Hooray for Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monsters!

It’s Friday and I’m feeling random.

So it appears that we’ll be going to Furry Connection North (April 11-13, Ann Arbor, MI). It will be the first convention I’ve been to in a long LONG time where I haven’t been on staff, so it should be an interesting experience. Once we get our rooming situation sorted out I’ll go ahead and buy sponsorships for takaza and me. If things work out, it appears that there may even be a Fine Potables Party there!

We need to make a couple of side dishes for a birthday party this weekend. Because I’ve never really cooked with Jerusalem artichokes (and because everything is better with bacon) I’m going to try making Warm Salad with Jerusalem Artichokes, Bacon, and Radicchio, a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s newest cookbook. I don’t have a lot of use for Oliver, but hey, the recipe sounds tasty. I just hope it scales reasonably.

Speaking of food-blog related stuff, I’m sad that I didn’t win anything in the Menu for Hope 4 raffle results that were announced today, but they did raise over $91,000 for the United Nations World Food Programme. That’s just amazing. I look forward to participating in Menu for Hope next year! (and I’ll probably mention it more next year because not only is it a great cause, the prizes they were raffling off were extremely nifty)

Finally, yesterday I introduced a cow-orker to the amusement that is Jonathan Coulton. That reminded me to go back and listen to some of his songs I haven’t heard. My new favorite of his is Skullcrusher Mountain, a tender tale of an evil overlord attempting to impress his less-than-willing female captive:

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

I Wanna Know What’s Goin’ On

Wow. I just realized I haven’t really posted much of substance for a couple of weeks. We hosted a kickass New Years Eve party from December 29th through January 2nd; everyone seemed to have a great time and we really enjoyed ourselves as well. Amusingly, the hotel called takaza on the 3rd asking if we wanted to book for next year. I guess this means they like us a lot!

We limped through the rest of last week at a severe sleep deficit, and had a truly lovely weekend of doing pretty much nothing but vegging on the sofa and watching a whole lot of Tivo. On Sunday we did a spot of shopping, stocking up for the week’s groceries as well as attempting to fill our shiny new freezer (hah! That’ll take a while). It was really nice to have a couple of nice, quiet days of enjoying each other’s company and ratcheting down the stress levels.

This week has been relatively unexciting as well, though last night I had a lovely dinner with moryssa, talking over Midwest FurFest-related things. I also took the opportunity to swing by Woodmans and pick up a few things I can’t easily find at our local grocery store, specifically cinnamon chips, as well as caramel chips and peanut butter chips from a regional company, and some Callebaut semisweet chocolate chips, just because 🙂 I see some fun baking in our future!

We don’t have a lot planned for the rest of the week. We hope to get to a birthday party on Saturday, and then Sunday is the first Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the new year. That should be a good meeting; I’m hoping that we can go ahead and assign what functions are going to be where in the new hotel as early as possible this year, and that’ll be a good start for the process.

Time to wrap up before heading home!

Great Googly Moogly

OK, stay with me here. See, a bacon cheeseburger? That’s for wimps. No, what we need is a bacon burger – a burger…made out of bacon!

And if that’s not enough, you’ve got to put cheese in the middle of the patty.

Then, you’ve got to dip it in beer batter and deep-fry that sucker!

Finally, add cheese on top, and there you have it: The Bacon Burger 2.0!*

* – Defibrillation paddles not included.

Quote of the Day

From an NPR news report on the New Hampshire primaries: “[One New Hampshire voter] says that there are several candidates that he likes, but he is most excited by the prospect of reporters following the candidates out of town and not stopping him to ask him what he thinks every hour of the day.”

Family Visit 2007: The Recap

So, when last we left our intrepid heroes they had arrived in Nashville, en route to South Carolina.

Our intention had been to grab a quick breakfast at the Pancake Pantry before heading out of town. Before we left I noted comments about long lines, and found an alternative – Fido, just a half-block away. Sure enough, the line for the Pancake Pantry was out the door, so we opted instead for Fido. I have to admit I was attracted to Fido not just by the name, but by the vibe of the place; it reminded me very much of Gillies in Blacksburg, VA, home of many fond memories for me. I had the “Bayou Benedict”, which was a poached egg with Hollandaise sauce over cheese grits with an andouille sausage on the side. Excellent! The French press of coffee helped too 🙂 We finished off our Nashville mini-tour with a quick stop by the cookware shop across from the Pancake Pantry; Dan picked up a few small things, but the best part of the visit was talking with the proprietors, who were real characters. We were glad we stopped in.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We got down to Anderson, SC, and checked into the La Quinta Inn there (verdict: cheap and clean. What, you wanted more for $50 a night?). Over the course of the weekend I discovered that my laptop power supply connector was over-flexed enough at the laptop end that moving it while plugged in made interesting clicking noises and smelled of ozone, so I elected to stay off the net (but for my cell phone) and quick-order a replacement power supply.

