Category Archives: Uncategorized

Midweek Already?

I guess I haven’t been real talkative this week, but there hasn’t been a whole lot to talk about, either.

Last weekend was busy: After doing some work around the house and some shopping, takaza and I headed down to Naperville for emrldgirrl‘s birthday party. Much fun was had by all! I made a couple of roasted chickens with potatoes (arr num num num!), which were quickly demolished, along with the ton of other food that was there (see what happens when you suggest a potluck to this lot?). Sunday was the Midwest FurFest kickoff meeting, with a little bit of recap from the past year thrown in (I just cheated and summarized my Registration report). Afterwards, we had some nice pizza-and-socializing, and ideas for guests of honor and themes were kicked around.

Since the weekend we’ve been working a bit on the house. Of the four blinds that I ordered from JC Penney’s, I mismeasured/misordered two of them. One was easy to take back to the Penney’s at Gurnee Mills, the other we’re not quite sure about. It annoys the heck out of me that the window openings are 70.5 inches wide but the only off-the-shelf blinds you can get are 72″ wide. If I can locate our Dremel set, I intend to try to cut down the one for the guest bedroom. We hung the blind in the stairwell and it looks really nice – I’m happy with the faux-wood horizontal blinds. I have re-ordered the shoji panels for the kitchen (at the proper length this time), and the blind in Dan’s office is going to have to wait until the window is repaired. We still need to figure out what to do with the living room window, though.

Tonight I need to hit the grocery store, and I’ll probably stop by Homo Depot and see what blinds they have in stock that can be cut down. Projects for tonight include clearing away the boxes in the master bedroom, and possibly getting the bookcases up in the guest bedroom. We’re having a few folks over this weekend, and I’m really hoping we can get the place 100% into shape by then. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

TGIF, Baby!

Friday’s here, and it’s just when I needed it! It hasn’t been too bad of a week, but I’m looking forward to the weekend and getting more stuff done.

On Wednesday, I picked up takaza from work. The blinds we ordered (for the stairwell, kitchen, guest bedroom, and Dan’s office) had come in and were too heavy and bulky to carry on the train. We loaded everything up and headed over to Mitsuwa Marketplace. See, we found our old rice cooker in all of the boxes and Dan made some rice with it. Which burned, the way it always had when we used it before. This is just completely unacceptable, particularly since we make rice two or three times a week. Having envied linnaeus his nifty rice cooker, we went to Mitsuwa and picked up a Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker We even double-checked the price on Amazon, which I didn’t realize offers a handy mobile interface. Surprisingly, Mitsuwa beat Amazon’s price by a good $50.00, so we bought it on the spot, along with a good supply of sushi rice. Afterwards we wandered up to Wauconda and found a lovely coffee shop there, Honey Hill Coffee Company. The guy who owns the place is very nice, makes a good cappuccino, and they sell Intelligentsia coffee beans at a reasonable price. Oh, and they’re open until 7 PM most nights. See ya Cafe’ Barista, I’ve got a new local favorite!

Last night, posicat stopped by after work and he, Dan and I caravanned up to our storage unit in Lake Villa (though we were delayed due to a train accident). We stumbled a bit on the icy pavement, but we managed to empty almost all of our stuff out of the storage unit; there’s just an office chair, a bicycle, and car ramps to be removed (both Elements and Posi’s van were stuffed, so they just wouldn’t fit). I’ll be going by tonight right after work and grabbing those last few items. Once we offloaded everything into the garage, Posi and I went out and, um, donated a few items we didn’t need anymore to the dumpster (Mom, remember that TV Dad got from a co-worker in Greenville? It’s finally gone!). We got to Charcoal Delight five minutes after it closed at 9 PM, so instead we detoured around to Long John Silver’s and got Dan the chicken planks that he loves. While we were gone, he was nice enough to move most of the stuff in from the garage and pull my car in off the street and into the garage. I love my husband! We ate at around 10 PM (ugh), and finally got to sleep sometime around 11. I’m dragging just a wee bit today because of that.

As for the weekend: I hope to put up some blinds tomorrow morning, then do a bit of shopping and prep for a party we’re attending. It’s a potluck, and I’m thinking making a couple of roast chickens. Sunday brings the Midwest FurFest post-mortem/staff meeting/what-have-you. I’ll probably try to finish putting up blinds on Sunday morning before that. We’re slowly getting the place together; Dan’s desk is now in place in his office (though it’s still frigid down there, and will be until the week of February 5, when they come to fix the window). Which reminds me, we need to find a way to seal up that window temporarily. I’m thinking a few more screws and some silicone sealant will do it. We still need drapes or blinds for the living room window, and to decide if we’re going to drop the large chunk of change necessary to get a true blackout shade for the master bedroom. Wow, I’d forgotten how expensive fun home ownership can be (even if you’re only renting).

Unearthing the Kitchen, Suburban Explorations, and Entertaining

As expected, the majority of the weekend was spent unpacking, cleaning, and sorting.

Saturday I worked on the kitchen for a bit, then takaza and I went out to run some errands. First we stopped by Cafe’ Barista in Lake Villa, one of the sources of Intelligentsia coffee beans in the area. I give them two stars out of five; Dan’s hot chocolate was watery, and my cappuccino was tepid and had too much milk. That, combined with the fact that they’re charging $13.99/pound for my favorite kind of beans, leads me to think that I’ll be seeking out other places to buy coffee beans. The next place I’ll try will be Honey Hill Coffee Company in Wauconda – we’ll see how that goes.

