Category Archives: pizza

The State of the Dog

So, we’re one week into dog ownership. How has it been?

Overall, I have to say that we are very happy dog owners. We have established a daily routine with Buddy and he seems to have adapted to it pretty well. Between takaza and me, we’re walking him through the neighborhood about 3-4 miles each day. The only downside is that on weekends he has to go out at around 6 AM. It’s a good thing I don’t mind waking up early on weekends!

We took him to the vet last week for a full check-up. The vet agreed that Buddy is around 8 and 9 years old, based on his teeth. He is unfortunately afflicted with all the things that go with older dogs: bad teeth, bad hips, and bad eyes (early signs of cataracts). The bad teeth probably explains why he rejects all hard food. He tested negative for heartworm, but did test positive for whipworm, which is apparently pretty unusual. Fortunately, a short round of anti-parasitic meds should clear that up. The vet also gave us a painkiller for his hips (Previcox, a Cox II inhibitor); that seems to make a difference.

Buddy has only had one accident in the house, and it really got me to thinking. At his foster home he was used to being let out immediately after being fed. We had hoped to break him of that habit, but when we didn’t let him out right after eating he simply couldn’t wait and peed on the carpet. I don’t fault him one bit for that (OK, I wasn’t happy, but it cleaned up fine), and realized that part of the familiarization process is as much him training us as us training him. I think it’s amazing and gratifying that we have had so few issues with him, and it makes me very glad that we decided to adopt him.

I did a little doggie shopping yesterday, using a PetSmart gift card that Dan got through credit card rewards. We picked up a new dog bed (nice and floofy), some more dog food, and some chewy treats that contain glucosamine and chondroitin. He loves the treats, and seemed very happy with his bed as well.

We spent the weekend hanging out with roho and genet, and their pretty-but-brainless Samoyed, Brianna. I should point out that both Buddy and Brianna are fixed, but that sure didn’t stop buddy from trying to mount Brianna every chance he got. Fortunately, Brianna had no problem demonstrating her lack of interest (with a snarl and a snap) and eventually he settled down.

On Saturday we watched a few shows off the DVR and made country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and sauteed escarole. On Sunday we were joined by Linnaeus, and we celebrate Pi Day with homemade pizza (pies), chocolate cream pie, and key lime pie. Linnaeus also brought over an awesome toy for Buddy: a raccoon (of course) made of the same canvas used for fire hoses. Buddy loved it!

And here we are back at work today. Dan and I are making lists of stuff we need to do before company arrives this coming weekend. I’m catching up on some MFF work, and hopefully some stuff for Anthrocon as well.

I’ll leave you with a thought I had as I walked Buddy back after today’s lunchtime walk. I’ve joked with friends about not wanting a cat because I didn’t want a box of crap in the house. Instead, I’m walking through the neighborhood with a bag of crap in my pocket. Oh, that’s MUCH better. All of you cat owners, feel free to tell me to shut up 🙂

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!

Livin’ the Suite Life

Now that was a truly amazing weekend, and exactly what I needed!

With Anthrocon quickly coming up, I admit I was not the most pleasant company for much of last week. Worries about preparations compounded with concerns about projects that were hitting at work right after the convention had me irritable and sleeping quite poorly. takaza, as always, was a saint and put up with me somehow. Then on Friday, I realized that 95% of what I needed for the convention was done and what wasn’t done could be handled at the con. At the same time, I found out that due to equipment and material delivery issues, my projects were being pushed back to late July. All of this set the tone for me to be very relaxed for the weekend.

We kicked off the weekend by checking into the Westin Chicago North Shore. You see, Dan won a free weekend in the Wheeling Suite there (yes, the suite which will be home to the Con Suite at Midwest FurFest) and he suggested that this would be the ideal weekend for it. So after we got settled in, he had to go have lunch with his cow-orkers. I met up with daveqat, jimcyl, and linnaeus and we had dinner at Wakaba, a Japanese restaurant just up the road from the hotel. It was…underwhelming. Standard suburban strip-mall sushi, at slightly inflated prices. I don’t see us going back there. After dinner we relaxed on the suite balcony (15 floors up) and relaxed. That was a nice end to the evening.

