Category Archives: thanksgiving

Hi! Remember me?

Wow. This may be the longest I’ve gone without a substantive public post to LiveJournal since I started this journal. What has happened since I last updated? Here’s the short version:

  • Midwest FurFest happened. It was a great convention, though it was the usual blur for me. It was my second and final year as convention chairman (MFF has a tradition of two-year terms for its chairmen). I didn’t accomplish everything I would have liked, but I feel that I was able to keep the convention on its upward trend and overall people seem to be very happy. How do I know? Well, we’ve got this nifty survey up, and if you take it you can win a free room night at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare! My biggest personal regret from the convention is that it sounds like there was one hell of a party in our suite on Sunday night but I was just so exhausted and done with socializing that I wound up taking a nice relaxing bath and going to bed early. Oh, and rest assured that I will not be disappearing from Midwest Furfest staff! I will be taking over the position of Hotel Liaison for MFF 2010, just as we’re going into a new hotel. Whee!
  • Thanksgiving happened. We were pleased to welcome Roho, Genet, Bander, Shawn, Shadowstalker, and Tarin over for Thanksgiving dinner, with a delicious turkey made by takaza‘s mom. The food was delicious, and the company was fantastic! Incidentally, if you were at Midwest FurFest, you might have met Dan’s mom – she was Staff Liaison, and her job was to go around the convention and make sure that folks who were stuck in one location got an occasional snack and drink and had everything they needed. She was a tremendous help during the convention and I’m so glad she was able to make it!
  • Dan’s birthday happened. We rounded up a bunch of folks and went out for dinner at Wildfire Restaurant, which was really excellent. Dan ordered the martini flight (!) and even drank a few of them. Great steaks, and really tasty desserts.
  • A doctor’s visit happened. I found out that what I thought was carpal tunnel is in fact tendonitis. This led to a nice cortisone shot (ow) and orders to wear an arm brace for two weeks. I’ll be living on Advil for a while, I think.
  • And finally, a brief visit down to Urbana happened. mirkowuff‘s neighborhood revived the “Candlestick Lane” tradition on short notice, so he threw a small short-notice party to celebrate. We had a lovely time and got to see some great old friends and meet some new folks as well. It was a very pleasant weekend.

So now we’re pretty much caught up. What’s coming up? Well, we’re going to dog-sit this weekend, and hopefully visit either Evanston or Milwaukee to go to The Spice House and do some restocking. We’re flying down to South Carolina for Christmas. And of course there’s Wuffmeet coming up, for which we really need to start making specific plans for food. December is a trainwreck, as always, and it doesn’t look like January will be much better! But we’re having fun and all is right with the world, regardless.

One Husky, Missing In Action

So what the heck have we been up to?

I know I’ve been pretty quiet since Midwest FurFest wrapped up. I’m mostly recovered at this point, and just sweeping up the last few bits of business before we put MFF 2008 to bed and can start looking toward 2009. Yeah, theoretically there should be a break in between there, but there’s no rest for the weary, or in this case, no rest for the chairman, as there’s staffing, website, and facilities issues for 2009 that need attention sooner than later.

In non-convention news, we had a lovely dinner last week with the Artists Alley crew and other friends up at Charcoal Grill in Kenosha, followed the next day by Thanksgiving dinner with takaza‘s mom with the usual huge amounts of food. We took home (and enjoyed!) many leftovers. And on Saturday night, we welcomed roho, genet, linnaeus, justincheetah, and calapurr over to our place for a yummy dinner of fondue and several bottles of wine (enjoyed in the fabulous gift we received from the Westin’s convention services manager). Cheetah and Cala spent the night and we had a nice lazy morning the next day before they had to head home.