We then headed south to Garden Fresh Market – not the one in Round Lake Beach, which doesn’t open until Wednesday, but the one in Mundelein (which is scheduled to move to the bigger Cub Foods space next door next month). Before we went there, though, we were distracted by the shop next door, which had a large sign that read “Sausage and Deli”. Well, that sounded promising, so in we went.

It’s a very strange thing to walk out of the middle of suburbia into unfamiliar surroundings. I realized as I looked over the items on the shelves that I couldn’t read a dang one of the labels – they were all in Cyrillic! After walking around a bit, we realized that we may have been the only people in the shop speaking English. As we waited at the deli case to order (they have Irish bacon! woo!), the woman behind the counter repeated something we didn’t understand a few times, as people glanced at us, and eventually motioned us over to speak with her. She had been saying “Next!” in Russian. Once we established that we were ignorant monolingual Americans, though, we got things sorted out. After that adventure, we went nuts in Garden Fresh Market, picking up a lot of staples and some nice produce. I can see why they’re moving – their current store is tiny and since it was a busy Saturday afternoon, the place was packed!

Just as we got home, we passed Dan’s mom, who was calling us for directions. She helped us put away a few more things, then we relaxed while Dan made his wonderful homemade macaroni and cheese. It was an enjoyable evening all around.

Sunday was even crazier. I was bound and determined to finish off the kitchen, and got it about 95% complete when I had to run to Target for a few things…which turned into a trip to Home Depot as well, then a return to Target for a few things I forgot. While I was gone, Dan did a great job of hooking up the stereo (which is now tied into the TV, the TiVo, a DVD player, the PS2, and the Airport Express. The Slingbox is the last thing to be added, but that will take some configuring). Thank heavens I got him a Harmony all-in-one remote to control all this stuff.

We made a mad dash to get everything presentable by 4 PM (we were close – it took until 4:30), when roho and genet arrived, fortuitously arriving at 4:30 🙂 I got to use and abuse our new kitchen, and I was very happy. We had a lovely dinner consisting of two bottles of wine (a North Carolina sweet red as an apertif, and an Australian merlot), homemade buttermilk bread, herb-crusted roast pork, steamed broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes a la Buca di Beppo’s. For dessert, we had a chocolate-orange torte that Dan’s mom brought over from Le Vichyssoise. In between cooking and chatting, we watched both playoff games and had a good time cheering for the Bears. We had a great time, and I can’t wait to have friends over again so I can show off cook for them 🙂

And here we are back to the work week. Tonight, I think we’re going to take it easy and enjoy the fruits of our weekend labors – perhaps enjoy some leftovers for dinner, and have a nice lazy evening.

Our Bedroom Smells Like Pine

Well, it does!

I’m getting frustrated because I don’t feel like I’m getting as much done as I’d like in unpacking everything. I’ve done this often enough – 31 times, to be exact. To update that list, add: 2003 – N. Troy, Chicago, IL and 2007 – Holiday Ln., Hainesville, IL. Unpacking and getting everything sorted is always frustrating, and this time it’s a bit worse since some of this stuff hasn’t seen the light of day in three and a half years. There’s a lot of “that should be here somewhere…but where?” going on.

Last night I alternated between doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, bringing up a few more kitchen boxes, fixing the Airport Express (took far longer than it should, and it’s still not quite right), and helping Dan put together our new Hemnes dresser, which explains the pine scent in our bedroom. It took longer than we expected, and we finished up at about 11:30 PM. We still need to fully tack the fiberboard onto the back, but that seemed a bit much hammering to do at that time of night. I mean, I’d like to meet our neighbors at some point, but preferably not while they’re shouting at me to keep the damn noise down.

I’d like to think that once we get a bit more of the kitchen straightened out the rest of the house will fall into place; with the TV unit in place, the living room is close to becoming better organized. That just leaves the upstairs bedrooms, which can be addressed next week, and Dan’s office, which is going to have to wait until the landlord fixes the window (something that was set into motion yesterday – yay!). With luck, maybe by the end of this weekend we can get the main level put away, cleaned, and presentable.

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.

Well, that was fun

So, we were faced with a dilemma: Plan out our move, give a week’s notice, and go about things in a scheduled, orderly fashion, or move into our new place in a rush, with only one day’s notice to drum up assistance, and get as much done as we possibly can in one weekend. Because we are insane, we opted for the latter 🙂

On Saturday, we met up with feren and lady_curmudgeon at our new place at around 10-ish. He had picked up a trailer (and therein lies quite a tale in itself) and I joined them in a ride back into Chicago. Takaza meanwhile was joined by posicat, tybis, roho, genet, colliedoc, nymphara, and Scott, and he led that contingent to our storage unit, where he had a rental truck waiting. Feren, linnaeus, and I emptied out the last of our furniture and 99.5% of our possessions from Paul’s place (there’s always those last few things you forget!), grabbed some lunch, then headed back up to Hainesville. Meanwhile, Dan and crew loaded about 75% of the storage locker into the truck, and met us back in Hainesville. There followed a massive unloading which took about three hours, slowed by the fact that both Feren and I had done bad things to our backs and Roho and Genet were still getting over the Creeping Martian Death Plague. Bless Tybis, Posi, and Scott – they shouldered the brunt of the heavy lifting and made sure we got everything into the house.

