Category Archives: trains

It’s Been a Busy Month…

Right, I have a journal here. I should actually use it 🙂

Just to update a few things before they totally slip into the past: Following the craziness that was Wuffmeet, takaza and I slipped into a comfortable winter rhythm. Our cooking has improved, or at least gotten more interesting, with the addition of a Sous Vide Supreme to our kitchen. We are still experimenting and testing recipes, but we’ve been really impressed with how it cooks steaks and other meats. The fish it makes is to die for, and butter-poached chicken is simply divine. The biggest trick is that seasonings behave differently with low-temperature cooking, so we are still learning what works, what doesn’t, and what we still need to try. I’m having a ball with is, and I’m hoping to bring it to Furry Connection North to provide some interesting snacks for our parties!

Our social life has gotten a bit quieter with the departure of close friends roho and genet to the wilds of the east coast as they move to the heart of Boston. While we were very sad to see them go, I’m really glad to see Roho get his life back from his (former) evil employer. We provided some small help in moving some of their furniture out of their house (I still feel bad about what we did to the wall in their basement stairwell, but I’m told it was a relatively easy fix). Once the movers came and loaded up their stuff, Genet crashed at our place for a few days with Briana, their pretty-but-airheaded Samoyed. She and Buddy got along great (as always), and it was nice to have the extra company. Once all of the contractors were done making their place super-pretty so it could go on the market, she packed up the dog and their two cats and made the long drive to Boston. Here’s hoping they can clear all the boxes out of their new place before summer! 😉

We have been having a lot of fun planning our upcoming cruise to Alaska, coming up around Memorial Day. Somehow our group has reached 18 people from all over – even someone from Sweden! We purchased a good bit of the various parts of the trip over the last month, including flights (Frontier Airlines, MKE-DEN-ANC/SEA-MKE), reservations at a fabulous little lesbian-owned B&B in Anchorage, trains from Anchorage to Seward (where our ship departs) and Vancouver to Seattle, and various shore excursions. Dan is thinking about putting together a group chat on Saturday, March 5, for everyone in our group so we can talk about coordinating schedules and answer any questions that folks might have. We’ll be sending around emails for that. This is going to be the longest vacation we’ve had, and I’m really looking forward to it! We’re already brainstorming ideas for group trips for next year as well, including an extended weekend in New Orleans, and a ski weekend at Sugarloaf in Maine. More on that after the cruise!

I should mention that on Groundhog Day we got buried with a blizzard. Twenty inches of snow fell in a very short time, and then the 40-50 mph winds kicked in. We did the smart thing and made sure we had everything we needed and when it started coming down we sat tight at the house. Work for both of us was closed (the first time in a long time!) and we spent the snow day relaxing and Genet made cookies! Our HOA dues have never been more appreciated as we watched the snow removal company try to cope with the huge drifts, though we did get into the act a little bit by excavating Genet’s car from the snow.

Somewhere in there was our first Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year. It’s always rough to get started again after the last convention, but there’s contracts to sign and plans to get into place. The good news is that Hyatt Regency O’Hare was extremely happy with the convention last year, and now that we all know each other, the coming year will be much easier to plan. We have changed up our meeting schedule a bit, with more online meetings early in the year; this makes sense since most of the staff doesn’t really need to spring into action until the summer.

Oh, for those wondering: our conventions schedule this year is to attend Furry Connection North and Midwest FurFest and…that’s it. Since the cruise is so long and I only have ten days of vacation, Anthrocon just isn’t in the cards for us this year. I wish everyone involved with AC well, though, especially rooth and chanur2000, who will be taking over my and Dan’s staff positions there, respectively. Good luck, guys!

Finally, Dan and I will be hopping on board the Amtrak Wolverine this evening and taking the train over to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to hang out with the fine folks there for the weekend, and to help determine the beers that will be served at FCN’s sponsor lounge. It should be tough, thirsty work! Dan has planned a fun dinner for Saturday night as well. The fun doesn’t end there, as it appears that we will be visited by fordshepherd and bajahyena next weekend, when we will…well, those plans are a secret!

Off to work now – I hope everyone has a great weekend!

A Weekend of Cooking, Partying, and…Training?

On Saturday, aureth and jenwolf were hosting a party over at their place. I thought I’d try to make a couple of new dishes to bring: Spicy Baked Plantain Chips and Salsa Verde. The plantain chips did not turn out well – a bit leathery, unfortunately. They were close to burning, but could have used a bit more time in the oven to crisp up. The salsa verde was… well, it wasn’t up to my standards. Way too salty, and the four Serrano chiles in the recipe made it mighty damn hot! This was a good reminder that I really need to only make tried-and-true recipes for these sorts of things.

mirkowuff arrived Saturday afternoon with his malamute, Chase. Buddy seems to be feeling better (though his appetite still isn’t up to snuff – possibly due to the continued antibiotics) and so greeted Chase with a wagging tail…and then spent the next hour trying to mount him. Oy. At this point I have to assume it’s a dominance thing. Chase let him know it wasn’t appreciated, and eventually they got things sorted out, but it was certainly comical to watch. We were a little late to the party because Mirko wanted to watch some basketball thing or something with his alma mater. He spent the rest of the evening squee-ing about the game 🙂

The party was a lot of fun. Jim’s brown ale was excellent, and the company was wonderful. I wish that we could have stayed later, but we had to get up stupidly-early the next day, so we grabbed hartree and Mirko and headed back to our place.

