s sleep instead; I noodled on my laptop and got some con-related stuff taken care of then it was off to bed.

Yesterday? Eh. Work. Last night we did watch the season finale of Treasure Hunters, the bastard child of Amazing Race and National Treasure, with some Survivor thrown in. All in all, the show was just dreadful, and we watched more out of obligation than anything else, since we had watched it up until then. The idea that the final three teams ended up in a small room that looked like an Egyptian tomb, but was actually in an abandoned factory on Baltimore Harbor was perfectly ludicrous, and the key to the final puzzle was…underwhelming. This is the kind of show where they don’t hint at any production interference, yet it’s patently obvious in places and leaves you deeply suspicious of the whole thing. The “reunion” segments were poorly paced, and their milquetoast of a host (who finally stopped [literally] phoning in his performance) had no control over the contestants; it was quite entertaining to watch him try to maintain order as everyone ignored him completely. Yeah, I suspect this show won’t be back, and if it is I recommend that everyone avoid it. But here’s something to look forward to: The Amazing Race 10 starts September 17! Yay!

And now, back to work…