After we got the boxes put into the proper rooms, things kind of dissolved into a nice party. Dan whipped up some of the tasty garlic, mushroom, and butter mixture that wildmouse used to make (yum!), while Straif busied himself in our barely-unpacked kitchen making homemade pizza for everyone. Dinner was delicious, the booze did flow, Apples to Apples was played, and everyone had a great time. We got to bed at around 1 AM.

Today, Best Buy delivered our new washer, dryer, and (ginormous!) TV set. Everything was hooked up and tested, and! Posicat was kind enough to lend us the use of his van and his back (’cause my back is most certainly shot!) and we got the last of the “urgent” stuff out of the storage unit, mostly all of the kitchen boxes. We seem to have enough equipment for two kitchens, the result of slowly upgrading our kitchen over the years. This means there’s a lot of stuff that we need to get rid of one way or another. More on that later, I reckon. Anyway, we got the sofa and the boxes to our place and stowed, then Dan and I dashed out to Sam’s Club, Home Depot, and Jewel to stock the place with all of the things that a house should be stocked with. $400 later and we’re close to having all the stuff we need, though we haven’t yet touched important things like window treatments (the blanket tacked over the master bedroom window notwithstanding).

So where do we stand now? Well, we’ve got a hell of a lot of boxes to unpack. Dan’s office downstairs needs a lot of work, and we discovered today that the previous tenant (who, it turns out, was foreclosed on and they pretty much trashed the place, which explains all of the new carpet and paint) broke out the window and fixed it by screwing Plexiglas over it – poorly. So there’s quite a breeze coming in there, which explain why it’s freakin’ frigid down there. Our landlord (who bought the place from the bank and refurbished it) was unaware of this and will be taking a look at it tomorrow. There’s a few other small issues, but nothing insurmountable.

Thanks so much to all of our friends who helped us out yesterday – you’re all amazing, and we feel very lucky to have folks like you around us. To those who offered to help but couldn’t make it this weekend, thanks anyway, and maybe we’ll need you next time (may it be a long time coming!). And finally, many, many thinks to Linnaeus, who put up with us as tenants in his condo for over two years – your patience, generosity, and friendship were and are very much appreciated, and if there ever was a time there when it seemed that this wasn’t so, I am very sorry.

And us? We’re exhausted. My back is a mess, and Dan isn’t doing too much better. But even so, we’re glad to have our own place again. It’s going to take a lot of work to get this place arranged to our satisfaction, but it’ll be worth it. We’ll announce our housewarming soon, I’m sure 🙂

Consumer Whoredom!

Well, I said we were gonna do it and we did it – we now have a shiny new washer, a shiny new dryer, and a shiny new TV. Yeah, High Definition would have been nice, but considering that the cost of HD only starts with the TV – then you have the extra fees for the satellite, the tuner, the extra-spiffy DVR – we decided we can wait a little while. The best part? They all get delivered and installed on Sunday! (barring any snowstorms, of course)

Quick Hits

Enough with all the seriousness and real estate and hand-wringing and the oy!

* Hey Feren – it turns out that you can do something else with all that gin around your house.

* Are you a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan? If so, I highly recommend you read Wil Wheaton’s recaps/review the series pilot, “Encounter at Farfetched Farpoint” (Part 1, Part 2). Besides being quite amusing (Wil feels that Wesley Crush was an annoying twit, too), the behind-the-scenes insights he adds are quite interesting and he’s a pretty good writer too. Oh, and fair warning: Wil uses some Bad Words in his writing.

* Oh yeah, Apple announced some phone or something. Unfortunately, since it’s Cingular-only, the iPhone is officially Dead To Me.

* Eclipsed in all the hoo-hah yesterday, Tivo TiVo announced that they’re going to start testing their software on Comcast’s existing DVR hardware this spring. Perhaps at some later date Comcast will not suck. Or at the very least, suck somewhat less. EDIT: Engadget scores some pics of the new TiVo software in action.

And now to get some work done…

House-Hunting, and The Product of Compromises

So, as I alluded to in a prior entry, takaza and I are on the hunt for new digs. Once New Year’s was past and we could focus more on finding something, we really started looking seriously. And what we’re finding is…well, it’s somewhat disheartening. A lot of it is just learning the realities of real estate in the Chicago suburbs.

Our original plan was to rent a house in the Wheeling/Buffalo Grove area. That would be reasonably halfway between employers for both of us (he works in Mount Prospect, I work in Round Lake). Unfortunately, in our price range in Wheeling and Buffalo Grove, a house is out of the question and the available townhouses are…underwhelming. Apartments are out of the question – neither of us wants an apartment. There’s an unfortunate gap between Buffalo Grove and the affordable areas of Mundelein (well, not a physical gap, more of an economic one – that would include Long Grove and Hawthorn Woods, two very affluent towns). Mundelein and points north starts to get into difficult commuting for Dan, until Dan suggested that maybe commuting by train would be a good option. The Prospect Heights train station is a mile and a half from his office – walkable in good weather, and in poor weather he can either take a bus most of the way there or hitch a ride from a co-worker (plus, if he ever transfers to his company’s HQ, they’re right on the Metra line). So, this opened up everything on the North Central Metra line, including Antioch, Lake Villa, Grayslake, and Vernon Hills.

