Category Archives: tivo

Wedding Bells Are Ringing…

Wow, what an awesome weekend! And now that the time-consuming testing that has been killing me at work has wrapped up, I even have time to write about it.

First off, the important news: I’m engaged! Again! 🙂

On Friday night, takaza gave me a lovely bunch of roses when he got home. We had invited roho and genet over for a small, quiet dinner. While I was cooking (meatloaf, which came out fabulous!), Dan reached into my pocket and took out my ring, saying he was concerned I’d lose it. I pointed out I take it off at work every day (the joys of working in GMP areas) so he shrugged and put it back in my pocket – or so I thought. When I took a break from the kitchen, I started looking around for my ring – it wasn’t in my pocket! That’s when Dan got down on one knee, pulled out an Altoid tin and opened it, revealing my ring, and asked me to marry him, again! In light of recent news from Iowa, we’ll be driving over there in May or June on a Friday, get married, and spend a nice weekend there. I’m looking forward to it!

Saturday I got an early start on things, dropping a good chunk of the old conbooks that have been in our garage in a local recycling bin and disposed of a futon that we’ve been dragging around for several years but getting relatively little use from. I also stopped by the Grayslake Farmers Market for its opening day, but there wasn’t much of interest there, unfortunately. Afterwards, Dan and I spent the afternoon and evening working on some MFF stuff that, as aureth so obliquely put it, will become apparent in about seven and a half months 🙂

Sunday was a good day to relax, as the weather outside turned to sleet and snow. We tried to install an overhead light in our living room, only to find that the wiring is wonky enough that we’re better off leaving it as it is. The balance of the afternoon was spent watching Dollhouse and catching up on three episodes of Heroes (only five to go!).

As for this week, it looks like we’re going to do dinner with a couple of wuffs at some point, but not too much planned beyond that. Oh, and maybe installing that light in the upstairs bathroom. Good times…

Lots of Grilling, and a Very Busy Week

Holy cow, it’s been a while since I updated. Last weekend was a real hoot. Saturday was roho‘s birthday, so we got together with a bunch of friends and first hit Brightonwoods Orchards, then went back to Roho and genet‘s place for a tasty dinner of grilled meats and some excellent cupcakes make by takaza, including carrot cake cupcakes and my favorite, Boston cream cupcakes {drool}.

Sunday, we were joined by linnaeus and headed north to Milwaukee, first to Sprecher Brewing to stock up on cherry cola for Midwest FurFest, then a quick stop by Alterra Coffee to feed my filthy caffeine habit. Once done there, it was off to hegdish and drakeduck‘s place for a very enjoyable shindig featuring more grilled meats and some excellent company. It was great to meet some of the Milwaukee furs we hadn’t seen before, as well as some old friends we hadn’t seen in ages (hi Mistletoe and Tremaine!). Wonderful company, and Hegdish and Drake were excellent hosts. I look forward to seeing more of them!

Most of this week has been slow at work, which is good since that let me catch up on some MFF business. I’ve been very busy coordinating between departments, making my credit card squeak with a good bit of ordering, and working with some fine crafters out in California on some fun “spiffy” projects. Evenings have been spent enjoying the autumn chill by snuggling up with Dan on the sofa and catching up on Tivo’d programs. Some TV notes: Heroes is definitely getting better. The Amazing Race bummed me out by eliminating my favorite team. Survivor:Gabon is still in the early (boring) stages where the majority of the show can be watched on fast-forward. Chuck is fun, though we still have a couple of episodes to watch. Also sitting on the Tivo: Life on Mars, Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod, My Own Worst Enemy, and the balance of Reaper from last season. As much as I wish we could keep up with Pushing Daisies, we’re too far behind. Shows that are falling into the “Ain’t gonna watch it” category: Prototype This (so much potential, but so much suck), Knight Rider (too dumb for words), and Fringe (just can’t work up the interest).

As for plans this weekend, I may have to go in to work tomorrow morning for a bit. Then tomorrow afternoon Dan’s family is coming over – I just don’t have the motivation for cooking for a crowd, so we may just order pizza. Sunday I hope to do as little as possible, though we have an MFF staff meeting online in the evening. Just about a month to go until the con! Gah!

Right now, though, I’m listening to some excellent blues, Dan is cooking up a delicious dinner in the kitchen, and I have a very tasty beer in front of me. Life is good. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Great Grilling, and “Oh Yeah, That’s Why I Don’t Go There…”

So besides the weekend’s technological trials and tribulations, what else happened?

