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Tick…tick…tick…

Man, what a crazy weekend.

Friday was not quite as fun as I had hoped it would be. Our department at work was rewarded with a day out to celebrate, um, doing well, or something. OK, fine by me! We met up at the Sears Tower and went up to the Skydeck, then caught the train up to Cafe Iberico. The food there was excellent, the service, not so much. We had a surprisingly good time, though. I suspect the sangria helped.

The next stop was supposed to the Shedd Aquarium, but since I had lost part of a filling the day before, I opted out and headed home instead. Takaza was a complete sweetheart and not only looked up what dentists were covered by our insurance, he also called around to see if they could see me on short notice. He found a dentist within a mile of where we live and at 2:30 or so I was in the chair. As you might have surmised from my previous entry, what should have been a small repair wound up being a root canal. I have four more visits with the dentist before the end of the year – wow, won’t that be fun.

On Saturday, I was up well before Takaza, too damn early, in fact – 6:30 AM, but I couldn’t sleep anymore. After showering and coffee, I was on the road! First stop, up to Wauconda to pick up the staff badges. Trust me, they’re purty. People will really like them, I think. From there it was southwards, first with a detour through Palatine to locate Emmett’s Tavern (this will be useful a week from today!), then to the MFF storage unit in Lombard. There, grabbed all of the Registration equipment we’re going to need.

After that I was pretty much done for the day so I wandered over to Windycon to see how things were going. See, the majority of the MFF security crew provides staffing for Operations and “Adult Supervision” at Windycon, and I got a first-hand look at why they view MFF as their “vacation con”. All I’m saying is that people who complain about how outré furry conventions are have never attended a single science fiction convention. Wow. Anyway, I wound up sticking around for quite a while, and just enjoying the fact that I wasn’t responsible for any of it 🙂 I do hope I didn’t annoy those who were working, and I have to say they were doing every bit of the excellent job one would expect of the fine MFF Security team.

On Sunday, I was again up early, this time for a drive up to Libertyville for an MRI test on my knee. That was dispatched reasonably quickly and then I was headed northwards to Antioch and roho and genet‘s place. We were joined by Neowolf2 and headed over for a tasty brunch (mmmm, Las Vegas Restaurant’s Vegas skillet). Afterwards, we walked over to the little games store and were pleasantly surprised to find that the place had a good stock of games and comics, including Furrlough. Roho also picked up a nice addition to the charity auction: a 24″ tall inflatable Brian (from “Family Guy”).

Then it was back to their place for the reason for the trip: pre-printing staff and dealer badges. Roho did a good job wrestling with the database for a while, but we finally got some very helpful advice from rustitobuck that made things flow much more smoothly. It then took a couple of hours to debug the printers and determine that not only were the color cartridges in them bad, so were the brand-new ones that had been purchased last year. One expensive trip to Wal-Mart later, we got that resolved. After all that, printing was a snap, though one of the printers might have some issues with the paper feed mechanism. These have served use well for five years, but I suspect we may be in the market for new printers next year. (And yes, Ramalion, I’ll be sure to look into top-loaders 🙂

So now it’s Monday, the first day of a three-day week for me. In between wrapping up some documents for work, I’ve been mopping up last-minute details and posting information stuff about the convention. There’s still a lot to do, and a lot to be packed up, but I’m pretty confident that we can get to con with a minimum of stress. After that, well, we’ll see…

Root canals suck. Emergency root canals suck more.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be wrapped around the bottle of ibuprofen.

Stressed/Not So Stressed

And so the week trudges on. Yay.

The last two days were rather stressful. On Monday I was inundated with MFF-related stuff, and tried to get it all cleared away, with mixed success. At the same time the pressure was on at work to get some documents out, and now it appears that they will be up for review next Wednesday – my last day before my MFF “vacation”. I had hoped to leave early that day – I hope it can get through with minimal corrections. In the evening, both Takaza and I were snappish, and we stayed up for too late talking over convention-related stuff with Linnaeus

Yesterday, work was hectic again. Afterwards I had a doctor’s appointment in Vernon Hills (see my next post for that). I didn’t get out from there until 4:45 PM, and in the meantime it appeared that someone has dropped a big ol’ stupid bomb on all of the northern suburbs of Chicago. The expressways were completely stopped, and I wound up having to go off to surface streets, and even then I pretty much had my very-detailed road atlas open because I had to do some exotic navigation*. I didn’t get home until just before 6:30.

Dan had beat me home (that’s pretty unusual), and he met me at the door. After helping me take my jacket off, he led me back to the bedroom and gave me the most wonderful back- and foot-rub ever. And to top it off, he made dinner, too! My husband is pretty damn wonderful, I think. I took a break from MFF stuff for the night and found that helped a lot, too.

So today, it’s back to work, nose to the grindstone, blah blah blah. I have some scheduling to work out (I had everything exactly right, then there was a slight change and someone yelled “JENGA!” and the whole thing fell apart). Still, the reason for the change is a good one and the net outcome is better so I don’t really have any complaints.

* {Take a deep breath} Tri-State (wait in backup) to Edens Spur (wait in backup) to Waukegan Road (wait in backup) to Dundee to Meadow to Shermer to Willow to Patriot to Chestnut to Lehigh to Harlem to Oakton to Central to Howard to Lincoln to Jersey to Kedzie to Carmen to Troy to HOME!

One Last Weekend of Sanity

A week and a half until my head explodes. What fun.

Friday night we bummed around the house and Takaza was kind enough to run down to the corner taqueria for dinner for us and Linnaeus. After dinner and some Tivo goodness, we called it an early night.