A little more searching, and now we’ve narrowed things down to two townhouses in Hainesville, just west of Grayslake, and about five minutes from the Grayslake train station. The two units have an identical floor plan, but here’s the dilemma before us:
Property 1 – Nice upgrades, including some nicely-painted walls (not beige! yay!) and a Pergo “hardwood” floor in the living room/dining room. BUT…the owners want $3,000 deposit, in addition to first and last months of rent.
Property 2 – In the building next to Property 1. Completely beige, but newly repainted and recarpeted. $100/month less than Property 1. Possible to put in DirecTV, which is probably not possible at Property 1. A more reasonable security deposit, as well. BUT…the unit has no refrigerator, washer, or dryer (Property 1 has all these).

We have a call in to the Property 1 owners pointing out to them that their security deposit is way out of line, and would the consider coming down on it. They’re on vacation in Colorado, though, and we don’t know when we might hear back from them. In the meantime, we’ve put in applications for Property 2 and we’re told that it will take about a week to process. We figured that should the Property 1 owners decide to come down on the security deposit, we can always walk away during the course of the application processing period. As for the appliances, well…Best Buy is offering 18 months same as cash. And that way we actually walk away with our own appliances (and get better-quality appliances out of the deal!).

As for the units themselves: they’re cozy. The floor plan is three levels, with the top floor being the master bedroom and the guest bedroom, with a shared bathroom between them (the bathroom has both a shower and a tub/shower combo). The middle floor has a nice large kitchen and pantry as well as the combined living room/dining room. The ground floor is a two-car garage (with room for storage) and a small (10 x 10) office. After talking it over, Dan and I realized that the 2,050 square feet we had in North Carolina was far, far too much for us. Looking at how we live, this is a much better fit. And it’s not like we’re sacrificing that much space – it’s a 1,500 square foot unit.

So now we’re waiting to hear back from representatives from both properties to see what kind of timeline we’re looking at. We hope to move smaller stuff out of our storage space during the week, and if all goes well, we could be moving the furniture from the storage unit as early as the weekend of January 20th. Don’t mark anything on your calendars just yet, though – there’s still several uncertainties to be resolved. I’ll post more when we have something a bit more certain!

The Great Holiday Summary

So, it’s been quiet here lately, and I hope to post a bit more than I have over the last few months.

Things are going OK at work, though the project I’m on is the kind of thing that seems easy at first but then grows in complexity and volume. I swear, someone at $employer must have a military background, because in order to get anything done you must first fill out form DR-CQ-271, followed by DR-CQ-272, but in order to that you need to fill our form DR-CQ-877, 878, 879, and 890 (all of which require the signatures of at least three separate people). I find it truly astonishing that anything gets done here – it’s like work gets done in spite of the paperwork. That having been said, though, it’s not a bad gig overall. Still no idea when (or if) I’ll be hired on full time, but in the meantime, the pay is good.

When I get paid, that is. There was a bit of a screwaround a few weeks back when we found out that my contracting service sent my paycheck to the wrong address. That was followed by them having to FedEx my next two paychecks to me, plus my direct deposit was delayed by someone in their office mis-transcribing my checking account number. Theoretically, my next paycheck will be deposited tomorrow, if it isn’t delayed by the fact that I had to bug my manager this morning to approve my timesheet from two weeks ago. And this will be only half a paycheck, since I didn’t work last week due to the annual winter shutdown. Even with all that, though, our cash flow is good and bills will be paid on time.

Before I go any further I wanted to mention Christmas. Normally we would have been with my parents and my sister’s family down in South Carolina for the holiday. Unfortunately, since I was uncertain of my time off until right before Christmas (they may have called me in over shutdown) and Dan didn’t have any vacation to spare, we had to pass on the trip south this year. Instead, we spent Christmas Eve with

[info]takaza

‘s mom, and Christmas Day with 

[info]roho

and

[info]genet

.

The Christmas Eve dinner is especially worthy of note. We took Dan’s mom to Le Vichyssoise, a noted French restaurant just outside of McHenry. She had worked at Le Vichysoisse for twenty years as a bartender before quitting six years ago to focus on nursing full-time. Fortunately, the parting was amicable, which afforded us the opportunity for an outstanding meal. Dan’s mom and I each had a couple of glasses of wine, an appetizer (my roasted-tomato-and-onion tart was excellent), and soup (my vichyssoise was also quite tasty). Following a tasty Poire William sorbet, compliments of the chef, they brought our entrees: steak au poivre for Dan, beef tourenados for me, and a scallops dish for Dan’s mom. We capped the meal with a collection of sumptuous desserts, including the “Floating Island”, a meringue floating in a vanilla crème Anglais drizzled with caramel, and I had a cappuccino.

