Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wednesday? What happened to Monday and Tuesday?

Man, am I getting slack at updating or what? I do try to make up for it in comments in other people’s journals, though.

Not a whole lot happened last week, so it’s not really worth mentioning. We were going to try to do some scouting for FRAC but takaza was feeling a bit under the weather so we got a late start. We were able to drive around and nail down a few locations, though. This edition is going to be a real hoot, I think, and folks are going to have a lot of fun. Look for some announcements on this very soon.

On Sunday we took things kind of slow, though we did eventually get out to make the rounds of shopping. The Suncoast Video store at Randhurst Mall is closing so we stopped by there to look at the store fixtures and see what was left in the picked-over DVD inventory. I got a copy of Passion in the Desert and we picked up a copy of Escanaba in da Moonlight for Linnaeus, both for about four bucks. We also picked up a nice shelving unit that will be helpful for MFF, possibly for holding stuff on the freebie table, and some small plastic sign holders (that they threw in for free) that will be handy at Anthrocon. Dan’s going to go back on Friday to see if he can get a deal on the registers – the main units are crap, and beat all to hell, but the cash drawers aren’t bad and could be useful for a future POS system at Anthrocon. They’ll have to be extremely cheap, though.

Dan and I broke our usual after-work routine on Monday by going to the volunteers meeting for Night of 100 Champions, a fundraiser for Gay Games Chicago. It was amusing that, while they were expecting two, maybe three hours out of their volunteers, we pretty much said we’d be available all day and into the evening, plus we’d help out at the brunch the following day. It sounds like we’ll be helping with setup, “entertainment assistance” (still to be determined, but helping out with the evening’s musical entertainment somehow), and possibly even welcoming people into the Soldier Field parking lots on “Segway patrol” (though that depends on whether they’ll waive the 260-pound Segway limit). It’s going to be a really impressive event, and the raffle and silent auction items are quite impressive (15 round trip airline tickets donated by Orbitz, complete cruises for eight donated by Olivia, and a lot of other cool stuff). Dan is trying to get his employer (a certain large German multinational corporation) involved as a sponsor for the Gay Games, and thinks that there’s a good chance of that. Incidentally, if anyone is interested in helping out, they still need volunteers! There will be a last-minute planning meeting on Monday, April 17 (at DeVry at Belmont and Western, I think?) where you can show up. We’ll be there, and it would be great to see some of our other friends involved.

As an aside, a nice bit of Gay-Games-related news: The Crystal Lake City Council voted 6-1 last night to allow Gay Games Chicago to use Crystal Lake for their rowing competition. I especially liked this quote: “This issue, for some reason, has become quite an emotional issue in our community,” [Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron] Shepley told residents before the public comment. “We will treat each other with the respect we owe each other as human beings.” Awesome! The next step is that the request has to go before the Lakewood Village Board next week (hopefully) for approval.

Yesterday Paul and I both had our annual physical exams (we go to the same doctor), so we decided to meet up for dinner with datahawk (Dan opted for a quiet night in). We wound up going to Froggy’s, a fabulous French restaurant in Highwood. Unfortunately, compared to the previous two times that we’ve been, the chef’s choice menu wasn’t quite up to snuff. While the rabbit casserole was tasty, the venison (though tender) was prepared in a way that gave it an acidic taste (not unlike sauerbraten) and the pheasant mousse stuffed with spinach wasn’t particularly flavorful or exciting. It wasn’t a bad mean, mind you, and it may just be that it was a Tuesday and the chef was off, or some such. Nevertheless this has spurred me into seeking out more restaurants in the area that have nifty (and inexpensive) tasting menus, and also to investigate other French restaurants on the North Side.

Tonight it’s back to the gym for an extended workout; to make up for the awful schedule I’ve been keeping there I’m going to have to go this Saturday and Sunday mornings to get back into the swing of things. It sounds like Dan’s going to be working late, so the grocery run may be put off one more day. Even though I’m out of milk for my cereal, I’m not missing it much (note to self: don’t ever buy Sugar-Smacks knockoffs again. Ick). I also need to start making lists for the weekend, since it looks like I’m going to be making quite a bit of chicken and dumplings for Saturday. Oh darn.

Well, time to get some work done!

Anthrocon hotel update

For those of you who don’t read , unclekage says about the overflow hotel:
The Omni has informed us that they are sold out of double-bed rooms on the night of Friday, June 16. There are only a very few double-bed rooms left for Saturday and Sunday, and most of those are smoking rooms.

Thus, only king-bed rooms are left. The hotel has a very limited number of rollaways that will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis on site, so please do not count on having a rollaway!

Ye gods. Looks like attendance won’t be too much of an issue, though.

Congenial is over, and ringlessness

So we spent last weekend at Congenial. Just to be different, I’ll spare y’all the blow-by-blow and just say that it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed swimming and hanging out with friends. When we got home on Sunday we sat around the house like zombies and then went to bed.

I had the unpleasant surprise yesterday of looking at my wedding ring and realizing that the white gold inner band had cracked and was spinning freely, about to come off. Ack! We purchased it five years ago from Ross-Simons in Raleigh, NC, and I was pleased to see that the only store they have in Illinois happens to be right on my way home from work. I stopped by yesterday afternoon and it has now been shipped off for repair. I should have it back in 10-14 days, at an as-yet-to-be-determined cost (they’ll call me with an estimate before doing any work, though). The biggest drawback to this is the moment of panic I get on an all-too-frequent basis when I realize I’m not wearing my ring and start wondering where I left it. Bleah.

Not too much going on this week. It’s month-end for Takaza‘s company, so he’ll be working long hours this week; last night he didn’t get home until close to 8 PM, and I expect a few more days this week like that. If he doesn’t have to work this weekend (ick!) I hope that we’ll be doing some wandering about in the lovely weather to do some research for FRAC, or at the very least relaxing a bit and being antisocial. We’re due for a bit of that, I think.