I woke up far too early on Saturday morning, at about 6:30. Ick. This gave me time to make coffee, read the paper, and stare at my laptop for a while, which was nice. We had originally intended to meet Roho and Genet for breakfast in Antioch, but Dan was feeling a bit oogie so we delayed our departure for a bit. Instead, we met them in McHenry, where we toured the (small) facility of the charity for Midwest FurFest this year, Wildlife in Need. WiN is a tiny organization dedicated to the rehabilitation and return of injured wildlife. It was formed after the small animal sanctuary that was run by McHenry County Conservation District shut down in 1995. We met Bill and Karen, a very nice couple who handle WiN’s raptors in one of the three or four enclosures in their back yard. Monica, the foundation president, handles waterfowl at her house in Woodstock, and another person handles small mammals at a third location. They only have two raptors right now, and these are the two that will be at MFF: a red-tailed hawk and a great horned owl (I’ll try to post some pictures when I get home). Both of these birds are imprinted and thus cannot be released to the wild, so instead they help with the foundation’s educational efforts.

After a quick tour (in the rain, which started right when we arrived), we had a nice chat about their work, what we were hoping they could do at Midwest FurFest, and what to expect. I suspect that they are going to have a really good time, once they get around the weirdness, and I’m sure they’ll be touring the convention and buying stuff in the Dealers Room before the weekend is over.

Roho and Genet opted to go to lunch with Bill and Karen, but since we had just eaten we instead too our leave to run some errands. We ran into a horrible thunderstorm in Fox Lake (torrential downpour, 1/2″ hail), but then were able to get over to our storage unit, where we picked up a few things we’ll be needing for MFF. Then we made a couple of stops in Antioch, including the always-yummy Antioch Packing House, where Dan got some beautiful strip steaks. From there it was back to the city.

Dan cooked up the steaks when we got home (yum!) and then Paul and I hopped the El over to perromutt‘s place, where we arrived earlier than expected to help celebrate his 27th birthday (oooh, so old. Not). I had a really fun time seeing a bunch of folks, some new, some not. I’d list them all but I have to head home momentarily :-)Both Paul and I started to get tired early, so we took our leave and slogged back home through the pouring rain. At least we had umbrellas!

On Sunday, we have the last in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Good meeting, and we got lots of last-minute details ironed out. I have a ton of work to do over the next week and a half, but once things start it’s all downhill. I have an excellent Assistant Director in Neowolf2, and a fabulous staff that I know I can rely on. Those two things make the prospect of the convention a heck of a lot more palatable.

After the meeting, Dan and I came home and got into a small cleaning frenzy, bringing some order to the living room and kitchen. We ordered some pizza and relaxed for the rest of the night, watching Tivo. All in all, an excellent weekend.

Hey comics geeks!

A friend here in Chicago, woodychitwn, is planning to open a comic book store near Loyola University with his partner. He’s furry, or at least furry-friendly (or would you consider yourself perhaps fringe-furry, Woody?).

He’s doing a bit of market research right now, asking folks what titles they would be interested in. Read his entry and give him some input! They’ll also be doing Internet sales, so you don’t have to be local for this.

Another weekend comes and goes, and the clock ticks…ticks…ticks towards the middle of November. Agh!

So, anyway. We wound up doing very little on Friday night, which was pleasant – it offered some nice time to wind down. Datahawk continued her visit into Saturday, and we spent the day bumming around the house. I made some nice pancakes for brunch. I highly recommend whipping the egg whites – it makes a huge difference in the texture of the finished product. Also, I recommend keeping a can of Saco’s Buttermilk Powder around for those recipes where you just need a little buttermilk. It keeps for months, too.

For dinner, we met Ed and Chouette for dinner at Reza’s. The food was quite tasty, but we found unfortunately that Persian is not a good cuisine for Takaza – too much onions mixed in. Afterwards we walked around a bit and allowed dinner to digest while Chouette talked programming stuff by phone with Hartree. We found a (relatively) new ice cream place on the 5300 block of N. Clark, just up from the Starbucks. They carry ice cream from a small operation in Madison, WI, and it is absolutely divine. I had a hot fudge sundae made with Zanzibar chocolate ice cream (three different kinds of cocoas and almost black), which Dan got a cup of some delicious cinnamon ice cream. Their baked goods looked pretty good too.

Ed and Chouette offered to give us a ride home but we declined, figuring we’d take the Foster bus. Well, we found out too late that the Foster bus had stopped running two hours earlier. Ah well – exercise wasn’t going to kill us. We walked the 2.5 miles home, and it was actually quite pleasant.

On Sunday, Data took her leave. After a suitable amount of procrastinating, lazing about, etc., Linnaeus joined Dan and me in a venture down to Sam’s Wine and Liquors for a, um, pre-MFF reconnaissance mission. Man, one of these days I’ll get out of Sam’s for under $60, but I haven’t managed it yet. I picked up a lovely bottle of apple wine and a bottle of the extremely tasty Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal cognac. We’ll have these in our room at MFF, of course 🙂 Afterwards, we attempted to navigate the zoo that is the parking lot in front of the adjacent Whole Foods Market, leading to many and varied comments on my part on the intelligence of the average driver there and how the world would be improved with their swift and efficient eradication, preferably in the most painful way possible. Nevertheless, we were able to park and we picked up a very tasty bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with basil for dinner. We headed home, cooked up dinner, and life was good.

Today is a nice, slow day, for both Dan and myself (a welcome change for Dan!). He had some car trouble that I’ll let him talk about (since he never seems to post to LJ – {poke, poke}), but all is well. I’ve got some grocery shopping to do tonight, and we’ll probably take at least one evening after work this week to do some shopping in the Schaumburg area; there’s a couple of items that I want to look for around there.

Man, it feels like it’s 2 PM for some reason…

Bring on the Food Porn!

Courtesy of the Chicago blog Gaper’s Block, here are two photo tours detailing excursions into what can only be described as Food Pornography, dining experiences in which all five senses are used in a nontraditional approach to dining.