I knew going in that this was not going to be a cheap meal; this is a highly-rated restaurant, the prices reflect that. Then they brought the bill: $365.00. I probably blanched a bit, but to my credit Dan said he didn’t notice anything was wrong. I just calmly put my debit card back into my wallet and pulled out the credit card. When the receipt was brought, I swallowed hard and added a 15% tip (alas, the service waned a bit towards the end of the meal), bringing the total to $415. I was somewhat shell-shocked as we drove to Dan’s brother’s house to visit, and I’m sure the quiet hand signals between Dan and I as Dan found out how much the meal cost were probably quite amusing to see.

As we chatted with Dan’s brother’s family, Dan got a phone call (he was the one who had made the reservation). Apparently, they had double-charged us for the meal, and the final bill was only $183. Whew. That was more like I was expecting. I was chided by Dan’s mom for not speaking up, but hey – that’s not how I am. (“Oh my GOD! Look how expensive this meal is! This can’t be right!” Yeah, that’s real smooth). And yeah, pride probably played into it a bit too. Either way, though, I’m just glad that that things worked out. We left Dan’s brother’s late and headed up to Antioch, where we found Roho and Genet, remarkably, still awake. We chatted a bit then all headed off to bed.

Christmas Day was wonderfully lazy. We had a tasty breakfast, then watched some TV, chatted, and poked at our computers a bit. Genet and Roho had started a turkey brining the night before (yay for Alton Brown!) and I was able to help provide a few tips on cooking it. Genet did most of the cooking, but all of us helped out a little bit. The finished dinner was absolutely delicious, and it was really nice to spend the time with friends.

The following week was spent putting together the New Year’s Eve party, which I already mentioned. That pretty much brings me up to date, except to mention what’s going on right now. Dan and I are hot on the trail of a new place to live, with the goal of moving by the end of the month. We have a couple of places lined up to look at on Saturday, in Wauconda, Hainesville (Grayslake), and Antioch, and will probably be looking at more places on Sunday. The idea is that Dan could take the train in to work from Hainesville or Antioch, or have about a 40-minute drive from Wauconda. I feel kind of bad, because all of these put me at most 20 minutes from my work (and about 5 minutes in the case of Hainesville). That’s the reality of what we can afford, though – things in our price range further south are either apartments (not what we want) or…unacceptable. Our hope is that we can find a place to live for a year and then, once we have a little more savings and better financial security, buy a place next year.

Oh, and a note to locals: yeah, expect that call for help moving something in the next few weeks 🙂 We’ll give as much notice as we possibly can. And now, back to work!

Missing In Action?

Missing in action?

I suppose I should recap what happened last weekend before this weekend starts up. Or something like that.

After work on Friday, I drove down and picked up takaza. We were both pretty tired, so any thoughts that we had entertained of going to see a movie were pretty much discarded. We drove down to the southern ‘burbs and checked into a La Quinta to put us a bit closer to our Saturday destination. We originally were going to go to a nice sit-down place, but as we pulled out of the parking lot, we both agreed that fast food would be cheaper and faster, and we just wanted to hang out in the room. So we elected to eat at Wendy’s instead, then stopped by a nearby Walgreens to pick up some items for Dan. While we were there, we rented a copy of The Lake House from the Redbox, but once we got back to the room we instead decided to watch a Doctor Who episode I had on my laptop and go to sleep early. (I tried ripping the DVD, just for grins, but couldn’t figure out how to easily get around the encryption key. I didn’t work very hard at it, though).

On Saturday we headed down to Urbana, where we were to celebrate Candlestick Lane at Mirkowuff‘s. We got in at about noon and hung out at his place for a bit, then ran some errands around town (Mirabelle’s is a mighty fine bakery, by the way!). We checked into the Champaign La Quinta (Bing! Dan scored some free upgrades with that room stay), and ran into Roho and Genet there. Dan and Roho decided to brave the mall for some last-minute shopping, and Genet and I stopped by the grocery store for snacks and libations, then headed back to Mirko’s. A decent crowd started showing up shortly thereafter, and we enjoyed a pleasant evening of good company, tasty food, Christmas lights, and electric sex.

Sunday morning we gathered most of the crew from the previous night for yet another gluttonous breakfast at the House of Lard. I just can’t say no to their huge western omelet, but thank heavens I passed the pancakes that came with it to Dan, ‘cause I couldn’t have eaten them. We bade goodbye to the Urbana-Champaign metroplex after breakfast and made the short drive home, a trip made rather enjoyable by a very exciting Bears game, including a detour to swing by Soldier Field towards the end of the fourth quarter, just because we could 🙂 The rest of the day was spent quietly relaxing; Dan went to take a nap at 5:30 PM and wound up staying asleep until 1 AM.

The rest of this week has been a train wreck for me. The commutes home have been bad, with me getting home at 6:15 or so each night, and then we’ve been heading off to bed by 9:30. Not a lot to time to get stuff done, unfortunately. I’ve tried to get some Christmas shopping done, but unfortunately the one item I was looking for for Dan seems to be out of stock anyplace I go. This time of year is always frustrating and distressing for me because I feel like I haven’t been paying attention all year to what Dan might have said he wanted for Christmas, so when it comes time to look for gifts, I have no idea what he wants. In my own twisted logic, this makes me a bad husband; don’t try to figure it out, it’s certainly not a rational thing. But there it is. So I’m trying to work through that this week as well, and I’ll admit it’s making me a bit moody and cranky.