Oh, and finally: happy birthday, woodychitwn!

Going to Anthrocon? Want To Lend A Hand? (and maybe get in for free!)

I am seeking staff to help out in Artists Alley/Con Store at Anthrocon 2006. Duties would include working as a cashier, assisting in artist logistics, and assisting with artist payout at the end of each day. While I would be happy to have the assistance of folks for just an hour or so here or there, if you put in ten hours you will receive a free Anthrocon T-shirt; put in fifteen hours over three days (if you’ll be there for setup and teardown that counts too!) you can earn both a T-shirt and a membership to Anthrocon. (For an idea of how things went last year, you can find my AA/CS report from last year here.)

If you’re interested, please drop me a line NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, MARCH 30 at duncan at wolfhusky dot org, or reply with a comment here.

-Tom Brady/Duncan da Husky
Artists Alley Manager
Anthrocon 2006

My Thursday Evening, or tl;dr

Grar. I so don’t want to be here today.

I got up to the Racine Marriott last night in short order, a quick 30-minute drive. I suspect the northbound Tri-State Tollway gets abominable in the afternoons (judging from the huge backups on the southbound side that occur in the mornings), but when you leave at 3:30 things are nice and smooth. I checked in without any problems and was pleasantly surprised by our room: instead of the small, somewhat spartan room we had last year, this room has a nice wet bar with refrigerator, roomy bathroom with a separate area for the vanity, and a sleeper sofa. Also, it appears that they’ve upgraded their beds; this one was very much on a par with Westin’s OMGWTFSOFT beds, though I’m not quite on board with the whole “Let’s stack twenty pillows on the bed so it looks luxurious” thing. Anyway, it’s the perfect room for entertaining and it will suit us well this weekend. I’m mildly annoyed that they are going to whack us for $10 per day for wireless access, but we’ll cope.

Datahawk and takaza arrived at about the same time, a little after 7 PM. We went over to Culver’s for a quick dinner then got back in time to meet wyldekyttin, unclevlad, and renniefrog unloading their van. There was brief talk about maybe hitting the hot tub, but I was just too tired. We went back to our room and I quickly collapsed into the sleep of the dead, interrupted at about 1 AM by a horrid reflux attack. Bleah.

This morning I was up at 5 AM and went out to find about an inch of snow on the car. Bleah. The drive in didn’t take nearly as long as I expected, and I had time to gas up the car and hit Charbucks for a caffeine fix before work. Now I need to find a way to pass the next seven hours since all the people I need to finish my current project are in training today. After that, it’s back to Racine and Congenial. Woo!

Wow, I’ll bet all of that above was amazingly boring. Here, have some links to amuse you:

  • A sixteen-year old gay teen takes on Virginia Senator George Allen on the subject of gay rights. This kid has a hell of a lot more guts than I did at his age, and I am just amazed and impressed by his actions. There’s a lot of nice stuff in the comments as well.
  • For those traveling to Midwest FurFest, here’s a new and inexpensive way to get to Chicago: MegaBus (which apparently is already a sizable carrier in the UK). According to Chicagoist, their deal is that fares start at $1 each way, plus a 50-cent reservation fee. For each trip, three or four $1 seats are reserved, and the remaining seats can range from $9 to $27. In other words, you’ll have to book early to get the super-cheap fares. They run express service to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis.
  • Wisconsin proves that they are on the verge of global domination…or just a really good three-day binge.
  • No wardriving for you! A Rockford-area man is fined $250 for leeching off of someone else’s WiFi.

And now, to work!

I’ve Seen Better Days…

Well, yesterday could have gone better. Work was uninspiring, though I did get a nibble on an interesting job well for which I would be very well suited. It’s in Marengo so the commute would be interesting, but it’s not out of the question. On the way home, I passed a Lake County sheriff’s deputy as I was getting on Route 41; he followed me for about a mile then hit his lights. He was very nice, and explained that the drivers license associated with my registration expired two years ago. I showed him my NC drivers license (yeah, yeah, I’ll be getting an Illinois one Real Soon Now) and explained that when I surrendered my IL license back in 2000 (!), I guess NC didn’t transmit any paperwork stating that fact. He was satisfied with this explanation, and sent me on my way. Whew.

After a brief stop at the Highland Park post office to stock up on stamps for mailing MFF registration postcards, it was down to Paulina Market to pick up some tasty snacks for the coming weekend. As I was sitting in the stop-and-go traffic on Lincoln Avenue, someone came barreling up behind me – all I heard was a squeal of tires then I felt the impact as he hit me. We pulled off to a side street and exchanged information. The damage doesn’t look too bad – rear bumper marked up and slightly pushed down – but having been through this not too long ago, I know that a lot more expensive damage can lie under the bumper. On my way home I stopped by my insurance agency and gave them all the information and set up a body shop to take a look at it next week. All in all, a minor hassle, though my neck is slightly sore. Nothing debilitating, just a mild stiffness. Hmm, I should have taken some Aleve this morning for that. Ah well.

I admit I was pretty down for the rest of the evening, but Dan put up with me. He made several batches of chocolate chip cookies, and then we packed up everything for Congenial. In a lot of ways, a local relaxacon is more of a pain to pack for than Anthrocon: There’s all the room amenities to pack (coffee maker and accoutrements), booze, glassware, games, and all sorts of stuff. We got it sorted out, though. As I mentioned before, we’ll be up in Racine tonight through Sunday, since Dan has to work in Milwaukee tomorrow and my commute to work is roughly the same from Racine or Chicago. I’m going to try to get the same room we had last year (first floor, on the east end of the south hallway), since it’s convenient to the con suite yet not in the line of traffic.

Hmm, I’m gonna go hunt down some Ibuprofen now…

Coffee, Sausages, and Cider: These Are a Few of My Favorite Things!

Right then: The weekend.