An evening at Alinea (and an overview of past menus)
Dinner at Moto

These are two of the hottest restaurants in Chicago right now, and with that hotness comes the attendant sticker shock: $160 at Moto and $175 at Alinea. But…damn. Were we a bit more financially flush, I would seriously consider it.

Half of a Useful Weekend

Hmm. Sox tonight, but also Amazing Race. Good thing we have Tivo…

So. The weekend. Saturday was a busy day for us. Takaza got up early (10 AM!) and we made the drive that I know so well up to my employer for the biannual Open House. It was pretty neat, actually – Dan got to see some of what goes into manufacturing tablets and capsules and hopefully got a little better insight into what I’m supposed to be doing up here every day. After the tour I showed up for my timeslot for the department “entertainment booth”, which is to say a toy 4-foot-tall basketball hoop in the middle of a hallway. Compared to other departments (DDR setup with full amp and mixing board, baseball with radar gun, free popcorn) we looked pretty crappy, but the kids seemed to like it when they made a took a couple of shots and got a free trinket. As a nice surprise, on Monday my supervisor instructed me to add the two hours we were there to my timecard, so that was a nice little bit of overtime.

That evening, we picked up unclevlad and gave him a ride to the party in honor of some-event-in-his-life-which-is-not-his-birthday, held at
emrldgirrl‘s place. The party was fun, and I had a good time even though I’ll admit I spent the majority of the evening hiding on the balcony. I don’t want anyone to think this is a criticism of the party, which was fabulous – it’s just that the loud music got to me a bit. That’s my own personal peeve, though; everyone else seemed to be having a good time, so hey – it’s all good. We headed out relatively early at 11 PM, just before the serious drinking started, I’m told 🙂 The blueberry cobbler I made seemed to go over well, so that was good.

Sunday? Well, I had all of the great things I wanted to do on Sunday. In reality, we relaxed around the house and generally were lazy. I did make some peanut butter cookies, which were quite tasty, and made dinner. Dan printed up some Registration postcards for me and was kind enough to grab them on Monday morning on his way to work, then cut them to size, stamp them, and mail them for me. I have the bestest husband!

This week should be a lot less hectic than the last. Datahawk is couch-surfing with us because it works out well for her work schedule; four people living in Linnaeus’ apartment may get a bit close, but I think we can work it out, plus it’s always a pleasure to see her (occasionally) smiling face 😉 On Thursday Dan and I are having dinner with Chouette to celebrate her putting MFF Programming to bed – well, theoretically, anyway. And there’s always more work to do for MFF…

Can’t Sleep, Con Will Eat Me

And so ends a particularly crappy week. Fortunately, the weekend is looking up.

I’ve been spending a lot of time this week working on Midwest FurFest related stuff (yeah, I know – such a shock!). Most of what I needed to order has been ordered, and I’ve already proofed a good bit of it as well; that’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Now it’s down to a lot of small tasks between now and the convention, which thankfully I can split up a bit more between neowolf2 and myself. I’m blessed with a fairly high level of interest from my Registration staff in working again this year – thanks guys! – and a registration server that works well and is even getting some slight improvements. Oh, and the restaurant guide is ready and just needs final proofing before being sent off for formatting and printing. Things are definitely going well.

Takaza was in training all week – his company is rolling out SAP companywide and his region is one of the pilot regions. They are so abundantly screwed, but that kind of goes hand in hand with SAP. Anyway, my poor wuff has been in training from 7:15 AM – 5:15 PM each day, then having to go back to the office and work another couple of hours. On the bright side, since he’s hourly he’s racking up a lot of good overtime. For me it’s been a pretty quiet week at work, but that lets me work on, um, outside projects. For instance, I was able to rewrite much of the travel information for the MFF website, incorporating a lot of the comments that I got last year. I sent it off to Puma just a short while ago, so it may be a bit before it goes up (if there’s links to hotel, air, train, and driving info at the top of the page, that’s the new page).

Tomorrow is the open house for my job, for which Dan and I will be here. Normally I would have skipped it, but it will offer some neat tours of tablet and capsule manufacturing and packaging, and it’s something I know Dan will enjoy. After that it’s off to a small get-together. And Sunday? Gloriously, nothing is planned! We’ll see if it stays that way, of course…

Oh yeah, the rest of the week…

So, there was indeed life after FRAC, which I sadly have failed to document (and I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seats, oh yes).

After breakfast last Sunday (10/9), Takaza and I decided to opt out of any planned entertainment and head on home. We crashed hard when we got there; I napped for about an hour, and Dan slept for a good four hours. We had a small dinner after that then went to bed early.

Last week wasn’t too exciting. The big deal for me is that I started the Midwest FurFest Registration Buying Season, in which I spend thousands of dollars of other people’s money, yay! I placed the first few orders and visited with one of my vendors on Thursday after work. That visit was conveniently-timed, since I was able to go from there (in Wauconda) down to Schaumburg. I stopped by Ikea to pick up some nice (and cheap!) wine glasses, then it was over to Fuddruckers for the LAFF Western Suburbs Dinner. I admit I was a bit anti-social and mainly chatted with folks out in the parking lot, primarily because I couldn’t deal with the soccer team of 6-8 year old girls who were sharing the dining room with us. I had a good time, though.

We relaxed around the house on Saturday and I got some MFF-related work done. Then siriuswolfstar came over and I made a hyooge pot of chicken and dumplings. mirkowuff joined us later in the evening and Dan commemorated the moment by making a batch of yummy Good Eats chewy chocolate chip cookies.