Looking at the traffic reports right now it looks like it’s another ugly day on the roads. Fortunately, I just got an e-mail from Dan suggesting I pick him up after work and we can get some dinner and poke around the ‘burbs a bit before attempting to fight our way back into the city. That makes it a much better afternoon indeed…

‘Tis the Busy Season!

Right. Wow, long time since my last decent update, huh? Anyway, last week found us at Gameworks on Thursday night for my contracting agency’s holiday party. It was exactly what I look for in a holiday party: bring a guest, free food, free booze, fun stuff to do, and no onus to socialize with cow-orkers (who I don’t know, having just been hired a few weeks ago, and they all work at other companies anyway). We had a lot of fun, even both takaza and I injured ourselves playing Hyperbowling (imagine a giant bowling ball going down a crowded city street. “Yay! I flattened a car!”).

On Friday we went over to perro and darkwolph lovely house to celebrate Andrew’s birthday and to help, um, warm their house. Or something like that. We got to meet Chaos, their German shepherd, who has the sweetest disposition of any dog I’ve met recently. The libations flowed freely, and Dan had a heck of a lot of fun playing bartender at their fabulous basement bar (that you can barely see over for all the bottles of booze perched atop it). Good times, great company, and we stayed out later than I have for a while. It probably helped that I didn’t drink much, since I had to drive home.

On Saturday we were going to get up early and go get Dan’s new driver’s license, then take a bunch of stuff up to our storage locker in Lake Villa, then go to Dan’s employer’s holiday party. Well, the first two were scotched by the 2:30 AM bedtime the night before, and Dan had some nasty workplace drama that left him not particularly interested in the evening’s festivities. Instead, we made some short-notice dinner plans and met daveqat and jimcyl for dinner at Cafe’ Bernard. It was a very tasty meal, and I got to try their cassoulet which was…well, not as good as mine, quite frankly (which reminds me – I have a monster post about making cassoulet that’s been waiting in the wings for weeks). The meal was excellent, though, and we had a great time.

Sunday we were just plain lazy, but we did finally roust ourselves out in the late afternoon to stop by Bobtail and pick up some coffee beans for me. While were in the area, we decided to grab a quick dinner at Potbelly Sandwiches, which really hit the spot. After buying provisions for the next few days’ dinners at Whole Food$ (for $6.99/lb., those had better be some pretty damned amazing chicken breasts), we came home and watched some Tivo and did laundry, then spent some time celebrating the birthday of one of linnaeus‘ friends.

And here we are at Monday. Woo. There’s plenty at work to keep me busy, but I’m still learning procedures, and the sequence of projects and spending an inordinate amount of time waiting for assistance from others. Hopefully this awkward period will pass soon and I can start going ahead full speed.

Convention Worst Case Scenario: When It All Goes Wrong

Wow. Big convention news going on right now, and it’s not a happy thing.

Flanvention 2 (aka The Big Damn Flanvention, Part 2), a professionally-run convention based around all things Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) was supposed to take place this weekend. Tickets were amazingly pricey, which I suppose is to be expected given that relatively small niche we’re talking about. Tickets for the weekend started at $229, with premium packages going for $2,000 and up.

Except yesterday Booster Entertainment announced on their website that the event was cancelled. Now everyone is asking what happened to the approximately $200,000 in revenue went, and the Booster people aren’t talking. You can follow the developing story on the Whedonesque message boards, or on the LJ community. This is Big and Ugly.

The one good thing in all of this is that so far Adam Baldwin (“Jayne”) and Mark Sheppard (“Badger”) have shown up, uncompensated, to meet and greet the fans. That’s pretty darned cool.

Birthday, Moving Plans, and Commuting

Well, as I mentioned on Friday, I was hoping that we would be heading up to Antioch to hang out at roho and genet‘s place, and that’s exactly what happened. We were joined by linnaeus and datahawk, as well. We celebrated takaza‘s birthday in grand style, with dinner at the local steakhouse, and cake and drinks and good conversation afterwards. It was a delightful evening.

Saturday morning we were slow to get started (as usual), but finally made our way over to our customer brunch stop, Las Vegas Restaurant, where we had a tasty meal. We then parted ways, as Dan, Paul, and I headed back into the city. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching stuff off the Tivo. In fact, Sunday was pretty much a copy of that afternoon, as I declared that it was too freakin’ cold outside, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. So we didn’t! It was nice to have a quiet weekend in. We did get a chance to look at our financials, though, and talk about upcoming plans, and we did arrive at an important decision: we hope to move out to the ‘burbs by the middle of January or so, probably somewhere in the vicinity of Wheeling or Buffalo Grove, as those would provide a roughly equal commute for Dan and me. Obviously, we haven’t had a chance to scope out places yet, and it’s up in the air whether we’ll be renting an apartment, a townhouse, or a house; it all depends on what’s available and what fits within our budget. Once we secure a place and a date, though, look for plaintive wails for assistance to be sounding loudly here!

Yesterday kicked off what promises to be a long week. Dan’s North Carolina driver’s license expired last week and he didn’t have a Social Security card to apply for an Illinois license (he does now, having applied for one last week), but that means that until he can get to a Secretary of State’s office he’s without a license. I’m driving him into work each morning, which surprisingly only adds about 20 minutes to my commute – not bad at all, and the company is nice, even if we are minimally communicative at that hour 🙂 Yesterday was a pretty crappy day for Dan, so instead of him taking the bus/train/bus combination to get home, I went down and picked him up. A friendly face as you leave work is always a nice thing. We’ll see if he needs a lift today – it’s really not too far out of my way, surprisingly enough.