And this week? It’s been pretty quiet. We’ve stayed in each night, though Dan’s employer’s holiday party was last night at The Cubby Bear North. While he was off at that I had an exciting evening of laundry, doing the dishes, and taking care of some much-needed sewing. Tomorrow I’m off in the morning to drop my car off for new tires (finally! After 50,000 miles, the OEM tires on there are getting far too slick, making starting from a standing stop an exciting exercise) then getting a nice 90-minute massage. Dan will pick me up after that and we’ll head over to meet Roho, Genet, and Linnaeus for lunch at a local French restaurant. I’m looking forward to it!

(Oh yes! And fancy new icon by sakuranym-kim. Woo!)

Yep, I’m still here

I’ll be posting an MFF report of sorts sometime soon – I admit so much of the con was a blur for me, so don’t expect anything particularly detailed. There’s the annual Registration report coming too, but that may be a week or two.

So what has happened in the meantime? Well, on Tuesday I started my new job. Like a new job at any pharmaceutical company, the first week or so is spent in training and orientation. Boring PowerPoint presentations and then document after document there I’m never going to remember. This coming week I’ll hopefully get a computer at my desk and can start in on some of the computer-based training as well. Owing to FDA regulations and company policies there’s some fun new restrictions: my cell phone has to stay out in the car during the day, and no food or drink (except water) outside of the cafeteria. But hey – at least there’s a cafeteria. It’s going to take some getting used to, but it seems like a good and challenging gig. It’s still up in the air whether this is a three- or six-month-to-hire gig, but as much as they’re paying me hourly, I’m all for stretching out the contract portion of the job as long as possible.

I’ve worked two days there so far; both times the morning commute has been smooth – about 40-50 minutes in, in clear traffic. On Tuesday, it took me two hours to get home. Wednesday was bad, though – the pre-holiday traffic had the roads choked and traffic completely snarled. I chose the less stroke-inducing option and drive 25 minutes north to Antioch, where I enjoyed some lovely conversation with roho, genet, and shadowstalkerw followed by a tasty dinner at Las Vegas Restaurant. The downside to all of this is that takaza, who was supposed to be on vacation until tomorrow, got a frantic call from his boss and went in to work at about 1 PM. I took my leave right after dinner and drove down the now-blissfully-uncrowded interstate to pick up Dan from work; he got out of there at around 9 PM. We indulged his craving for Long John Silver’s chicken planks on the way home, so at least he got dinner.

Thanksgiving was quite pleasant; we had a late start but we didn’t need to be over at Dan’s mom’s place until 3 PM. Or so we thought, until we got a call at around 12:30 PM saying the food was ready. Ack! We hustled out the door and drove the hour and twenty minutes to her place, where we enjoyed a HUGE meal of a roasted 14 lb. turkey, stuffing, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, mashed rutabagas and carrots, sweet potatoes, corn, biscuits and apple pie and ice cream for dessert. All for just the three of us. Um, yeah – that was a heck of a lot of food, but it was all quite delicious! Needless to say, we took home a ton of leftovers. The post- meal digestive torpor was spent watching a bit of TV and poking around on the net on my laptop. With Dan’s family, just being together is enough – not a lot of conversation, just spending time around each other. It’s radically different from what I grew up with, but it works for them so there’s nothing wrong with that.

Friday we didn’t do a lot. Dan was feeing under the weather, so we pretty much just stayed in, ate leftovers, and lazed around. It was delightful.

On Saturday I got a bit of clothes shopping done, then we met siriuswolfstar and simbalion up in Evanston at The Lucky Platter for a tasty late lunch, followed by a viewing of Casino Royale. I found the movie to be a good 30-45 minutes too long, and I’d give it more of a 70% rating, as opposed to Rotten Tomatoes’ 94%. Daniel Craig is some damned nice eye candy, though! More shirtless scenes, dangit!

And today? Well, once Dan wakes up we’ll need to fetch his car from his employer so he has a way to get to work tomorrow. And hey, that’ll be an excuse to get out and enjoy what is likely to be the last decent day of the season. Hmm, and now to forage through the leftovers for a bit of lunch…