We had all kinds of plans for Friday night; rasslor was going to have dinner with friends, we were going to join linnaeus for dinner, and we were just rarin’ to go…until we actually got home. Traffic was sucky, it was cold and windy outside, and Rasslor’s plans fell through. None of us were motivated in the least, so we wound up huddling ’round the TiVo and ordering pizza. Not a bad alternative, though.

On Saturday I was up moderately early to face the day. Rasslor, Linnaeus and I drove down to the so-hidden-don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it Intelligencia Roasting Works (seriously – they only put a sign outside their door when they give tours) for a tour of their facilities. Naturally they supplied copious coffee to drink, and walked us through roasting a batch of coffee (Guatamalan El Cuervo, to be specific), then we all got a half-pound of the fresh-roasted El Cuervo at the end of the tour. We also got a nice look at their barista training room and QA/QC lab, where they not only test the roasted coffees for quality, they also review samples of green beans sent by farmers from all over the world for quality and suitability. I came away extremely impressed by Intelligencia; they’re a small company (75 employees, including their two – soon to be three – coffee shops) who care about doing things right. I’ll be buying my beans from Intelligencia in the foreseeable future.

After the tour, we drove over to Hot Doug’s, where we were joined by sabotlours, carol_kitty, and takaza. mstegosaurus, fritzywolf, and circafox were there as well (Sorry we couldn’t socialize more, guys! Unfortunately Hot Doug’s is about the food and not so much about the sitting and chatting). I had the Italian-seasoned wild boar sausage with sun-dried tomato mustard and Romano cheese, as well as the merguez lamb sausage with spicy harissa and goat cheese. Both were quite tasty, but definitely not the best I’d ever had there. After lunch we adjourned back to Linnaeus’ place to wallow a bit in postprandial torpor before getting back into the car and driving out to datahawk and posicat place for their annual St. Patrick’s Day party. Much fun and socializing ensued, and I had a really good time.

Sunday morning, I awoke to find Rasslor plotting out various bus routes to get himself back to Midway. Given that he had a huge, heavy suitcase and several changes of transportation were to be involved, I volunteered to just drive him down – it was a beautiful day out, anyway. After seeing him off, Paul, Dan and I went to the Midwest FurFest staff meeting which, due to various illnesses and schedule conflicts, was rather lightly attended. This made for a fast meeting, though, and we migrated to the Curragh for one last meal before it closes at the end of the month. The meal reminded me that the best thing about going there on the Monday after MFF has always been that it was the Monday after MFF – the food has never really been all that. The Magner’s Cider on tap helped a good bit, though. Still, it was fun to hang out and chat with hartree, taren_, Puma, mirkowuff, wyldekyttin and Datahawk. After the meeting Paul, Dan and I headed home to lay about and be generally useless for the rest of the evening.

I was a bad boy and skipped going to the gym yesterday, this after skipping all of last week due to some nasty blisters on my heels. Those are all healed up, now, and I intend to go tonight and tomorrow. Thursday night, we’ll be up in Racine since Dan has to work in Milwaukee on Friday and he wanted my company 🙂 Then after work on Friday it’s time for Congenial! I intend to revel in the spirit of the convention, doing exceedingly little and relaxing. Maybe some nice swimming and relaxing in the hot tub, too. I’m quite looking forward to it.

And now, it’s back to making Visio do things that it’s not meant to do. What fun!

Tuesday Linkitude

There’s a real update in the pipeline, but first here’s a couple of links which amused me this morning:

This one’s for posicat, though I’ll bet he already knows: Diane Duane has posted the first chapter to her subscription-only e-book. It’ll be interesting to see how the economics of this work out, and if it is actually worth her time to publish this way.

GAHHHHH! This is not what I need to see in the morning. Tell me again how creepy, bizarre pictures help sell your product? (granted, it gets people to link to your ad, evidently…)

It’s not too late to vote for the worst company in America! The competition has been fierce, and many worthy contenders (Wal Mart, Sprint, Monsanto) have fallen by the wayside, but in the end it’s down to two: Halliburton vs. ChoicePoint. Whose evil will reign supreme?

What’s Alton Brown been up to lately? Check out this twelve-minute podcast (playable in Flash, even!) to hear an interview with him at the Housewares Show in Chicago last weekend. Find out why he adores Shun knives, what Good Eats episodes are in the pipeline (hint: cinnamon rolls is one of them!), and some very cool webcasting plans that are in the works.

It’s not particularly useful, but I find the concept amusing: Wiki on a Stick (How to install MediaWiki on a thumb drive)

And finally, it’s nice to know at least some of the CTA El train operators have a sense of humor.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

And just like that, we go from a lovely, warm weekend to snow. Depending on who you listen to we’re due from anywhere from 1″ to 8 ” of snow, though at this point I expect it’ll be on the lower end of that range. I hit the road early this morning, so I’ll be leaving here early as well, by 2:15 or so. It’s not that I expect that the roads are bad now (last I saw there was less than an inch on grassy areas and the snow wasn’t sticking to the pavement), but I don’t particularly want to stick around to see how bad it gets. The weather isn’t going to help the intricate dance we have to do to make it downtown tonight; we’ll need to be out the door by 6, and takaza usually isn’t home until just shortly before that. We’ll work it out, though.

We’ve been playing host to rasslor this week and it’s been nice having a little extra company around the house. I made a tasty dinner of pork roast, sautĂ©ed potatoes, and steamed broccoli. Nothing fancy tonight – probably a quick trip to the taquiera on the corner on the way. Tomorrow…maybe Buca di Beppo with linnaeus and company, but we’ll see.

Well, time to pack up a few things and then hit the road!

Hmmm…

I’m trying to track down some info, but it appears I need a membership to Orkut to access it. Is anyone a member who wouldn’t mind sending me an invitation? Thanks!

EDIT – Done. Thanks badger and roho!

Coffee Disaster!