Looking ahead this week, we have my staffing agency’s holiday party on Thursday (at Gameworks! Woo!), then someone’s house (luke)warming on Friday, and on Saturday, Dan’s employer’s holiday party (dinner then a Second City show). We’ll hopefully get Dan’s license on Saturday, too, and maybe drop some stuff off at our storage unit, if we have time. And on Sunday, maybe we’ll get to sleep in, who knows?

Back to this exciting training stuff…

Driving in the snow is fun!

Yeah, as y’all may have heard, we got a little snow in the Chicago area today. In the city itself it wasn’t too bad – I estimated that there was maybe two or three inches of wet, heavy snow on my car when I went out at 6:30 this morning. Once I extricated myself from where I had been parked in (gods, I hate parking on the street!) it was time to begin the fun:

North on Jersey to Peterson, Peterson west to the Edens, the Edens north to Touhy (took 15 minutes), Touhy west to Caldwell (traffic light was out), Caldwell north to Golf, Golf west to the Tri-State Tollway. Tri-State Tollway north (25 mph all the way, snow depth and accumulation rate increasing as I go – stop twice to clear snow out from under wipers). Try to get off at 137/Buckley Road – accident on the ramp between a truck and a car, no dice. Continue north to 120/Belvidere Road – truck stuck on the ramp, no dice. Continue north to 132/Grand Ave. Grand Ave. west (parts still unplowed, a good 10″ of snow on the ground) to US 45. US 45 south to IL 120. IL 120 west to Wilson Road.

Total travel time: Three Hours. It’s normally a 45-minute drive.

Well, that was fun.

I expect the roads are going to suck even worse tonight as everything starts freezing. With luck, I’ll be heading northwards after work to Antioch rather than deal with all of the foolishness in the city. We’ll see…

Dates to remember

This is a remarkable day. Thirty years ago today something happened that would change the world – something that would make many, many people happy, something that would improve the lives of even more people, whether they knew it or not. It’s something that would change my life for the better and make me feel happy and loved.

Thirty years ago today, takaza was born. Happy birthday, love!

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…

Home.

We’re home.

I’m exhausted.

I start a new job tomorrow – probably it will be a few days until I make a coherent update. In the meantime, it’s time to relax.

Thanks to everyone – attendees and staff – for making this such a great weekend.

Recovery Mode, and Here We Go Again

So now that the Registration system has been repaired and the last few items for Midwest FurFest are being delivered today, I’m in a state of relatively little stress. So what to do? Why, go work another convention, of course! Which is why this afternoon I’ll be heading over to Windycon at the Wyndham in Rosemont to assist in their Operations office for the weekend. Yeah, it’s silly to work a con the weekend before working a con, but this one should be considerably lower stress for me since I’m not technically in charge of anything, and from what I saw last year, quite manageable.

In the meantime, I need to drive up to Wauconda and pick up the staff badges, and then down to Arlington Heights and rent a storage unit for MFF for the coming year. If all goes well, I’ll be able to meet takaza for lunch, then head down to the Wyndham, check in and maybe grab a quick nap, if needed. Expect more updates as the weekend goes on!

Apply The Brakes?

For the past few months, I’ve had two driving forces: get a job, and prepare for Midwest FurFest. These two things have been pretty much what I built every day around, and kept my mind occupied. So now I have a job in hand, and I’ve completed all of my preparations (well, save one or two, but those are not time-consuming). So I have before me a rarity: a day unclaimed. Now, because I’m the way I am, that doesn’t mean I’ll be lolling about; I have to get a haircut, stop by Sam’s Wine to stock up for the Fine Potables party at MFF, do laundry…but I do those things today or tomorrow or even on Monday, were I so inclined. The pressure to get stuff done is off, and it’s a very strange feeling. It’s certainly not one that I’ve felt in literally years, and while a relief, it’s unfortunate that it’s a little disquieting too.

Ah well. Off to start the day!

The Con Is Mother, The Con Is Father

As one might have guessed from my last update, Midwest FurFest is weighing heavily on my mind.

Friday I took takaza into work and took advantage of the glorious weather to take some nice pictures in and around McHenry County (well, except for the first one; that’s on Milwaukee Ave. in Niles). You’ll be seeing some of those pictures again come the convention. After driving for several hours I made a big loop and stopped back by Schaumburg and found a good place for MFF to store our stuff for the next year right near the hotel. I’ll be stopping by there later this week to nail down a contract with them. Afterwards I went to Dan’s employer and read the paper and killed some time until he was ready to leave, only about two hours after quitting time. steviemaxwell was over visiting so we had a pleasant evening of dinner from the taquiera and good conversation.

