Category Archives: sick

Well, That Bowl Wasn’t So Super (But Who Cares?)

Another busy weekend passes by…

You know folks who say they’ve lived someplace for years and are still unpacking from moving? That would make me insane. On an unrelated note, we invited a small group of friends over to watch the Super Bowl. Couple the desire for getting the place unpacked and into some semblance of order with a mania to have the house look perfect when company comes over and you get a sense of urgency that just won’t quit. (This is the part of the entry where I nominate takaza for sainthood for putting up with me when I get like this 🙂

On Saturday I was up far too early (before 6 AM), and by 11 AM had run various errands, including a sizeable grocery store run. We spent the afternoon putting up blinds in the kitchen and living room and I am pleased to say that we now can have privacy in our house. Hooray! We finished out the day with a little more unpacking and sorting. We briefly considered going out to check out a little Mexican joint in Round Lake I read about but instead ordered pizza and salad in because neither of us wanted to face the sub-zero temperatures and wind.

Sunday I was up early again and doing some preparatory cooking. After making too darn many crepes, I took a break from the kitchen and Dan and I cleaned the house from top to bottom, stowing any remaining boxes, vacuuming, and generally whipping the place into shape. We finished right as folks were expected to show up. I was expecting a night of food and boozing, but it was a lot of the former and not much of the latter. The amount of food we had was crazy: cheeseburger dip, monkey bread (both herb and cinnamon sugar), guacamole, and chicken tenders. My contribution was a pair of baked crepe dishes. One was crepes stacked with bĂ©chamel sauce, spinach, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese and baked together, the other was similar only with a fresh tomato and garlic sauce, prosciutto, Parmesan, and fresh mozzarella cheese. We finished off the meal with a pair of homemade frozen treats: Dan made cinnamon ice cream, and I made a green apple sorbet (aka “booplesauce!”). Though good individually, the two combined to be quite yummy.

Oh yeah, and there was some football game on, and the Bears lost. Eh. Nobody was particularly upset about the loss, and watching the game on TiVo made the game move SO much faster. Of course we watched the commercials, and though there were some funny ones, overall we were generally unimpressed. We sent folks on their way on the late side, and as a result I’m dragging badly this afternoon, something not helped by the fact that I’m fighting off some kind of upper respiratory ick. I’ve got an appointment with the doctor at 5 PM today, and even if she can just treat the symptoms, that will be an improvement.

datahawk spent the night last night, with the intention of just heading to work from our place this morning. As cold as the night was (-12 degrees F), it’s no surprise that her car didn’t start this morning, and as far as I know hasn’t started yet. She’s instead suffering through the torture of relaxing in the living room and cuddling up with our TiVo. It’s a tough life 🙂

It was lovely having folks over and getting the house into shape, though we still have some stuff that we need to figure out where it goes (mainly that’s all in the garage). Dan and I are thinking about throwing a housewarming party sometime in March; we’ll be sure to give plenty of notice once we figure out a date.

Good Weekend, And Coughing The Night Away

Well, I’m starting to feel a bit better now, so I guess it’s time to update.

The weekend was quite pleasant. After going to the gym on Saturday morning, I bummed around the house on Saturday while takaza was at work. He got home just in time to pick up Linnaeus and I and give us a lift over to The Hopleaf to meet up with mirkowuff and siriuswolfstar. We had a couple rounds of the fabulous Belgian beers The Hopleaf is well-known for, as well as a couple of orders of frites with aioli (mmm, yummy!). We decided to break for dinner at around 6 PM; the first place we tried, L. Woods, told us it was a 60-70 minute wait for a table. Eh, Chicago is a big city, there’s plenty of other options. We instead went to Tre Kronor, a quiet little Swedish place right around the corner from where we live. The menu wasn’t extensive, but it was quite good (and inexpensive!). I had a beef stew with garlic mashed potatoes, and Dan had a sautĂ©ed chicken breast with Jarlsberg and ham. We finished off the meal with a yummy creme brulee as well as a very light chocolate mousse and some good, strong coffee. Excellent. We went back to the apartment and watched a couple of episodes of Dirty Jobs (Mike Rowe is such a cutie!) then Dan and I headed off to bed.

On Sunday, we had a nice lazy morning of laptop geeking, coffee, and Ann Sather cinnamon rolls (thanks Paul!). Then it was over to the Hyatt Regency Woodfield for the first in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year. It was a very useful meeting, and we hammered out a lot of details, though there’s still a good way to go. Afterwards, there was the usual after-meeting socialization in which we firmed up our Anthrocon rooming plans (still need to work on our travel plans, though). Dan was feeling under the weather so he headed home while about a dozen of us drove over to Fuddruckers for an early dinner. Fud gud.

I went to bed with a slight tickle in my throat on Sunday night and woke up Monday with a nasty, hacking cough. Oddly, no sinus problems or the like, just a sore throat and coughing. I felt poorly all day and wound up leaving work a little early to go home and nap. Once Dan got home he took good care of me, cooking up dinner and taking care of laundry. I’m a very lucky guy to have him.

Today I’m feeling better, though the cough and sore throat are still around. Fortunately, we have some excellent cough syrup that really takes care of things for me. No gym for me yesterday or today, though – that would be a bad idea all around, since it’s hard to exercise while you’re hacking up a lung. I’ll have to come in early for a couple days later this week to make up the time lost yesterday, but that’s not too big of a deal. I’m also happy to report that I have a lot more on my plate at work (compared to what was far too little), so I’m feeling a lot more positive about my job today.

Hopefully we should have some major announcements about MFF coming in the next few days – watch here or for those!

The Things I Do For Excitement

So I have this thing that isn’t quite a cold but it’s pretty annoying. Slight nasal congestion, sore throat…but not much else. Oh, and an occasional cough that sounds horrible, but isn’t really. My cow-orkers are all offering me cough drops, so I’m guessing they’re tired of listening to me. Lucky them!

I’ve spent the morning calculating surface areas, and I’ve only scratched the surface (heh) of the stack I have to complete. This is boring and tedious, but it’s good to know I need a masters in chemical engineering to calculate the area of the lateral surface of a truncated cone. At least I have my MP3 player. So far I’ve been through the Garden State and Hedwig soundtracks, and I’m listening to Princess Mononoke now.

Had a couple of nibbles from recruiters lately, which is encouraging. This weekend I need to fluff my resume a bit on Monster and Careerbuilder (read: make the resume appear newer on database searches). It’s a pity that I don’t want to completely ignore the first seven years of my work experience, otherwise I could take any of the nice low-paying jobs that I’ve been offered. On the bright side, takaza is in line for quite an impressive raise, which opens up the acceptable salary range for me. But I’m still not going to take any of this entry-level crap.

Well, ’bout time for lunch now. The cafeteria here is quite adept at taking a good idea and rendering it into something barely edible; we’ll see what they put in the slop-buckets today.