Dan got me a wonderful coffee maker for Christmas in 2004, a 12-cup Bodum Santos vacuum coffee maker. The principle is pretty cool, and neat to watch: The water in the lower chamber boils, and all of the steam moves up to the top chamber (where the ground coffee is), where it condenses. After a predetermined period (determined either by time or by a sensor – probably time because it’s cheaper), the heater switches to a lower setting, the water stops boiling, and the condensed steam runs back into the lower chamber, pulled by the vacuum created by the water boiling. It’s all very efficient, and yields a great cup of coffee.

Over the last month or so I noticed that the coffee maker would behave oddly, like switching to boiling (higher-output heat) after the coffee was done brewing; since I immediately decant into a pre-warmed carafe it wasn’t a big deal, but a bit disconcerting. Then yesterday, whatever was wrong came to a head: I turned on the pot, the light indicating the brewing process had started came on, and…nothing happened. No heat at all from the heating element. Aieee! No matter how much jiggling, rattling, or power cycling we try, it makes no difference. I suspect that the internal computer control of the heating element has gotten borked, and there’s probably not a lot we can do about it. Obviously, it’s over a year old so I doubt any warranty would still be in place, though I intend to review the paperwork and maybe even call Bodum, just in case. The sad likelihood is that it’s probably toast. While I have my emergency-backup French press, I really want an electric unit for company and such. I’ll probably suck it up and drop another $100 for another Bodum Santos, but I won’t be particularly happy about it. Also, while I doubt if anyone else has had much experience with problems like these with this unit, I’d be open to any suggestions.

Furrypalooza Weekend!

Good heavens! What started out as a few simple plans became an exhausting, entertaining weekend.

Saturday started off with linnaeus and I meeting up with ramalion and his partner KBear (why doesn’t K have an LJ, anyway?) at the luxurious Renaissance O’Hare (really nice job on that one, steviemaxwell!). After agonizing over whether the weather was going to hold, we decided to go out and try to find two geocaches (the latter was just outside Gino’s East on Higgins, and was made more entertaining by the GE employee eyeing us wandering around with our GPS, then saying, “Did you find it yet? I know where it is, but I’m not going to tell you!”). After a lackluster lunch at Steak and Shake (at least the company was good!), we picked up three more caches. This involved a lot of tromping around through the forest preserve along the Des Plaines River; I need to remember that the reason I don’t wear my boots that often is because they cause blisters, which explains why I had a nasty blister on each heel when we were done. Still, it was worth it – the weather was beautiful, in the 60’s and partly cloudy, and the forest was quite pretty even if it was full of deer crap 🙂

After tromping through the woods, we retired back to our place where takaza was waiting, having wisely chosen to sleep in, and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon, watching some accumulated Tivo goodness (including my newest addiction, Survivorman). Once recovered, we piled into the Blue Box (which seats four comfortably but five rather uncomfortably) and drove down to Ann Sather on Belmont, where we met up with roho, genet, and feren. Dinner was…well, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t terribly exciting. Again, the company more than made up for the food. After dessert and some chatting, we adjourned over to the Briar Street Theater to see Blue Man Group. Wow. What a show. It was a whole lot of fun, and extremely entertaining. Everyone seemed to have a great time, though next time, I’ll definitely get an earlier show than 10 PM – we were all pretty worn out by the time we got home at around 12:30 AM.

On Sunday we had a rather abrupt change of plans (I’m really sorry about that, siriuswolfstar!) and wound up meeting up with Rama and K then making our (somewhat haphazard) way down to the Holiday Inn – William Tell Convention Center in Countryside. There, we met up with unclekage, petercat, and mach. We packed everyone into cars and migrated over to one of the northern outposts of The House of Lard for a tasty breakfast and Apple Pancakes As Big As Your Head. Lots of good conversation and SMOFFing took place. Afterwards, Rama and K took their leave to drive back to St. Louis, we dropped Mach off at the hotel, and Dan and I took Kage and Peter over to Mitsuwa Marketplace where, surprise of surprises, Kage bought some sake. We dropped Kage off at his deluxe hotel accommodations (on the bright side, it looked like he might be able to easily commune with his cockroach brethren), and then dropped Peter off at O’Hare for his flight home, then went home to relax briefly. Dan napped and I played some mindless video games until Paul came home with rasslor in tow. Bob is going to be spending the week with us as he did last year, only this time hopefully he won’t get deathly ill 🙂 Dinner was a rather soggy trip to Charcoal Delight, then I was tired enough that I turned in not long after.

Man, it seems like I need a weekend to rest up from our weekend! It was a blast, though, and the next weekends are going to be fun too, with someone’s St. Patrick’s Day party (I think?) and MFF meeting next weekend, then Congenial the weekend after that. I’m really looking forward to that!

Friday Linkage

Not a lot to talk about today, but a couple of interesting links.

Since I got my iPod, I’ve been having fun with podcasting. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s just recording an audio file (typically MP3) and putting it up for downloading. If you have a program like iTunes (though there are others that do it as well), it will check periodically to see if there is a new file available and download it for you and even upload it to your portable music player. Here are a couple of podcasts that I’ve found that I like (no music player required – you can just download the files to your computer and listen to them there).

National Public Radio has a couple of nice podcasts: Right now I’m subscribed to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (the most recently aired episode) and Story of the Day, but just in writing this I see that there’s a heck of a lot more there to check out. Woo!

There’s also the audio version of the latest Ebert and Roeper At The Movies show.

If you like Celtic music, particularly contemporary Celtic music, Celtic rock, and Celtic fusion, have I got a podcast for you. Celt in a Twist airs weekly on AM 1470, CJVB in Vancouver, BC, and they make their hour-long show available in four parts. Lots of great stuff here – The Paperboys, Spirit of the West, Flook, and Enter the Haggis, among many others.

