Category Archives: video games

This is a low-activity weekend? I’m not doing it right.

I needed a laid-back weekend, and that’s exactly what I got! Both Saturday and Sunday I was able to just relax each morning, read the news, listen to some nice music, and enjoy my coffee. It was lovely! I even slept in a bit, which is unusual for me. Definitely it was something I needed to reset myself a bit after dragging horribly all last week.

On Saturday takaza and I checked out the site for the MFF Summer Picnic (on June 20 in Prairie Spring Park, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin). Nice fields, and the shelter is a bit cozy, but I think it will work. We also stopped to watch a neat Jet-Ski freestyle competition, part of the Great Lakes Watercross Tour.

As we were checking out the park, I got a text from fordshepherd. He, baja_hyena, and friends were doing a Wine Country tour and were right up in the area where we had toured last year. After hearing about their experiences at somewhat lackluster wineries, I suggested they check out Peju Winery, which was one of our favorites. Score! It sounds like that wound up being one of the best places they stopped at. Baja was also kind enough to send what sounds like a very tasty white port home with Ford for me, something that was very sweet and unexpected. Thanks again, Baja! 🙂

We capped off the day with a trip with linnaeus and Tom J. to the McHenry Outdoor Theatre to see Up. Wow, what a great movie! I really enjoyed it, and it was an amazing night to be out watching a movie – crisp, a steady breeze fending off the bugs, and a lovely wine and cheese spread to start the evening. Just a great evening. (Also, to paraphrase Nathan Fillion: How to test if your date is a robot. Take them to see Up. If they don’t cry, robot!)

Sunday, we met up with Paul, roho, and genet at BW3’s for lunch. R&G had just arrived from gypsypet and Charlie’s wedding in Charleston, SC. Lydia was on her thirtieth or so hour of being awake and was amusingly loopy 🙂 It was a fun lunch, and a nice spontaneous break in a very mellow day. We did a little shopping afterwards and picked up the new Boom Blox game (whee!). Later in the evening I made a batch of bagels for the week.

Then there’s this morning. Dan left for work at 5:45 AM as usual, but not long after I got a call: his car had died on the way to work. After I showered I drove down and kept him company while waiting for the AAA-summoned tow truck to show up. The truck didn’t show up until 9 AM, but that’s fine – it was nice to have the time with Dan. The car went to the Honda dealer in Gurnee, I dropped Dan off at home, since he can work from home, and came in to work. No diagnosis on the problem yet, but given that it sounded like it the engine was missing and losing power at 2,500 rpm+, I’m thinking it might be a computer issue, or maybe spark plugs, fuel injectors, or something else entirely. On the bright side, Dan’s car needed service anyway, including a fix to a sticky driver’s side door lock. I could have conceivably fixed that myself but taking apart the door looks like a bit of a nightmare.

So that’s about it right now. The rest of the week should be pretty boring, at least it will be once we get Dan’s car back. Fortunately he can commute by train if need be, so that makes the lack of a car somewhat less critical. Hope everyone has a great week!

EDIT: Sounds like the problem is the VTEC oil pressure switch, something that is apparently a common problem in 2003 Elements. It’s about a $250 fix, which isn’t too bad considering that (routine maintenance notwithstanding) Dan’s car hasn’t required any major work in years.

Games, Cooking, and Constuff

It’s been pretty quiet over the last few days, which might explain the lack of updates – not a lot of exciting stuff going on.

takaza and I had a pleasant weekend together at home. On Friday Dan was feeling like a bit of retail therapy and between gift cards and Reward Zone credits we had $75 of credit for Best Buy, so we headed down to the BB in Mundelein. We stopped by the Gamestop there to look at their used PS2 games and I picked up a couple of games I hadn’t played before: God of War and Destroy All Humans! (I’m about five hours into God of War and it’s a whole lot of fun. A little more gory than a lot of games I’ve played, but the puzzles are fun and the action keeps things interesting.) As for Best Buy…well, we never did find anything that looked interesting. On the bright side, the next item that comes up on sale, we’ve got a $75 discount waiting to be used.

On Saturday, we bummed around the house most of the day, except for a run to the grocery store. Sunday I made Dan the chicken and dumplings I promised him for Valentine’s Day (a few days late), as well as the delicious semolina bread from Cookwise. Mostly we just sat around the house and enjoyed doing gloriously nothing.