On Sunday, it was it was the MFF staff meeting. Typically, the meeting was over in an hour, and the after-meeting chat lasted twice that. It was a very useful meeting, and we got a lot hashed out. I’m still working on a good location for Registration on Thursday night of the convention – we’ll see what layouts I can come up with. Afterwards we migrated over to Portillo’s for dinner, then went home and vegged out for the rest of the night, eventually going to bed by 9 PM because we’re old and boring that way 🙂

As for this week, it’s more ordering and more preparation for MFF. We’re now inside of a month, and I’m really trying to keep my stress level lower this year. Dan, bless his heart, puts up with me, but it’s not fair for him or linnaeus to have to deal with my crabby self for the next few weeks. We’ll see how successful I’ll be…

Observations

Funny, but when I play Blue Man Group on the drive in, I always seem to get to work a good five minutes faster. This probably not a good thing.

Also, happy commemoration of the day on which you entered the world and started down the road to pain, sin, taxes, and, eventually, death to roho, yotogi, and gatcat!

Happy birthday {stomp} Happy birthday {stomp}
Doom and gloom and dark despair
People dying everywhere
Happy birthday {stomp} Happy birthday {stomp}

Well, that was a fun weekend!

Another weekend, another party. After much planning and preparations, Wuffmeet II came and went last weekend, and everyone seemed to have a great time. This time around we were at the Courtyard By Marriott in Glenview, IL. It was a nice hotel, but the general agreement seemed to be that the La Quinta in Hoffman Estates had more comfortable rooms. Unlike the La Quinta, which only has an outdoor pool, the Courtyard had a nice indoor pool and hot tub which was quite lovely, especially on Saturday night when our group was the only one in the place (the three(!) wedding parties that we were sharing the hotel with were partying hard elsewhere, I guess. Fine by me). This time around we tried a conference room as the general gathering area, and which it worked OK, certainly a space with sofas and more comfortable furniture would be preferred. We’ll look into that for future gatherings.

Thanks to everyone who attended: Aeto, Cheetah, Cobaltfox, Datahawk, DaveQat, Hartree, jimcyl, Linnaeus, Mirkowuff, moryssa, Mistletoe, wooisme, Neowolf2, Posicat, Ralkor, rcking, Rolliebear, Rustitobuck, Siriuswolfstar, steviemaxwell, Stormdog, UncleVlad, werellama, and Wyldekyttin. As usual, takaza did a fabulous job planning and purchasing all of the food and drink, and I’m happy to report that we pretty much broke even, which is exactly where we wanted to be. Takaza also did a fantastic job of keeping me sane 🙂

After seeing the walking dead attempting to have breakfast yesterday morning, we’re considering only holding these parties on three-day weekends, though. After staying up late on Saturday night (or well into Sunday morning, for some), check-out time on Sunday morning comes punishingly early. Plus, two days is just too short! Well, we learn as we go, and each party gets better.

In addition to the party, we introduced FRAC: Furries Race Across Chicago!, a combination race, scavenger hunt, and puzzle game. I’ll post more about that later today…

See, this is why I like organizing events – it lets me get all of my recreational stress out of the way. Yeah, that’s it. I woke up with a coughing fit at 3:20 AM this morning and was unable to get back to sleep, though I might have dozed slightly between 4:30 and 5, when the alarm went off. Don’t ask what I was worrying about, it was all silly stuff (did we remember to do X? Do we have enough Y?) that was quickly dispatched with a few questions once takaza woke up. It’s safe to assume that I won’t be staying up late tonight.

And now there’s the long day ahead. I wish I was buried in work, so the day would fly by. Sadly, I’m not so much buried as I have work up to about my ankles. There’s a few nice things about being underemployed, but boredom on the job is not one of them.

As long as I’m whining, I’ll throw this out: what the heck is going on with morning traffic? Back in the summer, leaving the house at 6:10 AM got me here by about 6:40 or so. It seems that since about the beginning of this month traffic at that early hour has really increased, to the point where it was stop and go on I-94 (Edens Expressway) this morning, and I got here at 6:50. Yeah, it’s just another ten minutes, but where the heck are these people coming from, and why are they out so early? And, most importantly, why can’t they GET THE F**K OUT OF MY WAY?

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, that’s what’s going on right now. Long day, but the fun starts at 3:30 PM!

I Love the Smell of Toner in the Morning!

Wow, I just love these mornings when I come in at 6 AM. Well, usually. This morning the lovely hour before anyone else shows up was spent fighting network printers and trying to print up the 160 (!) postcards I need to send out. Well, I got the job half-done, anyway – the rest I’ll have to do at home, on our laser printer that isn’t really fond of cardstock. Oh well.

So, it’s been a few days since I last posted, it would appear. On Friday, we joined linnaeus, rustitobuck, and muganga in seeing Serenity. The experience was much-improved over the preview that we saw earlier this year – much better music, and improved effects. I thought that they changed around one of the scenes at the end, but I may be wrong.

Saturday, we bummed around the house and worked on some party planning and MFF stuff, then Hartree showed up. We grabbed a tasty dinner at Charcoal Delight, then bummed around the house for the rest of the evening, chatting. Sunday brought sparsely-attended MFF staff meeting, but we nailed down a few useful things there. Afterwards, mirkowuff came back to the apartment and we ordered some sammitches. Tasty.

This week has been so-so. I finally shook off the cold/whatever I had picked up, but I had a lingering cough that was kicking my butt and keeping me awake at night. That finally seems to be subsiding, though, much to my relief. So now it’s back to planning for the upcoming gathering this weekend and MFF stuff as well. I’ll be much happier once I can get all of the stuff I need to get ordered for MFF taken care of, which should be by this time next week. I hope.

Back to work!