Finally, woodychitwn pointed me to The Bruiser Chronicles (possibly NSFW). This, to me, is the epitome of the power of podcasting: one guy, just talking about his life and what’s on his mind. The thing is, he’s a personable guy, has a great “radio voice”, and can tell a riveting story. His lengthy story of his encounters with “Bill”, a repressed and vengeful co-worker, is nothing short of astonishing; if it were fiction it would be hard to believe but the fact that he had to live through it is amazing. Along the way, he touches on topics of sexual identity, self-doubt, and self-esteem. This is a show for adults, though; Bruiser is a gay man who is frank about what he likes and doesn’t like and there’s plenty of Bad Words and Sexual Content. It’s definitely worth a listen, though.

Can anyone recommend any other podcasts to check out? I’m always looking for new and interesting stuff.

Since I’m posting a bunch of links today, I’ll also throw in a couple that interested me:
I just added Hungry Magazine to my Bloglines subscriptions. It’s an interesting read anyway, but two great articles showed up today: the McDonalds McArabia (really!), and a nice profile of “The Sausage King”, Doug Sohn, owner and operator of Hot Dougs “Encased Meat Emporium” (with accompanying podcast!).

It’s not too late to get in on Consumerist’s Worst Company in America Tournament!

Finally, if you watch Survivor or The Amazing Race, you really should be reading the hilariously snarky recaps at televisionwithoutpity.com. They cover many other (U.S.) prime-time shows as well, and even have a lengthy recap of the movie Serenity.

Right-o, then. Off to lunch I go! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Dancing Huskies? Not Likely.

Time to play ketchup…and mustard! Nah, just catch-up.

For all that I was hoping to kick off the weekend with a bang, takaza and I agreed on Friday afternoon that we were both tired and we’d just stay in. That was a good thing, since Dan didn’t get home from work until close to 7 PM anyway.

On Saturday, I vowed to get a nice, early start. I got up at 7 and, after morning coffee, headed over to the gym for a full workout. I got back later than I would have liked but almost on time anyway, since siriuswolfstar and rustitobuck were already waiting and chatting with Dan and linnaeus. The five of us walked the few blocks to Tre Kronor, the wonderful little Swedish restaurant near our place. Several different kinds of eggs benedict were ordered (traditional, crabcake, and salmon), and Rusty’s corned beef hash was amazingly tasty (lots of fresh thyme in there helped, I think). All that and fresh-made danishes and strong coffee. Man, I love that place!

Afterwards, Sirius, Dan, and I drove up to Antioch to meet Roho and Genet. We went to see Eight Below (short review: awful script, awful actors, extremely unlikely and over-anthropomorphized canine behavior, but at least the dogs were pretty), then adjourned to their place for the usual pizza and Drunken Apples to Apples. Sunday morning we made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for their Skillets O’ Doom, and then came home and zoned out for the rest of the afternoon.

Yesterday, Dan attempted to start a regimen of going in an hour early to try to avoid having to stay late each might – still get the overtime, just make it a little more bearable. Unfortunately he picked the wrong day to do it, as that was when the monthly forecasts were due, which meant he didn’t get home until a little before 9 PM. Thirteen-hour days suck, indeed. Here’s hoping that the rest of the week won’t be nearly as bad. For tonight, it’s back to the gym for me, and with luck a tasty dinner for us both.

Feeling Happy and Gay!

We went to the volunteer orientation meeting for Gay Games Chicago last night. This is going to be an amazing experience, I think; they’re expecting 12,000 athletes, 80,000 spectators, and are planning for 6,000 volunteers (expecting that only 70% of those will actually show up to work). There’s going to be five athlete villages: University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois-Chicago, Oak Park (for soccer) and Crystal Lake (for rowing). Takaza and I both mentioned out convention experience, though the Volunteer Coordinator seized on Dan’s accounting experience, mentioning that they need someone to head up cash management at each athlete village. He’s kind of ambivalent on that, plus it would probably mean we’d have to work separately, which would suck.

One of the interesting things is that with the huge number of people involved and the placed that volunteers will be going (Opening Ceremonies are at Soldier Field, Closing Ceremonies at Wrigley Field), they’re going to be extremely strict about credentials, and once you’ve been assigned a shift you can’t change it. The deadline for signing up to be a volunteer is June 1 (the games run July 15-22) – after that, you’re out of luck. If anyone in the Chicago area is interested, I urge you to get involved; this is going to be a lot of fun and pretty damn exciting, I think. We’ve signed up to help out at the black-tie-optional fundraiser Night of 100 Champions, which is being headlined by Greg Louganis, “plus others”, on April 22. Even if we’re just moving tables around, it’ll be pretty cool since it’s at the Cadillac Club at Soldier Field. We’ll see what other volunteer opportunities pop up between now and July (they said they had 120 events planned that they’ll need volunteers for).

OK, back to work, and to plan fun stuff to do this weekend. W00t!

Cat Weekends Are Good For Dogs

Yesterday was pretty tough. Work was OK, but I tuned in to watch takaza‘s cousin’s funeral (for those who missed it, Jared was a police officer in Colorado Springs who was killed in the line of duty). Dan went home early to watch it, which is a good thing because it was an extremely emotional and draining service. We spent a good part of the afternoon when I got home watching the funeral procession wind through Colorado Springs (thanks to a webcast by KKTV). I skipped going to the gym because, well, it was better I stay there with Dan. Afterwards, Dan cooked a nice dinner and we watched the final episodes of Monster House.

The weekend was much better. March looks like it’s going to be a busy month, so we decided to make last weekend a “cat weekend” – the kind of days where you say to yourself, “Hey, it’s five o’clock. I should really take a shower.” On Sunday we ventured far enough outside to walk around the neighborhood a little. We checked out the Middle Eastern butcher shop near us (good prices, though I need to find a recipe that uses baby lamb shanks, because they looked delicious!). We also stopped by the coffee shop down by the (former) Kedzie El stop. Man, they weren’t kidding around about station renovation; it only took a week for them to completely level the station. There’s nothing there right now except a bunch of construction equipment between the tracks.

