Category Archives: softball

Apparently, I’m Less a Husky and More a Booze Hound?

Great googly moogly, it’s been a crazy seven days!

After work on Friday roho and genet came down and we grilled up some burgers and brats and celebrated the end of the week with a very tasty drink that included mango juice, pineapple rum, and Cointreau.

On Saturday I drove down to LAFF Softball while takaza worked on Anthrocon finance stuff. I had a great time hanging out with friends and generally socializing. After the game ramalion and I came back home to de-grungify, then Dan, Rama, and I met up with justincheetah and calapurr for dinner at Cooper’s Hawk Restaurant and Winery, which is located right in front of the Westin Chicago North Shore (MFF’s hotel).

We had a very tasty meal at Cooper’s Hawk; not quite the level of Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood, but better than Claimjumper. The price point is about the same as Claimjumper, too. I had the bacon-wrapped scallops, which came with a yummy mac and cheese and a fabulous mango salsa. I also found the wine to be surprisingly good – Cheetah and I ordered the “Red Wine Flight” ($12.95), 2 oz. pours of four of their popular red wines. Three were good, but their cabernet sauvignon, while OK, had some VERY non-cabernet flavors going on. When our waitress asked what we thought of the wines, I was candid in my appraisal. She surprised me with a sample of the cabernet sauvignon reserve, which I found to be excellent. She then brought Cheetah, Cala, and I samples of the oak-aged cabernet sauvignon (also gratis), but the reserve was by far the best of the night. The only downside of the place is that at peak times (like, say, on a Saturday night at 8:30 PM), it is extremely loud and crowded. Overall, though, it was a great meal and I look forward to going back. It will be a great addition to the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide, too.

On Sunday, we relaxed for most of the day and worked on Anthrocon stuff. In the evening we had the online Midwest FurFest staff meeting, where we covered a lot of useful topics. It’s coming up on Labor Day weekend, the point where people start to realize, “Oh crap! We have a convention to put on in less than three months!” and things really move into high gear.

Then came the work week. I had not one, but two projects moving into high gear this week. Both projects have involved a lot of time out on the production floor, and by the end of each day I’ve been exhausted. Today was a little different, since I spent most of the day in a mandated technical writing class, one of two. It was…yeah. As I observed to one cow-orker, “This is not the most productive use of my time that I can think of.” Tomorrow it’s back to the grind to wrap up one project and figure out some snags with the other. I’m looking forward to drowning my sorrows in Mongolian BBQ and good company tomorrow night, though!

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.

Why Do I Smell Like Garlic?

Well, something about being wrist-deep in garlic will do that to you, I suppose. Last night’s kitchen adventures included preparing the Asian peanut dressing for the grilled zucchini (easy enough – dump a bunch of stuff into the food processor and puree). I also made the rosemary-garlic oil for the potatoes grilled in foil, which consisted of 50 garlic cloves and 30 sprigs of fresh rosemary pureed with three cups of olive oil. Let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass to peel 50 cloves of garlic. Still, I’m happy with the results.

Then came the main event: dinner rolls. Very exciting, no? Well, baking 96 yeast dinner rolls is a bit of a challenge. takaza was kind enough to borrow a number of muffin pans from his cow-orkers (some of which were best described as “vintage”). I made the rolls in two batches of 48 (actually 45 in the first batch and 40 in the second due to vagaries of portioning). Blessings upon Dan for reminding me that our square Cambro containers are awesome for holding rising dough and perfect for determining when the dough volume has doubled. I’ll post the recipes after this weekend, but everything came out reasonably well with only a couple of rolls getting a bit overdone and having to be eaten/discarded (most of them from one of the “vintage” pans). They’re all nicely bagged up in one-gallon Ziplock bags and ready to go; the plan is to put them into foil and briefly throw them on the grill (maybe with a quick spray of water to moisten them) so they can be served hot.

Tonight’s entertainment? A run to the butcher immediately after work to pick up 20+ pounds of New York strip steaks, then an evening spent making apple slab pies (mmm, 20 pounds of apples to be peeled and cored. What fun!).

Incidentally, if anyone is going to be at the game on Saturday, isn’t going to be playing, and would like to lend a hand, we will probably be able to put a few folks to work as we prepare dinner. Dan and I will probably be on site and setting up between noon and 1 PM. Also, note that if I understand things correctly (and I hope steviemaxwell corrects me if I am wrong), although we will still be in Madison Meadow Park in Lombard, we won’t be at the usual field (the ones at Madison and Ahrens) but at the ones near Harding and Fairfield. Here’s a map to make things a bit clearer.