Tasty Dinner and Busy Weekend

Last night’s dinner was perfectly fabulous, I must say. We tend to get into a bit of a rut with the same-old, same-old menus (pork chops, sauteed chicken breasts, burgers), so I tried to break out a bit. I poked around America’s Test Kitchen‘s recipe archive and I found an excellent recipe for pan-roasted chicken with a sage and vermouth sauce. I really like how nice and browned the chicken came out, and the sauce was relatively simple and quick. I’ll append the recipe below since ATK seems to demand you register just to access the recipe.

This week has dragged by slowly. Dan had some kind of nasty upper respiratory infection and initially it looked like I caught it too, but since I never developed a fever I guess it was just a nasty cold. It’s all but gone now, leaving me with a slight cough and sore throat and a rather hoarse voice. I’m sure it will all be over with by the end of the weekend.

Registrations for Midwest FurFest are pouring in as people try to beat the 9/30 deadline for cheap registration, and this makes me very happy. After the slow start in getting online registration up earlier this year I was concerned that our overall attendance might take a hit, but all that seems to have happened is people put off registering until the last minute. This is confirmed by the rate at which people are reserving rooms at the hotel. A word of warning: last year we came extremely close to selling out the hotel; this year I would not be surprised if we did in fact sell out. More importantly, as the hotel fills up, certain types of rooms become harder to get (i.e. double, king, whichever) and not being able to get one type or the other can really throw a wrench into people’s plans. Take my advice and reserve now.

Looking ahead to the weekend: Well, there’s Serenity tonight, of course. Tomorrow I have a ton of MFF stuff to work on, and rumor has it that we’ll be joined by hartree. Sunday is the MFF meeting, and while we’re out that way I want to duck into Ikea for a few things.

As promised, here is the recipe for Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sage-Vermouth Sauce:

Kennel cough?

Well, that was actually a pretty productive weekend. Our agenda was pretty short, since takaza has been fighting an upper respiratory infection (or as linnaeus called it, “kennel cough”) for the last few days and so was not up for a whole lot. On Friday, Datahawk joined us after work and he had a pleasant evening of chatting, tasty pork chops, and (heaven help us all) We {heart} Katamari, the sequel to Katamari Damacy. Paul was off for an early bike ride thing so he turned in early and we were all pretty tired so we turned in around 10 PM. Sorry we couldn’t join you, Woody – it sounds like it would have been a fun time!

On Saturday I met up with partran and we walked around Little Italy for a bit, then caught a bus up to Wicker Park and walked around there some. I looked lustfully at some recumbent bikes but they didn’t have anything in stock for under about $2,200. Yeah, I’m thinking not. There’s a place up in Niles that has a pretty lenient test ride policy – I need to try them soon and see what their prices were like.

On Sunday, Dan was feeling well enough to go in to work to catch up on some of the work he’d missed. In the meantime I enjoyed the quiet apartment and got a lot of work done on Midwest FurFest stuff (sorry about all those e-mails, neowolf2!). I still have a ton of work to do on the Restaurant Guide, but otherwise I’m in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, while I was working all afternoon I started to get a tickle in my throat that blossomed into a full-on sore throat. Last night I slept very poorly, with lots of sinus problems and coughing. I’m getting by today, but I think the pseudoephedrine I took is starting to wear off; fortunately I brought more. I’m going to hold off on calling the doctor unless I’m actually running a fever – she can’t really do much besides treat the symptoms anyway, and we have meds for that. Now, if I can just keep from falling asleep…

For Want of a Nail

So I stopped by the Illinois Secretary of State‘s (aka the Department of Motor Vehicles) office yesterday afternoon, because I’m a masochist or something. Actually, it’s because Dan’s car still has North Carolina license plates, and they expire at the end of the month. So I went in to find the place blissfully uncrowded. I got the forms needed and started to fill them out, until I got to the line: FILL IN YOUR IL DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER. Um, whoops. See, I’ve never quite gotten around to getting an Illinois driver’s license, even though I’ve been here for about a year. Heh. My bad.

Well, the Drivers License office was right next door, so I figured what the heck? I opened the door and was shocked to see that it, too was uncrowded. I was directed to a large, unsmiling man who asked me what I wanted and what documentation I had. I handed him the bundle of papers I had, he looked through it and said, “Where’s your Social Security card?” Aw, crap. I haven’t seen my Social Security card in more than five years. And if it’s still around, it’s somewhere in our storage locker – good luck.

So now it looks like I need to come in a early one day next week and leave by 2:30 PM so I can get to the Social Security office in Waukegan before they close at 4 PM. There’s an office right near us in Chicago, on Lawrence between Western and Damen, but it too closes at 4 PM. And me with a 40-60 minute commute to get there? Yeah, I’ll go to Waukegan. And theoretically all of this needs to get done by the end of the month. Um, yeah. We’ll see.

Television Made Me Stupid

This past weekend was pretty good, actually. I declared on Friday that, dammit, we were going out for dinner. After a year of driving past L. Woods Restaurant on Lincoln in Lincolnwood (right by the dreaded Purple Hotel), we agreed that it was time to check it out. Now, I’ll admit I had some trepidation – the place always seems packed, and it was a Friday night. A quick check on Metromix showed that the entrees were in the $8-15 range, and that it was a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant (a local chain of restaurants that are pretty much excellent in quality). Takaza phoned and we were told that they took call-ahead seating (i.e. put your name on the list before you get there) so we were off!

We were seated immediately, but the menu…well, $8-15 isn’t quite accurate. I’d say $15-30 is more like it. Not awful, but not what we were looking to spend, either. Fortunately, they had a small section (“The Lighter Menu”) that was essentially their lunch menu for dinner – $10 or so entrees. Hmm, that might work. Dan had the bacon cheeseburger, and I opted for the beef brisket sandwich. Both were OK, but the mashed potatoes that came with mine were excellent, and worth coming back for. The real draw that will bring us back are two things: Sprecher sodas on tap (root beer, cream soda, and orange cream soda), and cooked-to-order desserts. We got the large apple strudel ($12, serves 4) that was divine. I’d also like to try their “Ooey-Gooey Chocolate Cake”. I’m also intrigued by their “Supper Club” menu for six, which is $28 per person for a whole lot of food! (Granted, as Linnaeus points out, for $28 per person you could go to Sal e Carvao or Fogo de Chao, too…).