As for the coming week, we have the premiere of the new season of The Amazing Race tonight. Yay! (I love their ads: “It’s a new season! It won’t suck as bad as last season! We promise!”) unclevlad, renniefrog, datahawk, and posicat will be joining us, with dinner provided by the taquiera around the corner from our place. Then tomorrow night right after Dan gets home from work we’ll be going to the Gay Games Chicago volunteer orientation meeting. Yes, we looked at the lineup of events and decided that this would be something that would be a lot of fun to be involved in. And hey, with Anthrocon moved back to June for a year, that opens up a nice hole in our schedule for mid July, so this works quite nicely! I’m excited to see what might be in store, but I’m also realistic. Sure, we have experience running Midwest FurFest, but that’s small potatoes to this (they’ve got 8,000 athletes registered already, with a goal of 12,000 by July). You always need people to take tickets and fill water coolers, and if that’s what they need us to do, it’s all good. I’m looking forward to just being a part of the event.

Not a lot planned for this weekend, but I hope to remedy that. We still need to see Eight Below (and Brokeback Mountain!), and it would be fun to hang out with friends some. But for now, it’s back to work!

And since I’m posting this everyplace else tonight…

Midwest FurFest announces Guests of Honor, theme for 2006

Midwest FurFest
Hyatt Regency Woodfield
Schaumburg, Illinois
November 17 – 19, 2006

Midwest FurFest is happy to announce that the theme for MFF 2006 will be: Midwest FurFest County Fair!

We are also proud to announce our Guests of Honor for 2006:

We are pleased to welcome the talented artist Heather “Kyoht” Luterman. Kyoht’s work has been featured by Australia’s National Dinosaur Museum, and Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books and media. You can see more of Kyoht’s work at her website, http://www.kyoht.com

We also welcome Whitefox (aka Whitey Fawks), noted costumer and co-owner of Arend Studios (http://www.arendstudios.com). You can find examples of Whitefox’s work at any furry convention, and he has created numerous retail, nonprofit, and sports mascots.

Finally, we are happy to be joined by Jen Seng (aka Spunky). Jen is a talented artist and cartoonist whose work has been featured by Sofa Wolf Press, among others. Her work can be found at http://www.toonapalooza.net
————————————————————-
Midwest FurFest is a production of Midwest Furry Fandom, Inc.
For more information go to http://www.furfest.org

Just ’cause

Here, have a rambling entry, just because. I’m feeling better today, even though I forgot to take the heavy-hitting cough syrup (mmm, codeine-licious!) this morning. I’ll stick with the OTC stuff to carry me through the day, I guess.

I’m vastly amused that an innovation from our old stomping grounds in North Carolina has been picked up on a lot of the tech blogs: Taco Bell/KFC Tries Out Touchscreens For Orders. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was one of Takaza‘s occasional lunch stops.

I’m still having fun at WikiFur. If you haven’t created an entry for yourself, well, why not? I’ll be happy to help with the editing and wikification, if needed.

We still need to try out some of the excellent restaurants in our area. Last weekend’s trip to Tre Kronor was a good start, but there’s so much more to try. Hey hartree – you need to come up and help us figure out the Korean BBQ place around the corner from us. It’s gotten rave reviews, but the prospect of navigating all the dishes and condiments is…daunting. I think I need to make a list to work from.

Speaking of restaurants, we’re looking at the possibility of hitting my favorite French restaurant in Highwood this weekend. Anyone care to join us? Plans aren’t set in stone, but if there’s enough interest, we’ll see what we can do. Fair warning: while it’s an excellent value for what you get, it is certainly not cheap! The Gourmet Menu ($32) and Chef’s Creation of the Day ($36) are a steal for a prix fixe meal.

Microsoft Word is the bane of my existence. I’ve successfully managed to crash it eight times in the last two days – either our templates are retarded (quite possibly) or my MS Office installation is borked (also quite possible). I’ll muddle through somehow, though.

Oh, and hi nymphara! Your comments about “the little Nazi” cracked me up, I must say 🙂 I hardly know the guy but my impressions of him have been, um, less than favorable.

OK, I’m off to immerse myself in my iPod and beat on Word some more.

Good Weekend, And Coughing The Night Away

Well, I’m starting to feel a bit better now, so I guess it’s time to update.

The weekend was quite pleasant. After going to the gym on Saturday morning, I bummed around the house on Saturday while takaza was at work. He got home just in time to pick up Linnaeus and I and give us a lift over to The Hopleaf to meet up with mirkowuff and siriuswolfstar. We had a couple rounds of the fabulous Belgian beers The Hopleaf is well-known for, as well as a couple of orders of frites with aioli (mmm, yummy!). We decided to break for dinner at around 6 PM; the first place we tried, L. Woods, told us it was a 60-70 minute wait for a table. Eh, Chicago is a big city, there’s plenty of other options. We instead went to Tre Kronor, a quiet little Swedish place right around the corner from where we live. The menu wasn’t extensive, but it was quite good (and inexpensive!). I had a beef stew with garlic mashed potatoes, and Dan had a sautĂ©ed chicken breast with Jarlsberg and ham. We finished off the meal with a yummy creme brulee as well as a very light chocolate mousse and some good, strong coffee. Excellent. We went back to the apartment and watched a couple of episodes of Dirty Jobs (Mike Rowe is such a cutie!) then Dan and I headed off to bed.

On Sunday, we had a nice lazy morning of laptop geeking, coffee, and Ann Sather cinnamon rolls (thanks Paul!). Then it was over to the Hyatt Regency Woodfield for the first in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year. It was a very useful meeting, and we hammered out a lot of details, though there’s still a good way to go. Afterwards, there was the usual after-meeting socialization in which we firmed up our Anthrocon rooming plans (still need to work on our travel plans, though). Dan was feeling under the weather so he headed home while about a dozen of us drove over to Fuddruckers for an early dinner. Fud gud.