On Saturday I took off early and headed up to roho and genet‘s place where we were joined by neowolf2 and attempted to assemble all of the parts of the Registration server. Things didn’t go quite as well as we’d hoped. Computer geekery ensued, and Unix-y troubleshooting

Can’t Sleep, Con Will Eat Me

My life, reduced to bullet points:

  • On Tuesday I had an interview with large nameless healthcare company that happens to be in Round Lake, IL. Promising position, and would be very exciting. Contract-to-hire, three or six month contract (to be determined), then hire full time at 15% less pay (but with benefits and vacation). If hired, it’d be a bitch of a commute for the short term, but we’ve been wanting to get a place in the Northwest Burbs, and this would be the catalyst to do so. I might know something by the end of next week. Maybe. The good news is that my recruiter is going to see about submitting me to another position at the same company.
  • Not much action on any other fronts. Still putting out lots of resumes, but not a lot of nibbles. It’s a bad time of the year to be unemployed, unfortunately. The good news is that between Dan’s income and unemployment, we’re covered for the short term, at least.
  • So this leaves me lots of time to sit around and play video games all day? Not likely. This is the peak time for preparations for Midwest FurFest. In addition to being an engineer, I suddenly get to become a graphic designer, making layouts for all of the items we’re having imprinted, plus designing the staff and attendee badges. We’re trying some new stuff (thus all of the nifty new equipment) that will hopefully make our lives easier and make Registration run even faster. So in addition to being an engineer and a graphic designer, I also get to be a software designer/network engineer, as we tweak the Registration system to accommodate the new equipment. I also get to flex my management skills, since once the programming schedule is posted I need to figure out how to schedule the seventeen (!) people we have on Registration staff to maximize volunteer hours for those that want them and to make sure no one has to miss any event they wanted to see. You understand why I get a bit flustered at the convention approaches.
  • It’s been a chilly day here, inside and out. I didn’t notice it earlier when I absorbed in computer work, but now I’m realizing my fingers are getting a bit numb. I’ve set foot outside only to get the paper this morning, but the chill is quite penetrating. I’ll have to brave the cold later to go out and forage for dinner – I’m not really looking forward to that.
  • Tomorrow looks a lot more interesting, though. The present plan is that I will drop takaza off at work, stop for some breakfast, stop by the printer to drop off the files for the attendee badges, then strike out westward to take pictures of…something. Things that evoke “County Fair”. Yeah, it would have been nicer to do this earlier in the year, but we didn’t realize just what nice signs we were going to be having. It should be a nice, clear, chilly day, and I expect I’ll be driving around Huntley, Marengo, and Woodstock, which is very pretty country anyway. Later in the day I’ll pick Dan up at work and we’ll do, um, something.
  • This bullet point intentionally left blank

Oh yeah, I’m still around

Yeah, no posts of note last week. I was feeling kind of down and much feel like posting.

So what did I do? Well, on Wednesday I struck out northwestwards to get some pictures for use by Midwest FurFest. This put me conveniently near the engravers who handle our staff badges every year, so I was able to stop by, chat a bit, and kick around ideas for this year’s designs. I’m pretty happy with what we decided on, and now all I have to do is e-mail him the template and the list of names and titles and we’ll be good to go (and this year I won’t forget the Guests of Honor like I did last year, with that lovely “Oh sh#t!” moment on Wednesday night). Afterwards, I drove down and picked up takaza after work. Last week was month-end for him, and between doing the work of multiple people and the stress of more and more tasks being piled on him, it was not a good week. I hope I was able to help a little bit, anyway.

On Thursday, after I took Dan in to work, I stopped by the MFF storage locker and picked up a few things, and dropped off a few things that had been sitting in linnaeus‘s garage since Anthrocon, as well. I stopped by a printer and got a quote for the attendee badges for this year – we’re going to a new, faster system, but wow, the price of badge blanks just got a lot more expensive! I need to call a couple more places for quotations and see if I can get the price down at all. That was also an especially tough day for Dan at work, so I drove back out and picked up dinner for him (and a tasty milkshake as a special treat), and after we ate I sat at the desk across from him and read the paper while he finished up; he finished up and we left $employer a little after 9 PM.

Dan got out of work surprisingly close to on time on Friday, and in much better spirits too. After I picked him up, we took back roads up to Antioch and had a lovely evening with roho, genet, and the visiting-from-Maryland ottr. We had a delightful evening filled with tasty burgers at Charcoal Grill, a hysterical shopping trip in the liquor department of Woodman’s, drunken Apples to Apples, and the alarmingly rapid consumption of a bottle of Pucker (“How does it taste?” “Blue.”). The next morning, following a typically delicious breakfast at Las Vegas Restaurant (mmm, chocolate chip pancakes…), we all went our separate ways.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on MFF-related stuff: preparing last-minute orders for promotional materials, Dan working on the con book, me helping Dan work on the con book, and other fun stuff. I’ve got a stack of confirmation postcards to go out (and I need to print more of them and buy more postage – great googly moogly, that’s a lot of registrations!) We also took some amusing pictures to accompany the Chairman’s Welcome (I’ll be keeping those for future blackmail material, Paul 😉 Dinner Sunday night was some tasty steaks, and catching up with “The Amazing Race.”

Lots to do this week – hopefully some good stuff going on tomorrow, but in the meantime there’s a ton of orders I need to place and phone calls I need to make. Never a dull moment…

Last-Minute Plans?

FYI: If you’re attending Midwest FurFest and haven’t reserved a room yet, check out this post in for what options are available right now. The Hyatt and the Amerisuites are sold out, though rooms should be coming available at the Amerisuites in a couple of weeks when some other groups’ underperforming room blocks are released.