Takaza, my sister, and I did the majority of the cooking for the weekend. I made a penne pasta with Italian sausage on Sunday night, then on Monday night Ruth (my sister) made fettuccine with scallops and shrimp in a cream sauce while Dan made his famous Macaroni and Cheese (with bacon!). For Christmas Day, I made the turkey, the stuffing, and the gravy, Dan made mashed potatoes, and Ruth made green beans with pancetta, as well as pecan and pumpkin pies. We weren’t hurting for food 🙂

There was the usual last-minute shopping, and gift giving and receiving. Everyone was happy, especially my nephews. Mom stood out in the cold on a Sunday morning a few weeks back to score a Wii for them. Once they received that, they were pretty much dead to the world for the rest of the day.

We got on the road at 6 AM on Wednesday morning and, as noted before, drove 15 hours straight to get home at exactly 8 PM Central Time. It was a fun trip and I’m glad we went, but man am I exhausted.

So, today. I have today and tomorrow off from work as well as Monday; Dan has to work today and tomorrow, but has Monday off as well. He had some interesting stuff happen with work this morning, but that’s his story to tell. Suffice to say that things are looking very good for him in the coming year. I’ve been doing load after load of laundry all morning, and mainly bumming around on the net. Around noon I’ll take a shower and see about doing some shopping in preparation for the coming weekend – Sam’s Club and the grocery store, here I come! I need to get pretty much all of my errands done today since it appears that the weather is going to be horrid tomorrow, with 5-7 inches of snow falling between 9 AM and 6 PM. What fun!

We did snag a few pictures from the weekend, including the 2007 Christmas Family Photo:

From left to right, that’s Me, Dan (aka takaza), Bella (in Dan’s arms), Dad, my nephew Tim, my brother-in-law Marvin, my nephew Chris, my sister Ruth, Holly (in Ruth’s arms), and Mom.

Click for more pictures!

…And Here We Are in Nashville

We pulled into the hotel by the Nashville International Airport about an hour ago. Long drive, with an interesting detour through Newton and Olney, Illinois and Evansville, Indiana. We passed only a few cops and one fully-involved Car-B-Que. Traffic through downtown Nashville was remarkably congested, with some stop and go traffic on the I-24 East ramp to I-40 East for no apparent reason. Tomorrow, assuming we can get motivated early enough, we hope to hit the vaunted Pancake Pantry before getting on the road. Off to bed now…

Hittin’ the Road

And here we are at launch day, so to speak. In a few hours, takaza and I will be getting into his car and heading southwards. Our tentative itinerary will take us through Chambana and Effingham, then down to Nashville, TN for the night. Then tomorrow morning, we’ll continue through Chattanooga, Atlanta, then up to Anderson, South Carolina. (Apparently many Chicago furries migrate to South Carolina at Christmastime. Who knew?) I do hope that we’ll be able to hit some back roads along the way, and I grabbed a subscription to Roadfood in hopes of discovering some nifty little out-of-the-way restaurants along the way.

Dan and I did our gift-giving last night. As I had mentioned before, since we bought ourselves a freezer we were just going to get each other small gifts for Christmas. Anyway, I did succeed in getting two of Dan’s presents to him: a book on digital photography, and the collected Firefly miniseries “Serenity: Those Left Behind”. Dan surprised me with something that has been in the back of my head but I had been holding off on: a whole new set of brewing equipment! This was an awesome surprise and I’m looking forward to getting back into brewing after the holidays. Unfortunately, one of Dan’s packages is still en route, and at this point it appears that it’s going to be delivered after we leave. Awesome! As I was writing this the package was delivered. He has to wait until I get home to open it, though 🙂

Looking ahead, it sounds like this is going to be a busy holiday for us. Dan, my sister, and I will be in charge of cooking while we’re in South Carolina, and coming up with a selection of foods that pleases everyone. Tuesday night will of course be the traditional Christmas Turkey (a la Alton Brown, natch). Then Wednesday the 26th we’ll be driving all the way back to Chicago in one shot – won’t that be fun? Dan has to work the 27th and 28th, but I have those days off for a change. I suspect I’ll be quite busy those days, cooking and shopping for the weekend. We’ll deal with that later, though.

Midwest FurFest 2007 Registration Report

And now it’s come to this: After seven years, my final Midwest FurFest Registration Report.

Executive Summary: Proper Prior Planning Prevents P*ss-Poor Performance.

In hindsight, I can see that it is a good thing that this was my last year as Registration Director for Midwest FurFest. A whole lot of the planning that went into this year fell into the category of “let’s do it like we did last year”, which is great for maintaining the status quo but also stifles creativity and innovation. If you don’t change, you don’t improve. So while everything went well this year and there were no complaints, I’m still leaving somewhat dissatisfied, but glad things are being turned over into good hands.