I went to bed with a slight tickle in my throat on Sunday night and woke up Monday with a nasty, hacking cough. Oddly, no sinus problems or the like, just a sore throat and coughing. I felt poorly all day and wound up leaving work a little early to go home and nap. Once Dan got home he took good care of me, cooking up dinner and taking care of laundry. I’m a very lucky guy to have him.

Today I’m feeling better, though the cough and sore throat are still around. Fortunately, we have some excellent cough syrup that really takes care of things for me. No gym for me yesterday or today, though – that would be a bad idea all around, since it’s hard to exercise while you’re hacking up a lung. I’ll have to come in early for a couple days later this week to make up the time lost yesterday, but that’s not too big of a deal. I’m also happy to report that I have a lot more on my plate at work (compared to what was far too little), so I’m feeling a lot more positive about my job today.

Hopefully we should have some major announcements about MFF coming in the next few days – watch here or for those!

WWDTM, or “I blame those damn greedy Alaskans!”

Holy cow, that was fun! Last night, takaza and I made use of our respective Valentine’s Day gifts: Dan got home at 5:50 PM, and we raced out the door shortly thereafter to head downtown for a taping of Wait Wait Don’t Yiff Tell Me, “the NPR news quiz”. Getting there was easy, a short walk to the Brown Line, transfer to the Red Line at Belmont, and then a short walk to the Chase Building at Madison and Dearborn. We made a hurried stop at a nearby Wendy’s for dinner, then got to the auditorium at about 7:15 PM; the doors were only opened at 7 PM and the auditorium was already about 75% full! It wasn’t that big of a space, though – it only seats 400 (here’s a crappy phonecam picture of the stage).

It was a very, very funny show, I have to say (the show we saw should air starting tomorrow, February 18, I believe). If you listen to the show on NPR and enjoy it, you’re hearing maybe half of what is actually committed to tape – some of it is too off-topic, too blue, or just plain too silly to squeeze into the allotted fifty-some minutes. Taping started a little late, at 7:40 or so, and the gang was all there: Peter Sagal, Roy Blount, Jr., Amy Dickinson, Charlie Pierce, and Karl Cassell was even back, fresh from vacation. Peter is crisp, professional, and very smooth and very funny, and Karl was amusing, though mostly business. As for the panelists, Roy came off like your curmudgeonly grandfather, though he still snuck in some wisecracks; Amy had a couple of funny comments, but she really needs to be a bit more forthcoming. The real surprise was Charlie Pierce, who had a wisecrack for every topic and at one point got off on a truly hilarious rant about money-grubbing Alaskans that became a great running gag through the rest of the show. The “Not My Job” guest was the great Chicago harmonica player Corky Siegal, a true character in his own right. He favored us with a couple of impressive “blues harp” performances, at least one of which should make the show.

After the show was over (it took about and hour and forty minutes to tape), they recorded a couple of short segments for what will be the pledge week versions of the show. Because the material had to be “evergreen” (i.e. not topical, since it could be run any time), those segments were mostly pre-written and unfortunately a little more stilted and less funny, but still fun to watch. That was followed with about ten minutes of re-takes, where the various cast members re-did lines and comments that got flubbed or stepped on or were a little inappropriate for airing (Caller: I’ve never heard of The Thistle and Shamrock. Peter: Man, Fiona Ritchie is going to come kick your ass! Director: You can’t say that!). I thought it was pretty cool that Peter and the panelists went out to the lobby to meet and greet after the show, but unfortunately we had to head out due to the lateness of the hour.

Naturally, this was the time that the El had to have problems with signals at Belmont, and we wound up sitting on a Red Line train just south of Fullerton for the better part of a half-hour. At least the Brown Line train went express from Southport to Western to make up some time. We didn’t get home until 11:15 PM or so, and didn’t get to sleep until almost midnight. Five hours is not enough sleep for me. Ugh. I’m dragging today, for obvious reasons, and I may pass on hitting the gym tonight, electing instead to go tomorrow morning.

As for tomorrow? Well, the gym in the morning, of course. mirkowuff is due to join us in the afternoon and we’ll probably hang out with siriuswolfstar as well. And of course there’s the Midwest FurFest staff meeting on Sunday, which will be the big kickoff meeting for 2006. Yay!

Finally, we had so much fun , we’re thinking about going to another taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Tickets are $20, and it’s general admission. It’s on a Thursday night, starting at 7:30 (we’ll be there by 7 PM, though), and typically runs until 9:30 PM. If we go on March 16th, Rasslor can join in the fun (assuming he’s interested, of course). Panelists that night are Adam Felber and Paula Poundstone, plus a Panelist To be Named Later. So, who’s interested?

Wait for my iPod?

As you may have heard, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Seeing that on a typical workday morning, I see takaza for all of five minutes before I head off to work (I go in to get dressed at 6 AM, when he wakes up), and given that there are a number of wonderful descriptions for Dan but none of them include the phrase “morning person”, we elected to exchange V-Day gifts when he got home in the evening. That evening, we both had tooth-rottingly cute cards for each other, and there was a folded-up piece of paper in mine. I opened it up and it was a list of upcoming showings for Wait Wait – Don’t Tell Me, a fabulously funny NPR program recorded right here in Chicago, for me to choose from. Dan then opened up the envelope I gave him with his card to find…tickets to this week’s taping of Wait Wait – Don’t Tell Me. We both burst out laughing. Evidently, we know each other well enough and share the same tastes enough that we got each other the same gift. It works out since Dan hadn’t actually bought the tickets yet, and he made my birthday so lovely that it all evens out. He then cooked up some tasty macaroni and cheese (with lots of thick-sliced bacon! arr num num num) and we had a nice relaxing evening.

Well, sort of relaxing. My iPod has become the bane of my existence. Well, not really; more accurately our MP3 collection has become the bane of my existence. We have about 35 Gb of MP3’s (about 8,300 tracks) that we have accumulated over the last six or seven years. Because they’re from a wide variety of sources the ID3 tags (information in each file that contains artist, album, and song title, plus other info) are of varying quality, from quite thorough to completely blank. With my last MP3 player, this wasn’t an issue because it relied more on the file name so I could usually figure out what I was listening to. The iPod, though, ignores file names and relies completely on ID3 tag information. If I want to, say, play all tracks in a given genre, or by a given artist, I’m out of luck if that information isn’t on a track.