This week has been pretty interesting. Dan will be transitioning from his old job to his new job until the end of the month (gotta love those internal transfers) so he was at the old location in Mount Prospect Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, then he’ll be at the new location in Buffalo Grove this afternoon and for the rest of the week. As for me, I got a couple of important reports turned in and I’m at a momentary lull until everything gets signed off and we’re working against the clock to finish a couple of projects. In the meantime I’m catching up on accumulated Midwest FurFest correspondence, and trying to resolve an annoying lingering issue with the house rental out in California (they’re trying to charge us for damage that we’re not responsible for).

Looking ahead to this weekend, we’ll be going by the MFF storage locker on Saturday to try to track down some convention assets and answer a couple of questions. Since we’ll be out and about, we’ll probably make a couple of stops (I want to swing by Ikea) and maybe even be social. No plans yet, but we’ll see what happens. Sunday evening is the online MFF staff meeting, and we also need to put together all the numbers for the Point of Sale hardware and software for Anthrocon’s Artists Alley. Oh, and speaking of conventions, congratulations to tozier_wah for signing on to run the Information Desk at Midwest FurFest. We own your soul I’m sure you’ll have a great time!

I Don’t Think Marble Slab Makes Rogan Josh Mix-Ins…

Now that was an entertaining weekend! First off, the week was instantly made better on Friday afternoon when takaza returned from the wilds of Indiana. Of course, not an hour after he got home we had to leave again, but it was for a good cause: dinner with friends at Bombay City Indian Restaurant. We had a lot of fun seeing familiar faces and meeting some cool new folks too (who I hope we’ll have a chance to see more of!). The food was, as always, fantabulous, though I have learned my lesson: while tandoori stuff is tasty, the sauced dishes are where it’s at. Fresh naan dipped in the chicken tikka masala sauce…heaven! Unfortunately, we’ve been there three times and each time the service has been sub-par. This time we waited about 30 minutes for our check once we were done. It might be time to investigate other Indian places in the area, sadly. For dessert, we went to Marble Slab Creamery with steviemaxwell, roho, genet, and linnaeus, which was a perfect capper for the evening.

On Saturday, after a very quick follow-up visit with the doctor about my toe (it’s healing nicely, thank you), I returned home and Dan woke up not long after. I knew that I needed to go to laffsoftballLAFF Softball to drop off the badge holders for Mephit Furmeet to ramalion, but it was up in the air if Dan would be joining me. Between a couple of calls to Stevie, making some lists, and having some cool ideas for grilling, it suddenly transpired that he had talked himself into going and we were going to be grilling for the picnic after the softball game. We stopped by Sam’s Club and picked up a huge amount of food (as well as a nifty new portable table) and then headed over to the softball game. Aeto was kind enough to make a quick store run for us for a few things we couldn’t get at Sam’s Club and to lend us the use of his cooler – thanks, Aeto! We watched some of the game and chatted with the various folks who were there (too many to name!). At about 4 PM we took all of the supplies over to the cooking area and fired up the (one, very small) grill and set to work prepping the food. Dan and I had agreed that we were going to make “Jucy Lucy” burgers (sic), and we set to work making the patties. Perro and Darkwolph let us store some of the perishables in their refrigerator, which was a huge help! I learned that the grill didn’t put out as much heat as I had hoped as I limped along with the first batch of bratwurst, but once we got a handle on it (and added another chimney full of charcoal!) we got things working properly. We wound up feeding 25 people or so, and even managed to break even in costs! Dan and I are kicking around ideas for the end-of-the-season picnic, possibly including steaks. We’ll see if we can make that work, though.

After grilling, we were both drained, so we drove home and crashed. We were both silly and didn’t put on sunscreen (not too bad – we were mostly in the shade) or bug spray (bad – I’ve got multiple unpleasant welts!), so we’ve got some tokens of the day to remind us to properly prepare next time!

Dan’s sister came over Sunday afternoon and they worked on her computer for several hours while I puttered around the house doing laundry and cleaning. That unfortunately meant that Dan had to stay home to work on work-related stuff while I headed out to have dinner with Roho, Genet, chebuytkin and CAJones at Dave and Busters. The company was excellent, with much smoffage and comparisons of conventions (I like the idea of road-tripping to Minneapolis next July 4 for Convergence!). The food was surprisingly good as well, as was my strawberry margarita. The games afterwards…not so much. If you like shooting or driving games, D&B’s is the place to go. Unfortunately, shooting games have zero interest for me and my passion for driving games is limited at best. I left with credit still on my card, but the night was getting late. I got home just as Dan was wrapping up for the evening, so it all worked out.