Pre-Convention Planning

Fun With Food Safety!

So after lounging around all morning yesterday I decided to get a start on the cooking for Wuffmeet. The plan was to make Curried Lentil, Tomato, and Lamb Stew. After some annoying issues that included having to buy the lamb sirloin bone-in (and subsequently getting about 2 pounds of lamb from a 7-pound hunk of meat, bone, and fat after butchering it myself), I got a later start than I would have liked. By 11 PM, the stew was done cooking, so I packed it off and put it down in the garage. I figured that the low temperature was going to be in the teens so it would chill quickly, a tall order for eight quarts of stew.

This morning I checked the internal temperature: 86 degrees F. That would mean that it spent 8 hours in the “danger zone” of between 140 and 40 degrees F, providing a fertile breeding ground for bacteria. And after some online research to confirm my suspicions, I found that even if you kill the bacteria by reheating to 165 F the toxins that the bacteria generate will still be present. And as much fun as it would be to give all of our friends food poisoning, I think I’m going to take the safest course of action and throw it all out. It sucks, but I’ll chalk it up as a learning experience. Besides, the overwhelming flavor of the stew was curried carrots, which…well, it’s not what I was going for. So I think I’ll be making something else in its place, though I’m not sure what just yet.

Tonight’s entertainment: Cooking up the Chili Con Carne (and then properly cooling and storing it!). The recipe looks delicious, and I have a couple of tweaks that I am sure will be very good.

Plans Thwarted

Yesterday was a bit of an oddity. Both takaza and I had to work; Dan had to help out in his office for a bit following their relocation on Friday, and I had to go in as part of a plant-wide work day in exchange for everyone getting Monday the 24th off. I was OK with this. The majority of my department sacrificed a vacation day not to come in, but considering I went in at 9 AM and left at 1 PM, I’m glad I went in (plus I don’t have any vacation days left!).

Once I got home, I worked on the dish I was making for datahawk‘s birthday party while waiting for Dan to come home from work. And waited. And waited. Right when I really started to get worried I heard the garage door open. You see, it was snowing heavily by that point, and he had to drive Route 12 from Palatine to Volo at 25-30 mph. After he got home, the snowfall intensified, and after much discussion and deliberation and worrying, we decided that it just wasn’t a good idea to try to make the 42-mile drive down to the party. We’re sad we couldn’t attend, and I hope that everyone had a great time.

Instead, we spent the evening relaxing, watching the snow fall, and catching up on some of the tons of stuff we have on the Tivo. Dan also made some tasty macaroni and cheese. I trundled off to bed early, while he stayed up to watch stuff I’m not interested in, like “ER”.

The sun is out this morning and it looks like the snow has ended. The Magical Snow Elves have come through and plowed our driveway and shoveled our sidewalk, which is lovely. We don’t have much plans for today besides laundry and making plans for Christmas. I may try to get a bit of cooking done for Wuffmeet, though, if I feel motivated to run to the store. This is the first time in a few months that we’ve had a day completely that we didn’t need to do anything, and it’s a lovely, though strange, feeling!

Anthrocon Hotel Rooms

Two items of note about Anthrocon hotel rooms. It appears that the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center is now 67% full.

Also, online reservations for the Omni William Penn are now available as well.

For more information, see http://www.anthrocon.org/hotel

Catering, Meat, Freezing Rain, and Talking Ferrets: Great Weekend!

I had all kinds of plans Friday of the wonderful cooking I was going to do when I got home from work, but as the day wore on…not so much. Instead, we opted for a simple burrito dinner and spent the evening relaxing and making plans for Saturday.

Saturday, on the other hand, things were hopping! We got a relatively early start (11 AM) and headed north towards Antioch. We got sidetracked, though, by the realization that we needed lunch and we needed to line up food for New Years Eve. How fortunate that we were going by one place that would provide a solution to both problems: Scott Dogs! Following a delicious lunch (I had the pulled pork BBQ sandwich), we sat down with Scott’s aunt, who runs the catering business, and we got a quick education in planning a catered event. Our original plans were for three appetizers, three entrees, three side dishes, and two desserts – all for $15 per person.

She was nice and didn’t openly laugh at us, but we had a great conversation about buffet psychology, serving portions, and the virtues of having too much food vs. too little food. We scaled things back a bit in terms of options and upped the number of portions, and we only came in a little over budget (mostly due to taxes and delivery fees, which were still very reasonable considering they were planning on being closed that day and will be coming in expressly to make our order and bring it to us). So now we’ll be serving roast pork and stuffing and Chicken Vesuvio, with garden salad and pasta Alfredo on the side. For dessert, we’ll have homemade apple strudel and three-layer chocolate cake. Yum!