On Saturday we decided that since roho, genet, and colliedoc were coming over, a tasty grilled dinner would be in order. We laid out where we needed to go, but the circle slowly got wider. See, we needed some really good corn on the cob, and while Garden Fresh Market’s isn’t bad, I think the best corn around is from Stade’s Farm Market, so a detour to McHenry was added. And heck, as long as we were going that way, if we want really good steaks, we were going to need to go to our favorite butcher at Antioch Packing House. The farm stand was delightful, as expected, and we picked up some fresh peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, and some delicious apple-cinnamon bread along with the corn. And Antioch Packing House always has good ground beef and bacon, so we had to get some of those while we got the 1.5″ thick New York strip steaks. Stopping by Garden Fresh, I got some asparagus and some other goodies. Once the Tivo was up and running, I fired up the grill and I grilled the asparagus with a garlic-rosemary-lemon vinaigrette that was divine. The steaks cooked up perfectly, and the rest of the meal (as well as the company) was excellent!

On Sunday we unfortunately had to bow out from magicpaw‘s birthday shindig (we’ll make it up to you, we promise!). While we were out picking up the networking gadgets we needed, I wanted a quick and cheap lunch. Hey, there’s a White Castle! I haven’t been to one of those in over a decade. And after having eaten there, I can safely say it’ll be at least another decade, because that was just plain nasty. Once we got everything up and running, the rest of the afternoon was spent lazing around relaxing, and scheduling our Tivo to fill up with weird, random programming.

And now it’s Monday. It should be a quiet week, though it looks like Dan will be working late on Thursday and Friday. Hmm, maybe I’ll actually get around to start that Harry Potter book this week (sorry Roho! 🙂

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…

Bowing at the Swedish Altar

Slowly but surely, we’re assembling our house into a home. takaza worked half-days on Monday and Tuesday and put a little more work into unpacking; the guest bedroom is close to being usable, except for the lack of any window coverings, of course. That helps because it gives us a place to put stuff – the stuff we’re not sure why we’re carrying around, but it’s gotta go somewhere.

Yesterday Ameritech SBC AT&T hooked us up, so now we have not only local phone service, but zippy-fast DSL as well! Unfortunately, after checking around it appears that the phone plates in the walls around the house are just that – plates, no wiring behind them. Wha?! This means we have one and only one active phone outlet, and that is in the kitchen. It looks like we’ll be investing in a cordless phone jack so our TiVo can call out – the only reason we have a phone line, really, since we don’t plan to give out the number. That what our cell phones are for 🙂 And speaking of the TiVo, it now works as well since the DirecTV installer came out and hooked that all up (never mind the stupidity involved in getting that done, something that required some new wiring, multiple trips, and lots of whinging on the installer’s part). It all works now, which is all I care about.

Last night after work, Dan suggested we go ahead and hit Ikea, since there’s a bunch of stuff that we needed. And so off we went to the Great Swedish Consumerism Temple, and we spent a heck of a lot more than I expected. On the bright side, we now have a light for the guest room nightstand, a replacement accent light to go over the kitchen sink (the replace “the pimple” contractor-grade light that’s there), a low cabinet for our TV and A/V equipment, a new dresser (we left our old one that was falling apart in the alley and it somehow went away), a few other knickknacks. We looked at some of the blinds and curtains there, but couldn’t find anything like what we were looking for, or that we couldn’t get cheaper elsewhere. Oh, and the Ikea Cafeteria? Maybe it’s good for breakfast, but for dinner? Bleah. Not recommended.

For tonight, we have our work cut out for us, as Dan is going to assemble the entertainment cabinet, I’m going to work on de-boxing more of the kitchen, and then we’re going to both work on assembling the dresser. We’ll continue our marathon of laundry, attempting to wash every blanket we own, and somewhere in there I’ll need to cook dinner. On the bright side, I’ll have more time to do all of this, since my commute has gone from 90+ minutes each day down to 10 minutes. The free extra time is a bit of a shock, and I’m still adjusting to it (“I’ve been home for an hour, we should be cooking dinner! Oh, wait, it’s only 5:30…”)

And one more bit of good news: I wrote to the kind folks at Intelligentsia Coffee, and they supplied me with a list of places in Lake County that I can buy my coffee beans. Life is good.