Saturday was pretty mellow; Dan had to work and I took care of some Midwest FurFest-related stuff, then attempted to take his car over to the nearest Currency Exchange to get new plates. I had the bright idea that I’d avoid the lines at the DMV by taking care of it there, but I didn’t account for the extra $45 they wanted to charge in service fees, on top of the $78 for new plates (they also expected to sell me a new title, but I’m not certain that’s necessary. More research needed on that). So that idea got aborted. That evening, Paul and I had the bright idea that socializing would be good so we went over to LAFF bowling (Dan was smart and stayed home). You know, there’s not much to say; we went, we bowled, we left. There may have been stuff that went on with the rest of the group, I have no clue. We pretty much just stuck to our lane and drank beer 🙂 My bowling was awful, though, and between knee and back problems I dropped out after two games.

On Sunday siriuswolfstar came over early and he and I drove the circuit around Woodfield Mall to collect the last of the information for the MFF Restaurant Guide. His help was very much appreciated! The MFF staff meeting went well and was quite productive. Dinner at Fuddruckers afterwards was quite tasty, and the conversation was quite entertaining and informative.

Not a lot happened yesterday – went to work, did laundry, and we watched the latest Monster House, which I swear is getting more and more stupid (“Let’s see how badly we can bitch up these poor saps’ house!”). Since Paul and I have read Anthony Bourdain‘s excellent book of the same title, we also decided to watch the premiere of Kitchen Confidential on Fox. We made it through about 18 minutes of it before we turned it off and deleted it from the TiVo. Yeah, it was that bad. Think all the stupid parts of “Hell’s Kitchen” meets “Sex and the City” with a dash of every stock sitcom character you’ve ever seen, with awful, self-conscious dialogue.

I’ll be coming in at 6 AM for the rest of the week to make up for the afternoon I’m taking off on Thursday (to be detailed in a later entry). And on Wednesday, Dan and I are going to an eye doctor that woodychitwn recommended so I can get both new glasses (my current ones are five years old and scratched all to hell) and finally get some prescription safety glasses. Hopefully the doctor will be as cute as advertised 🙂 And now, back to that aforementioned work!

Due to the proliferation of Brazilian steakhouses, chophouses, and carnicerias in Chicago, Mayor Daley has been forced to declare a state of emergency. Dozens have died in horrible cases of meat exhaustion.

Yes, it’s a meatwave!

Run Silent, Run Deep?

I’ve been accused of running silent for the past few days (hi Mom!) so I guess it’s time to bring everyone up to speed on what’s going on in my life.

First and foremost, I’ve been worrying about my Dad. As I mentioned in my last entry, he’s in the hospital recovering from a repair of a repair of a repair to his back surgery. The good news is that he seems to be recovering nicely, and I’m hoping may be out of the hospital as early as next week. My mom and my sister have been busting their butts keeping him in good spirits, cooking dinners for him, and generally making sure he’s got the best possible care. It kills me that I can’t be there helping, but time and money and circumstances prohibit.

We actually had a pretty busy weekend. Takaza, Linnaeus and I spent Saturday walking around a whole lot in preparation for a event we’re working on in October. Preparations went well and I’m confident that folks will really have a good time. We had a lot of fun but unfortunately I’ve confirmed that I have weak arches or some such because my back was a complete mess by the end of the day (and my left knee wasn’t so hot either). I’m going to need to see a doctor about this sooner than later, and I’m hoping the resolution isn’t going to be more of the “Lose weight ya fat bastard” sort of thing.

I spent a good portion of the day Sunday resting my back, but Dan and I finally headed out late in the afternoon and spent the better part of four hours doing research for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. The idea was to pare the radius of restaurants listed from five miles down to two miles. Just lopping off the list at the two-mile mark cut about 20 restaurants, though a few were added back (Outback, Gameworks, etc.). We covered about 75% of the area (still need to do Woodfield Mall and its environs) and wound up crossing off 3 or 4 restaurants that closed and added a good 20-30 restaurants that hadn’t been listed before. Yikes! We’re going to have to take a hard look at that list and decide either to cut back the radius or be more selective about the restaurants we list (probably the latter – do we really need to list all four Quizno’s in the area?).

Last night was a nice change of pace. I got a call on the way home from daveqat informing me that I really needed to stop by their place to pick up something. That something turned out to be a belated birthday present, a very nice cheese board, a nice set of knives and little cheese label thingies. It was a lovely gift, and very thoughtful of them. We hung out and chatted at their place for a while, then were joined by tecknow. We all went out to Tom Yum, a little sushi/Thai restaurant a few blocks from our apartment (though Dan and Paul bowed out from dinner). The food was pretty good, the service appalling. A nice reminder of why I only get take-out from there. Fortunately, the dinner conversation was entertaining and I had a really nice time.

As for the rest of the week, we don’t have a lot planned. I might have to work late on Friday (yay overtime!) and Dan might have to work this weekend – we’ll see. I’m hoping to maybe hang out with friends, because I feel like I’ve been a bit of a hermit of late. Who knows? We might even show up at LAFF Bowling this month. And of course there’s also the Midwest FurFest staff meeting on Sunday – lots of fun to be had there!

Well, back to work I go…

Holy cow

This is a first. Fox News actually broadcast the unvarnished truth last night, and it’s not a pretty picture for Our Fearless Leader. I’ve never had much use for Geraldo Rivera, but he is absolutely compelling here, and Shepard Smith does a good job showing Sean Hannity’s obfuscations for what they are. Just watch the clip.