I found an excellent program to fill in the ID3 information on a semi-automated basis. In my first pass I fed it all 8,300 tracks and wound up with about6,100 tracks identified and tagged and 2,200 tracks that had to be identified manually. Well, that wasn’t going to work, plus if I want podcasts and room for new music I was going to have to leave room on my iPod for those, and it only holds 30 Gb. So I sorted through the files and split them into those that I wanted to carry around, and those I could comfortably leave behind, with about 20 Gb of tracks going onto the iPod. I fed those files into MusicBrainz and this was better – after some whittling down, I’m down to about 630 tracks still to be identified manually. I think i can pare that down further, but I expect that in the end I’ll still have to sort through 400 files or so. I’m actually glad of it, though – I’m finding that we have a lot more electronica than I thought we did, and that’s my music of choice when working out at the gym.

Once I get all the files straightened out and uploaded to the iPod, I’ve found a nifty utility that will add album art to the files, which will show up on the iPod display when the track is playing. Then I need to start picking up podcasts; I’ve already got Wait Wait.. and NPR’s Story of the Day subscriptions set up, and I need to go hunting around to see what else tickles my fancy. altivo, I’ll admit I’m a slacker and I still haven’t checked out your podcasts, and woodychitwn had a good recommendation a while ago, though I’m not sure how I’d feel about listening to that while working out 🙂 I’ll have to see what I can find. Oh, and on top of all of this, I just found Azureus, and I’m having a lot of fun playing with it. I’ve found that when you have a flaky wireless connection, though, Bittorrent doesn’t work very well. I need to work on that.

Oh yeah, one more thing…

Genet‘s entry reminded me…I seem to have been added to many people’s Friends’ Lists and I honestly have no idea who you people are! If I’ve met you in person, I understand, but there are a number of names I just don’t recognize. If you could let me know who you are and how you found me, I’d certainly appreciate it. Thanks!

Won’t Get Fooled Again? Shyeah Right.

First off, my birthday came and went on Saturday. Thank you so much to those of you who wished me a happy birthday – it’s a bit overwhelming how my name kept popping up! I’m very fortunate to have such wonderful people around who care for me.

For my birthday, I knew that we were going away for the weekend, but takaza was being cagey about where we were headed. The story gets kind of convoluted from here…

Sometimes, Life Hands You Way Too Many Non-Sequiturs In A Row

Man in Tiger Suit Climbs to Top of Lighthouse, Is Arrested (Bonus link: here’s the guy’s website. We’re starting a collection to send him to web design school.)

Groundhog Day leads to groundhog movie leads to furries leads to Anthrocon. Oookay then. (This is a clip from the little-watched CurrentTV, by the way)

Here, have a Hello Kitty Belt Sander.

Worthy of note…

If you’re planning on going to Anthrocon, note that the Westin Convention Center (the primary hotel) is now 75% full and rooms are going fast. The overflow hotel, the Omni William Penn, is right up the street, but reserving now means you can spend your con in air-conditioned (and non-rained-upon) comfort.

Edit: jadedfox notes that all doubles and queens have sold out for Wednesday night, so all that is left that night is king rooms (if you make a reservation that includes Wednesday night, you’ll be told they’re sold out of doubles and queens for all of the nights, even though they’re not.)

“Don’t mess with me, Porkchop.”

It’s funny – whenever we are planning a weekend getaway, the week before compresses into a bothersome few minutes leading up to our departure time. That pretty much describes this week, though there have been a few notable spots. The first is that I’m getting back into the swing of going to the gym on a regular basis, though I discovered last night that the days that I do my full workout (i.e. cardio + strength training, vs. just cardio) it’s going to take me a good two hours between leaving home and when I return. Which is fine if I get home at 4:15; if I don’t get home until 5, well that kind of sucks. I’ll need to see if I can streamline things, or something. The downside of going back to a full workout routine, of course, is that my entire body aches today. Ah well, the price of progress…

Last night takaza and I stopped by to say hi to daveqat and jimcyl. Jim is definitely looking better, though there’s still some swelling a week after surgery. His jaw is wired shut, though, and will be for the next seven weeks – that’s just brutal. He and Dave have good communication set up between charades, pointing, and a handy Pocket PC. I think I would go insane. We talked about dinner and Jim urged us to go out without him (eating and drinking is a bit of chore for him these days), so we collected siriuswolfstar, and perro and drove down to The Celtic Knot in Evanston for dinner. woodychitwn joined us at the restaurant shortly after. The food was so-so (at least they had Magner’s Cider, though not on tap), but the company was excellent, and it was a very enjoyable meal. For all of my Irish dining needs, though, I’ll still stick with The Curragh in Schaumburg. We took our leave shortly after dinner and wound up going to bed far too late, something for which I am suffering this morning.

Since I’ll be leaving work at 11 AM tomorrow, I’ve been coming in each day at 6 AM. There’s a nice tranquility here at that time. No one else shows up until 6:45 or so, and the cafeteria opens for breakfast at 6:30. The only drawback is that by 2 PM I’m ready to go home. Ah well, one more day and I’ll be done with it.

So tonight, we’ll be finishing off the week’s laundry, packing, and maybe doing a spot of housecleaning. datahawk and moryssa will be crashing with us tonight since they’ll be in the city to see Great Big Sea. We’re passing on GBS this time – they play a great live show but their last two albums haven’t really excited me, and I’m sure they’ll be pulling heavily from them. Plus, very late night at a concert + waking up at 5 AM = very sad Tom. I’m sure they’ll have a great time, though I don’t expect I’ll see much of them.

OK, back to making billions of Visio drawings…