On Sunday morning, Hartree and Mirko and I left before 8 AM (well, left the first time – we had to double back because I forgot my ticket. Doh!) for the Illinois Rail Museum Snowflake Special CTA Tour. This was a 9-hour tour of the Chicago elevated train system. We were joined by dexcat, rustitobuck, and linnaeus. The tour went from Rosemont (right next to the Hyatt Regency O’Hare!) to downtown, out to UIC, down the South Side to 61st Street, then north to Evanston, with numerous stops and detours along the way. I have to say I was very much impressed by the IRM’s organization, and the quality of the tour was very good as well, with near-continuous narration provided by a pair of very knowledgeable fellows. I took over 180 pictures, and I’ll post some of those soon.

We had lunch in The Loop, stopping at the Qdoba on Randolph. We were unexpectedly joined by a rather loquacious train fan who was maybe 10 years old. He talked a blue streak, and while he knew his stuff, it was amusing to listen to him rattle on about the wisdom of the Circle Line while his parent nodded wearily beside him with that look of, “Oh thank God, he’s talking to someone else for a change.” After lunch we had time for a quick stop at Intelligentsia Coffee, then it was back on the train. All in all, I have to say that it was about seven hours of an interesting tour – the last two hours really dragged and it was a bit of a relief when we pulled back into Rosemont. takaza, roho, and genet met us there (with Chase, who went home with Mirko from there). The rest of us went down for dinner at Smoque, which was excellent, as usual.

And here we are at a new week. I have some errands to run after work, then I’ll grill up dinner while Dan works on the FCN con book. It sounds like we’re going to go see “How To Train Your Dragon” tomorrow night at one of my favorite local theaters, so we’re off to a great start to the week!

Get Your Train Geek On!

It’s time for some full-on train geekery! I had mentioned this on Twitter and it sounds like there are enough people interested that we’re going to get a group of folks together for it. What is it?

It’s the 2010 IRM Snowflake Special on the CTA!

This event is a fundraiser for the Illinois Railway Museum. For $43.00 ($42 + $1 handling fee), you can join us on Sunday, March 28 for a tour of the Chicago Transit Authority El lines. “Beginning at 9:00 AM at Rosemont station (River Road) on the Blue Line, the trip will travel on almost every line, plus lots of non-revenue and yard trackage.” There will be lunch stops in The Loop, and the train returns to Rosemont station at 6:00 PM.

Yeah, it’s a long day. But I figure it’ll be fun with a group, and if we get tired we can always bail and head back to Rosemont on our own. So…who’s interested?

Snowstorms and Birthdays

And here we are, Friday at last!

I thought the week might take forever (subjectively) as it always does right before a vacation, but this turned out not to be the case. Having piles of projects at work helps!

So the big snow came and went on Wednesday; in the end we got a hair over 12 inches. The roads were a wreck yesterday morning, so much so that when I went to drop takaza off at the train station what is normally a less-than-five-minute drive took 15 minutes and we missed his train. Since the schedule on the North Central line sucks, his next shot at a train in was two hours later. I went in to work, then left at 8:45 AM to take him to the 9:18 train. Yeah, not even close. What is normally an eight-minute drive took close to twenty, and when I picked him up and saw the line of cars on Hainesville Road, I knew there was no way we’d make his train. Rather than wait two hours until the next train, I dropped him off at the Grayslake station and he caught the Fox Lake train in, again having to take a taxi from Glenview (that cost even more than last time!).
Unfortunately, as a consequence of not getting in until just before noon, he didn’t make it home last night until around 9 PM.

And so we have this weekend. As I mentioned before, Dan is dragging me off on a four-day trip to celebrate my 40th birthday. I still have no idea where we’re going, though I have some suspicions. I’m sure it will be fun and memorable. They say that over the years a couple tends to get more like each other, and watching Dan fret about planning and worrying about the trip, I have to laugh. Normally he’s unflappable and easygoing; being so nervous about things, he reminds me of…me. But that’s exactly why I’m not worried, because I know I’m in good hands 🙂 That doesn’t mean the excitment isn’t getting to me, though – I woke up this morning at 3:45 AM with a touch of reflux and after a half-hour couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up. I hope we’re not going to be out super-late tonight! Anyway, I intend to bring the camera along and be Mr. Annoying Shutterbug (if I can remember!) so hopefully I’ll have lots of pictures to show off when we get back.

Now if only 2 PM would get here so I can get out of here!

Well, that was fun

So last night was, theoretically, August Game Night at our place. The storms sort of caused some issues with that, though. The biggest problem was that first Metra shut down all service between 3 and 4 PM, then slowly brought things back online. takaza was supposed to catch his regular train at 5:11 PM, but it was delayed by 30 minutes…then it wasn’t moving at all due to a power line across the tracks in Des Plaines, which stopped all service on the North Central Line. His train didn’t actually get moving until sometime after 7 PM and he got home at around 8 PM, two hours later than usual (there’s more to the story, but I’ll let him post about that).

Unfortunately, because of the weather pretty much everyone but steviemaxwell had to cancel, and it’s certainly understandable. We had fun anyway, though. Stevie and I got to chat for a while, then when Dan texted to let me know he was on his train heading northbound we drove down to Jimmy John’s and picked up some subs. The rest of the evening was spent chatting, watching Robot Chicken, and playing poker, where I learned that Omaha is a pretty fun game, and I accidentally won all the chips 🙂

The good news is that all the trains are running as they should today, at least up our way. We were spared the worst of it, with the hardest hit areas being between us and Chicago. 250,000 people are still without power, though we never had any problems there. But hey, there’s more storms on their way today, so who knows what the day will hold. The good news is that we’re on relatively high ground and far away from any large water source, so flooding isn’t an issue near us. It might make getting around interesting for the next few days, though!