Category Archives: st. louis

Playing Catch-Up

I see I’m in my usual post-convention blogging quiet period. This month is pretty crazy, and as usual, when I’m busy I don’t have much time to document it.

Last week included a delicious dinner with perro, darkwolph, and linnaeus at Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood, which sadly is due to close its doors very soon (along with RT’s Lounge and Osteria di Tramonto) due to Rick Tramonto departing the joint venture. We’ve heard some promising possibilities about what will be happening with those restaurants in the new year, but nothing for certain. We’ll see what happens!

The next day I joined justincheetah and calapurr for a tasty dinner (with some tasty wine) at Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant. The short ribs there were delicious! I’m thinking that during Wuffmeet we may need to swing by there and sample their latest wines.

On Saturday, takaza‘s family came over for an evening of dinner and games. I made a killer Lasagna Bolognese that was simply outstanding. I substituted ground bison for the ground beef and, not having ground veal readily available, did 50/50 ground bison and ground pork. Instead of Parmesan cheese, I used an aged Mahon cheese which was quite tasty (and half the price of Parmesana Reggiano). This was good enough that I think it may be one of our entrees for Wuffmeet. I just need to figure out the logistics of making the sauces, assembly, baking, and reheating.

Sunday? We did nothing. And it was good. (Oh, and the person I was rooting for won Survivor. That was nice too.)

Yesterday I finished my Christmas shopping. Yay! Hooray for Amazon.com 🙂 I’m impressed that some of that stuff will be arriving today. I {heart} Amazon Prime – we really do get our money’s worth on that.

And then there’s today. I’m keeping a close eye on the weather radar as we’re supposed to get hit with 2-6 inches of snow in the next 24 hours. I’m not wild about this since tonight we’re having dinner with the folks we’ve worked with at the Westin North Shore down in Lincolnshire. Still, travel difficulties aside, it should be a good meal and I’m looking forward to it.

For the rest of the week: I’m hoping that we can help genet celebrate completing her last final for the semester tomorrow. Then on Saturday (after I have to work all day in exchange for getting Christmas Eve off), Dan and I will be going over to his mom’s house to exchange gifts with her, since we’ll be out of town on Christmas. Oh, in case I haven’t mentioned it, Dan and I will be in St. Louis visiting my parents and my sister’s family from December 24th through 28th. We hope to do a bit of touring around the city (though I just found out yesterday that a main highway is closed – man, that’s got to suck!). If nothing else, hope to hit one of the fine eateries the Good Mister Brown visited during his road trip through the city.

Well, time to take care of a bit of work before today’s free “Holiday Lunch” – the usual uninspiring beef/chicken/pasta buffet. Hey, at least it’s free…

Edit @ 5 PM – No steak dinner for me – the Westin folks cancelled due to weather, and I can’t blame them. Dan is on his way home, and he’s thinking that his normal 50-minute commute is going to be closer to 2 to 2.5 hours.

Meanwhile, In Another Part of the Forest…

Well, that was a lovely little impromptu little trip. As I mentioned in my entry on Friday, I hitched a train down to St. Louis for the weekend, got to hang out with some fun folks, got in some family time, and got a nice change of scenery. It was a lot of fun.

On Friday I left work on the early side and caught the El down to Union Station. As I was getting on the Brown Line at Kedzie, I heard a mother and her daughter inquire about how to get to Union Station; when they reached the platform I volunteered to show them the way. This opened the way to an interesting conversation all the way downtown. The daughter was in the middle of a multi-week tour to visit college campuses and they were just returning from North Park University, which is right around the corner from where I live. Given that she was leaning towards Wellesley and didn’t think much of North Park, I reckon they won’t be back. Anyway, we had fun chatting and once we got to Union Station we parted ways.

The Business Class upgrade that I had purchased turned out to really pay off, since they had us board the train first, well ahead of everyone else. In all, I think there were eight people in a section that seated eighteen. The seats were wide and relatively comfy and since we were at the front of the car right behind the engine, there was no foot traffic. The middle of the car was the “snack bar” (a couple of refrigerators and a microwave – I was glad I’d picked up something at the station!), then the rest of the car was something akin to restaurant booths for people to eat and socialize. The trip too five and a half hours, and while it was somewhat boring it was nice that I could plug in my laptop for entertainment. I watched the first disc of The Fellowship of the Ring, then listened to MP3’s the rest of the way. I also worked on sorting through my inbox in Eudora, paring it down from 1,600 to 700 e-mails (some back to 2003. Um, whoops). We arrived a few minutes early at 10:40 PM and takaza pulled up to the station not long after. We retired to the La Quinta Westport and quickly went to bed.

On Saturday we lazed about the room a bit, then met up with ramalion and KBear. We grabbed a quick lunch then went over to their lovely house and watched a few episodes of Firefly (while entertaining Sammy the hyperactive black lab). We chatted for a while then drove up to meet Tygercowboy, spikerotty, and mauilovich for dinner at a diner/pancake house. The food was tasty and the company was excellent. From there it was over to Webster University for an interesting film, Three of Hearts. It was about the creation and ultimate dissolution of a three-way relationship between two bisexual men and a woman. Seeing the pushes and pulls of the relationship was fascinating, and while I don’t think I would have the constitution for a polyamorous relationship, there were a lot of interesting insights to be found about relationships in general – how they’re formed, how we cope, and what it takes to sustain one. I’m really glad we went. Afterwards we parted ways with T.C. and company and Dan, Rama, K, and I hit a Cold Stone Creamery (in Kirkwood, right near St. Joseph’s Hospital where I was born! 🙂

Sunday was equally slow getting started, but hey, we were on vacation! Once we got up and got checked out of the room, we met up with my sister’s family at Macaroni Grill. The meal was fun and it was really nice seeing them again, even though it was all too short a visit. Then it was time to hit the road for the five and a half hour drive back. Outside of some heavy fog near Braidwood, the drive wasn’t bad at all.

And now we’re back into the work week, yay. Not too much planned for the week – I have an appointment at the gym tonight to plan a workout routine, and tomorrow I have to take my Element in for its 10,000-mile checkup. No plans for the coming weekend, which is good since we’ll be the on the road again the weekend after that. No rest for the wicked, and all that…