It’s a new week now, and it looks like it’ll be a busy one at work. We don’t have much planned during the week, though at the end of the week is the Chicago Air and Water Show. Also, keep an eye out here because plans are in the works for another game night at our place next week!

Long Days, Video Games, and Peanuts on the Floor

It’s Thursday, and as this day begins…

Oh wait, it began a while ago, didn’t it? Anyway. It hasn’t been a very exciting week, but things are picking up. I’ve been coming in an hour early each day (7 AM – 4:30 PM) so that I can leave at 11 AM on Friday. Why? More on that below.

Earlier in the week I finally finished Okami. How sad is it that I fired it up again for a bit yesterday just to see what happens when you start it again (oooh, you have lots of cash and stuff, that’s what!). I don’t foresee playing the whole game through again, but it’s remarkable that the playability holds up even after finishing it. And even though it’s the most expensive game we’ve ever bought, at 40+ hours of gameplay, it was very much worth it!

Yesterday when takaza got home I started to make dinner – farfalle in a tomato-sausage sauce. Except when I unwrapped the Italian sausage from the fridge something wasn’t…quite…right. Rather than speculate on just how spoiled the sausage might be (hey everyone it’s food poisoning roulette!) we elected to seek dinner out. We wound up trying Pat’s Pizza on 83 in Grayslake. Wow, what a throwback that place is. Peanut shells on the floor, tables decorated with pages from the 1967 Grayslake High School yearbook…yeah. As much as I wanted to like the place, though, the pizza was unremarkable, as was the garlic bread. It might be a fun place to go with friends, though, just not on a weekend night – that place gets seriously crowded then!

After dinner we made a short drive up to Antioch to visit our favorite booze supplier, Antioch Liquors (nee Armanetti’s, and now apparently part of the Cardinal Liquors chain, though they haven’t changed their sign in over a year). We got a six pack of the Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale that I had at the bowling alley a few weeks ago; as I feared (and the stupidly low price was the tipoff) it’s an Anheuser-Busch product. The stuff from the tap was reasonably good, though, and at three bucks for the six pack, if it’s nasty at least I didn’t gamble much. We also got a bottle of Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka (giza is so doomed!) and a bottle of Aberlour a’bunadh (I’m so doomed!). I toyed with getting a bottle of the extremely tasty Stolichnya Elite, but we were already damaging our wallets enough, so we stopped there. From there it was back home for a boringly early bedtime.

Today has been somewhat busy but I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. After I leave work at 11, I’ll be picking up Dan at work then we’ll be hitting the road for Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Dorsai Thing, a nice little relaxacon. I have no idea what to expect, but I’m sure it’s going to be entertaining one way or another. I’m really looking forward to this because it’s been a while since we did any kind of a road trip (since last July, I think?) and I’ve been antsy to get out on the road again, even if it’s just a short jaunt over to Michigan. For those going to Congenial this weekend, I’m bummed that we won’t be able to make it and I hope that you all have a blast!

Now That Is How You Celebrate A Holiday!

Wow. It’s been a while since I updated here, hasn’t it?

As I mentioned last week, we didn’t attend MFM, though from what I hear a good time was had by all. Instead, we had a nice, lazy weekend around the house. I found a new addiction (Jak 3) with which I wasted numerous hours, which was pleasant. On Saturday night we met up with lisagems for some tasty gelato (not as good as Silvia’s, though) and then walked down and hung out with siriuswolfstar for a while at his place of employment. Sunday morning we met up with Lisa, Sirius, and simbalion for a delicious brunch at Tre Kronor. When we got home we collapsed into a food coma, and enjoyed a lazy day around the house, watching TV and playing Jak 3. Monday was rainy and gray outside, so we made the most of it by taking care of some cleaning around the apartment. And that was about it – our Labor Day weekend! Not exciting or anything, but actually quite enjoyable.

Yesterday was an all-day job interview for the company I’m currently contracting with. I won’t say much about it except that I think it went well, but it will be a good month before I hear anything one way or the other. In the meantime, life goes on.

And here we are at today. I’m back at work, for now anyway. In a few hours I’ll be heading out for lunch with the rest of my department to mark a cow-orker’s 30th anniversary with the company, but it looks like I’ll be bowing out from the ensuing golf outing so I can head down and pick up takaza after work. Why pick him up, you ask? (Well, you didn’t really, but pretend you did.) The street where we live is currently under construction, and from what we’ve seen they tend to put up signs about how you must move your car or be towed about 24 hours in advance. I think it would be safer to leave his car at his employer’s while we’re in Maine.