For a Friday, this sure seems like a Monday

First, let’s get the whinging out of the way: I need a new pillow, I think. I woke up this morning at around 2:30 AM with a headache (neck strain, most likely) and slept fitfully the rest of the night because of it, never waking up quite enough to get up and take some ibuprofen for it. When I did get up at 5, I had to make the coffee twice, because I hear the coffee tastes better when you remember to actually add the coffee grounds to the coffee maker. And just when I thought the day might pass uneventfully, I heard from takaza that there has been a fiber cut to his employer’s building, so they’re without phone or connectivity and he’s left to twiddle his thumbs until they work it out (just got an e-mail from him – they’re back up. Good).

All of this, of course, is completely meaningless and insignificant compared to what is going on down on the Gulf Coast. There’s plenty of discussion and finger-pointing and speculation going on so I don’t see much need to add fuel to the fire except to say let’s tend to the living and bury the dead first, folks. It’s a question of priorities. It’s worthy of note that, according to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the city worked to get everyone who couldn’t get out into central locations and then…the system failed. No one appeared to ship them out to safe locations, and so there many of them have stayed. Make no mistake, I believe there should be some serious analysis of what happened, just…not now. Not yet.

Down in the Delta

Something that some folks may not know about me: after high school (so long ago, in 1986), I didn’t want to just move on to Clemson University. At that time, it just seemed that all of the people I knew from my high school in Anderson, SC (15 miles south of Clemson) were going there, so I was afraid it would just be high school writ large. No, I wanted broader horizons. I received a nice package of grants and loans from Tulane University in New Orleans, and that is where I went for my first year and a half of college. I have a lot of fond memories from there:
– The horrid freshman dorm. Fourth floor, Sharp Hall.
– Marginal improvement the next year, second floor, Butler Hall
– Sunday morning brunch in Bruff Commons (not good food, but pleasant at the time)
– Broadcasting the Global Folk Show on Sunday mornings on WTUL-FM
– Video production with TUVAC, producing a weekly issues discussion show for public access TV
– The massive toy-gun shootout that ranged the length and breadth of McAlister Auditorium
– Seeing Andreas Vollenweider, Bruce Hornsby, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Hunter S. Thompson (the latter completely drunk out of his mind) at McAlister Auditorium
– Plum Street Snowball stand. That wasn’t a sno-cone, that was heaven.
– Audubon Park Zoo, right across St. Charles from Tulane
– Mardi Gras. Good gods, Mardi Gras.
– All the great music at the clubs: Beausoleil, File’ Cajun Band, The Godfathers…
– Fridays afternoons on the Quad. The Song Dogs, Harry Connick, Jr., Winter Hours, The Radiators…
– Working as a dispatcher/student marshal for Tulane Police. I saw every inch of that campus, and then some, and met some great people.
– Cafe du Monde, Dixie Beer, barbecued crawfish (suck the head and pinch the tail, y’all!), muffalettas, and po’boys

And now? Most, if not all of that is under water. Officially, Tulane University has said they won’t start classes until September 21, but I saw one blog that had a tip from a Tulane employee speculating that it may be next year before they can start classes again.

They’ll rebuild. There is no doubt in my mind. It won’t be the same, but that’s OK. Everything changes, and I’m sure very little was still the same from the last time I set foot in the city seventeen years ago. But I do believe they will come back, in time.

That’s in the future. For the present, there are millions of people that need help. They need your help. Stop what you’re doing and think: what if you had to leave, right now? What would you take? What would you leave behind? Where would you go? What if what you thought you could come back to was gone, obliterated?

Think about that. Then click on one of these links. Even if it’s just a few dollars, every little bit will help. The American Red Cross donation page (site is very slow). Americares donation page (small but very effective charity). Humane Society of the United States donation page (mounting a rescue effort for pets and caregivers). Or select some other charity that you prefer, but seriously: do something.

Home Again and Big Blows

So, back in Chicago. I had a lovely weekend at my parents’ in South Carolina. My dad is recovering well from all of the back surgeries and is up and about, walking (well, for short periods anyway) for the first time since April. Mom is holding up well too, though I hope my visit provided some short respite. I had a strange moment of deja vu as I drove to their house from the airport at 12:30 AM on Friday night, realizing that 20 years earlier, in 1985, I would have been driving that same road in my F-150, coming home from hanging out at friends on a Friday night. And it’s scary how little has changed in the last 20 years, at least out in the country where they live.

As with so many people, New Orleans is on my mind this morning. I admit that I’ve watched a lot of CNN and The Weather Channel over the last few days, remembering the times we’ve watched and waited in North Carolina, and remembering what it was like when Hurricane Fran hit in 1996. Fran was still a Category 3 hurricane when it blew between Raleigh and Durham, and the devastation was staggering. I can’t imagine living in an area below sea level and having a storm as strong or stronger coming through. My thoughts and hopes are with the people down there and especially those I know with family there – rustitobuck and genet. Here’s hoping everyone pulls through safely. And hey, goodluckfox – keep your head down and take care!

BoingBoing has some good links to blogs from folks down there. I’m keeping an eye on this one, written by a reporter holed up on the third floor of the Times-Picayune building.

“Play the one that goes deedly-deedly-deedly!”

I seem to be drifting a bit this morning, having trouble focusing on one project at any given time. I do hope this passes soon. Not that I have any huge plans for the day besides stopping at the grocery store for dinner, but it is a trifle disconcerting.