Saturday brought Dan’s company picnic. He was in an organizational role this year (yeah, imagine that) and so I was left to run bingo myself. Fortunately, Paul, roho, and genet volunteered to lend a hand, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon calling bingo to several hundred people and giving away over a thousand dollars in gift cards. It was surprisingly entertaining. Afterwards, we had a quick but refreshing swim in the hotel pool, then it was time for the party.

What’s the fun of having a ritzy suite if you can’t have a party? We welcomes a small group of friends up to the suite, ordered pizza, and mixed up some drinks. The weather was perfect as we chatted out on the balconies, admiring the views and watching fireworks set off in distant towns. We took a break at about 10 PM and everyone went down and swam for an hour until the pool closed, then it was back upstairs to chat and refill our drinks. I had a fantastic time and the party really let me relax and not worry about work or Anthrocon.

On Sunday it was time to check out (after sleeping relatively late). jet_der_hund had spent the night with us, and he kindly assisted us in carrying all of our stuff down. Dan took a nap in the afternoon while I puttered with Anthrocon preparations. Following a reasonably short online MFF staff meeting, we both worked on AC stuff while I introduced Dan to some of Big Blue Fox’s outstanding megamixes.

And now it’s Monday and I’m back at work. I’m going to struggle to maintain focus and get stuff done here, but I leave here at 2 PM tomorrow, pick up Dan from work, and then we head for a brief overnight in Cleveland, then Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. By the way, A note to folks in general: if you e-mail me between now and the coming weekend, don’t expect any response until after Anthrocon at the earliest!

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…

A Whirlwind Weekend!

Whoa, that was a crazy weekend. A whole lot of fun, though.

On Friday, takaza was stuck at work until late. When he got home, we elected to grab dinner at Charcoal Delight, finishing up just as we got a call from mirkowuff the he had arrived at our place. We stopped by to pick him up then went up to Garden Fresh to do a bit of shopping for the following morning. The rest of the evening was a whole bunch of laptop geekery and the very amusing season finale of Ace of Cakes (with a bizarre furry reference in the opening minutes).

Saturday morning we were joined by Linnaeus. Following a quick but tasty breakfast of pancakes, we headed up to the Sports Center in Round Lake Beach for the Spring Stampede. That’s a big enough deal that it’s going to get its own entry following this one (with very silly pictures!), but suffice to say that we had a lot of fun. After that wrapped up we met up with roho and genet at Antioch Liquors (of course). After some shopping there, we stopped by Lovin’ Oven Cakery (om nom nom) on the way home, and enjoyed hanging out for a bit and sampling some of the pastries we picked up there. After some chatting, we decided on Dog and Suds for dinner, since the weather was so nice out. The atmosphere was great, the place wasn’t too crowded and the food…well, the food was only mediocre, unfortunately. It’s a shame because it’s a nifty drive-in, but I don’t see us going back any time soon. After dinner we went back to our place and spent the rest of the evening trying out some of our purchases from Antioch Liquors, including Roho’s kek Ke Ke Beach key lime liquor. It tastes just like key lime pie…including the graham cracker crust. To my taste, it was actually more graham than lime. It was deemed to be Not Right and pretty much undrinkable (well by most of us. I think Genet liked it in small quantities!). Sadly, because we’re all old and boring we wrapped things up by 11:30 and Paul, Roho, and Genet headed home.

Sunday morning, Mirko, Roho, Genet, and Dan and I made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas for brunch, which was delicious and remarkably filling, as usual. Mirko had to head out afterwards, so Dan and I went home and napped a bit. That evening, Paul, Roho, Genet, steviemaxwell and magicpaw came over to watch The Amazing Race. It was an OK episode, though the ending was disappointing, leaving us with none of our favorites to cheer for during next week’s season finale. On the bright side, we ordered some delicious pizza, and had French silk pie from Lovin’ Oven for dessert. Everyone had a great time, and I look forward to seeing folks again next week for the finale. I think I’ll have some fun making dinner 🙂

Following a lousy night’s sleep (it was too hot – need to reset the thermostat’s programming!), here I am back at work. Not too much going on this week, except for dinner with partran on Friday night. After such a busy weekend, it’ll be good to relax! Oh and hey – Heroes tonight. Yay!