Maine, did I say? Why, yes I did! Tomorrow morning, we wake up at 4:30 AM (ugh) and drive to O’Hare International Airport. Following our cavity search and removal of all relevant and irrelevant privacy rights, we will be boarding a United 737 for glorious Manchester, New Hampshire (along with feren and Lori, roho’s cousin). We’ll pick up a rental car there (AAA discounts are da bomb!) and drive two hours to Portland, Maine, where Roho’s parents live. We’ll be spending the next five days out there, attending (and helping with), Roho and genet’s wedding, plus seeing some of the sights and generally having a good time. We’ll be sharing a vacation cottage with linnaeus, chebuytkin, Feren, lady_curmudgeon, and datahawk. It’s gonna be a blast! According to the listing, the cottage has wifi and broadband Internet, so with luck I may even post the periodic update (probably at the wee hours of the day, when I’m awake and the rest of those slugabeds are still asleep! 🙂

So: some last-minute laundry tonight, then packing, and oh, we have an online MFF board meeting somewhere in there too. Ideally, an early bedtime, too, though I somehow doubt the likelihood of that.

For now, though, time to get some work done!

Mascots and Psychonauts!

I was feeling a bit blah after work on Friday – nothing serious, just a series of reminders of why life sucks when you’re a contractor. I found that a good workout at the gym helped – yay for endorphins! It didn’t hurt that it was a lovely day out so the walk back was quite pleasant. Takaza saw that I was restless and we went out to do a little shopping, with a stop by EBGames (fruitless, but for some reason the store at Lincoln Village always sucks) and Target. We grabbed dinner at Hub’s on Dempster in Skokie, which was pronounced to be undistinguished.

I got an early start on Saturday and went down to the EBGames on Elston, where I found what I was looking for: Psychonauts, allegedly the best platform game from 2005, and a very fun and playable game. It happened that that was right near the Edward Don Outlet (a restaurant supply store) that I had heard was closing. I stopped by and was impressed by two things: first, all the cool merchandise marked down by 70%, and second, the HUGE line waiting to check out – like a good 20-30 minute wait. I looked all through the store but I didn’t see anything that I HAD to have; I saw some nice stuff at great prices, but the kitchen is crammed full now, and I couldn’t see anything that would merit the major project of making space for it. More’s the pity. Quasiskunk, I did think of the stuff you might need for Con Suite this year, but I knew you were off in the boonies for the weekend, so…oh well. I passed the afternoon playing Psychonauts (it’s one of those games where you sit down to play and suddenly it’s three hours later!) then it was time to go.

A friend of our had given us complimentary tickets to the final home game of the season for the Chicago Rush arena football team. We took the CTA out to the Allstate Arena and got in just before the game started. It was a good game, once I got used to the arena football rules, and Chicago kicked the butt of the Utah Blaze. The highlight of the game was actually halftime, when they had a game of “mascot football” – yes, sixteen mascots from all around the Chicago area turned out, including Staley the Bear (who gets points for being the most willing to take a hard fall), Benny the Bull (definitely the most personality), Skates (the home-arena favorite), Tommy Hawk (from the Blackhawks), Sparky (from the Chicago Fire), plus mascots from Loyola, Northwestern, and several other schools and companies. The highlights were Benny laying out “celebrity quarterback” Mike Adamle, and a bee mascot putting a shoulder in the gut of the Rush’s mascot Grabowski (yeesh, what a costume). He needed a sec outside the huddle to catch his breath. The “game” was a disorganized wreck, of course, but extremely entertaining from the stands. We took off in the middle of the third quarter with the Rush up something like 76 to 24 and found ourselves with no way back to the CTA. We opted to walk to the ATS at O’Hare and take that in to the CTA station at the airport, getting home at around 11 PM. Datahawk and Linnaeus were watching Rent when we got home, but we were too tired to watch, so we headed off to bed.

On Sunday I puttered around a bit while Data slept through me grinding coffee, the dishwasher running, and the cat meowing. I only wish I could sleep that soundly. Dan and I drove up to check on my wedding band (more about that in my next post) and sat down at a nearby Potbelly Sandwiches to make use of the free wi-fi and try to hammer out the final details of FRAC. Unfortunately, what we determined was that, while we had a set course, neither of us was happy with it. We kicked around ideas on the way home and I think we have some solid plans on how things are going to go, but we’re going to need to do some research this Saturday. We got home and had a quiet evening of video games and laptops.

Not a lot of plans for the week, though we’re going to have dinner with partran tonight. I’m sure stuff will come up, as it always does 🙂