So on Saturday Dan and I drove up to Irishfest in Milwaukee. For all that it was their 25th anniversary and they brought back a lot of fine performers, I found the schedule strangely unappealing. The company was good, though, as we were joined by datahawk and linnaeus, and even briefly by roho‘s sort-of-cousin Laurie. I did get to see brief flashes of some excellent performers, but there was a lot of dreck there too; there’s only so many times I’m going to hear “Danny Boy” before I start wanting to beat someone with a mic stand.

While it was a pleasant surprise to see Schooner Fare there, that too was something of a letdown. I first saw them a good eighteen years ago, performing at Wolf Trap in Virginia. They were amazing, and a real treat to see live. To their credit, they’re still in fine voice after all these years, but one of their members passed away last year and as a duo they really lack of the punch they once had. We did see the majority of the performance by Wolfstone and as always their instrumentals far outshone their songs. I could rant about the annoying woman and her even more annoying child who were sitting next to me, but the less said about them the better.The joys of festival seating. Ugh. Dan and I packed it in at around 7 PM and went home and crashed.

Sunday was the August Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Planning continues apace, and the meeting went well. A lot of unresolved questions were answered, and we worked through some outstanding issues. Dinner afterwards at Fuddrucker’s was quite tasty, too! After dinner, Dan, Paul, and I drove to one of the possible hotels for an upcoming shindig and it looks like we might have a real winner. After a brief stop, we headed home and crashed for the evening.

More to write about, but it’s lunchtime now!

Addictions

giza seems to have gotten me addicted to WikiFur. I have to admit, I never really saw much use in wikis but I’m now starting to understand. This is a fun collaborative tool, and it lets you play at being both an author and an editor. Click on over and take a look – you may find that someone’s already written an entry about you 🙂

Sort of back and IRISHFEST!

Well, the good news is that they finally got the work computers back up. The bad news is that my laptop goes out today via FedEx so any computer access I have at home is on borrowed equipment. Safe to say, don’t look for me on ICQ or AIM anytime for the next week or so.

So this coming weekend is Irishfest in Milwaukee. I’m planning on heading up there on Saturday, leaving Chicago at around 10 or 10:30. Anyone interested in joining me, or meeting up at the Fest? Tickets are $12. I’ll be sticking around until at least 10 PM or so.

Home Early, But That’s Not Good

So, thanks to our good friend Zotob, I left work today at about 1 PM. Given that pretty much every single computer at my employer was affected and given that everything we do is based around writing and editing information that’s stored on the network, well, there hasn’t been much since all of the computers started shutting themselves down yesterday at about 1 PM. There were large signs everywhere and announcements this morning not to turn on your computer, and from the memo that was distributed at around lunch time, it doesn’t look like this is going to get fixed until at least late tomorrow or maybe Friday.

If I were a full-time employee, this would be great, but being a contractor, well, if I’m not there, I don’t get paid. I snuck out early anyway since I need to back up my laptop. Yes, I’m finally getting around to sending this thing in for repairs – it only took a month to get around to it 🙂 Anyway, I’ll make up the tie by going in early tomorrow and Friday, though I hope I can come up with stuff to do in the meantime.

Standard Weekend Recap #912

Saturday, the plans were simple: have lunch with Takaza‘s mother to belatedly celebrate her 60th birthday. As a gift we were going to add some components to her computer and get everything running again. Sounds simple, right? Heh heh heh…

First, there was a trip to Cyberexchange in Vernon Hills to get a CD-RW. We had an external CD-RW that Dan got for free from work but it was a USB-driven unit and Dan’s mom’s computer is an older box running Windows 98, therefore all it has is slow USB 1.1. The CD-RW’s they had in stock were too expensive and the owner was reluctant to take the CD-RW we had to trade (come to think of it, we still haven’t heard back on how much he’s willing to offer). Eh – we picked up a SoundBlaster Live card since her sound wasn’t working either and resolved to figure out a way to get Win 98 to recognize the CD-ROM that was already in the computer. We arrived only a little late at 2:30 PM and proceeded to spend the next four and a half hours banging our heads against the wall trying to get everything up and running. It was frustrating, but in the end we got everything working! Of course, the birthday lunch had now turned into a birthday dinner, but that was OK.

Dinner was at a little Italian joint between Crystal Lake and McHenry. The food was OK but clearly…well, would it be too snobbish to say “It was good for McHenry County”? After dinner we headed back home, with a quick stop at Culver’s. I had a taste for their lemon ice, but I was dismayed to find that they started making it with Splenda so now it has that nasty chemical aftertaste. Phooey! I settled for a concrete and we drove home, pausing briefly to admire the fireworks at Lakemoorfest on our way through the town.

Sunday, Dan wasn’t feeling well, having had a bad reaction to the previous night’s dinner (as had I, but that’s because I was stupid and forgot that I should always take an antacid before bed after a dinner that has tomato sauce). We got a late start, but Dan, Linnaeus, and I drove around the northwest suburbs scouting out hotels for an upcoming shindig. We found some good possibilities, but probably the most surreal moment was the tour of a certain hotel which shall remain nameless (hint: it rhymes with Schmingate Inn). The manager took great pride in his hotel, but there’s such a thing as too much pride. We got a tour of the rooms, a description of the granite countertops, assurances that the furniture was sturdy, Canadian-made stuff, and the many and varied television stations they carried. And to top it all of, after we mentioned we had stayed at a sister location a few miles down the road: “I don’t want to put them down or say we’re better than them. I mean, they’re friends of mine and we work together all the time. But we’re really a much better property.” Heh. Right. After that we retired back to the apartment and spent a relaxing evening watching Tivo and reading. And that was our exciting weekend, woo.

This week it looks like we’re going to have some company over for dinner on Thursday (hopefully), and maybe do some touring around the city on Friday afternoon/evening. Saturday is IrishFest (I’ll be posting more about that soon) and Sunday is the Midwest FurFest staff meeting at the Hyatt Woodfield. Lots to do!