It was a great experience and extremely educational, but unfortunately also took a couple of hours we hadn’t budgeted for. We scrambled to stop by Antioch Packing House and pick up stuff to put in our shiny new freezer, but had to pass on Antioch Liquors, where we had planned on buying champagne for the New Year’s toast. Following a quick stop by the house to drop off our meaty purchases, it was off southwards to Schweppes, my favorite restaurant supply store. We shopped around a bit there and got some items we needed for Wuffmeet, as well as some much-needed items for our kitchen (like replacing our old, scarred cutting boards with nice new color-coded cutting boards). It wasn’t a cheap visit, but we got a lot of very useful items.

From there it was down to Yorktown Mall, where we met aeto for a showing of The Golden Compass. Many others have reviewed it, but my thumbnail version: great cast, wonderful effects and scenery, nifty armored bears, but…it seemed to lack an essential something. I’d give it maybe a 7 out of 10, which is a heck of a lot better than the 5 out of 10 I’d give Enchanted. Still, it was a fun way to kill a couple of hours so I won’t complain. Afterwards we grabbed dinner over at an Irish place in Glen Ellyn (the bangers and mash were quite tasty, though Dan’s burger was less so). The evening was spent at perro and darkwolph‘s place, celebrating Wolphy’s birthday; Perro documented that disturbingly well already, though.

When we left, we got to chip our car out of the ice that had encased it (gotta love freezing rain), then make a very short drive over to justincheetah and calapurr‘s place, where they were kind enough to put us up for the night. Following an excellent night’s sleep and a pleasant morning chatting, we had an excellent, if rather heavy, lunch over at Juicy-O. Oooh, so good. Then we all headed over to Sam’s Wine to do the booze shopping we had skipped the day before. An excellent cava was procured for New Year’s Eve, as well as a number of other tasty drinkables. We parted ways from the kitties and drove home to relax and recuperate from a busy weekend.
The one thing we did accomplish that evening though was to divide, bag, seal, and freeze our meat purchases of the day before, so now we have 10 pounds of hamburger patties, three one-pound packages of bacon, and a 2.5 pound package of stew meat in our freezer, with more to come. I’ll be running to Target this week for more Foodsaver bags, though!

As for the coming week, I’ll be finally getting back to making that lamb, lentil, and tomato stew for New Year’s, as well as a chili con carne. Oh, and I have to work on Saturday (boo!) but in exchange I get Monday the 24th off (yay!). I expect that will be a pretty laid-back workday, though.

Menu for Hope – What a Great Deal!

If you like food and want to help raise money for an excellent charity (The UN World Food Programme) I highly recommend clicking over to Menu for Hope 4 which just started today over at Chef Pim. For $10 per virtual raffle ticket, you can buy chances for a stellar array of prizes, including some one of a kind dining experiences all over the world (many nifty things in the UK!), cookbook packages, specialty food products, homemade food, kitchen equipment, and more! (I’m being a big ol’ fanboy at the prospect of lunch with Harold McGee!). It’s a worthy cause and great prizes. Check it out!

Time to Cook!

Well, the snow came and went, as predicted. I think when all is said and done we got about eight inches up here. It’s not too big a deal, but the roads were pretty sloppy this morning. It took me twice as long as usual to get to work – 15 minutes! Man, I love living nearby.

So takaza is still off in Detroit training, which means one more night of living the bachelor life. Last night was terribly exciting: relaxing on the sofa, reading the paper, chatting with folks on the muck and by IM, and listening to a good net radio station. Woo, life in the fast lane! 🙂 Tonight may be a bit different, though. Now that we have a little extra freezer space to work it, it occurred to me that the dinner that we traditionally cook for the first night of our New Year’s shindig could be made in advance and frozen. This would take a lot of pressure off me right before the party, which is always a Good Thing. I’m thinking about making a curried lamb and lentil stew tonight. I also want to make a tasty chili, and Dan will be making a beef stew. How crazy will we get? Who knows. This adds an extra bit of flexibility, though, and I love the idea of being able to offer a couple of different dishes.
I expect I’ll be stopping at home after work to track down the recipe(s) I want, then it’ll be off to the store to pick up ingredients.

Hm, need to make some plans for the weekend, too. I’ll work on that.

Time to Play Catch-Up!

My goodness, where to begin. I’ve been remiss in updating things (yes Mom, I know 🙂 so I have quite a bit to write about.

Last week was a bit of a blur – mainly just getting back into the swing of things after the previous short work week. Saturday was takaza‘s birthday party! After kicking around ideas of how to celebrate his birthday, he finally settled on spending time with friends, so a party it was. I was a bit worried about the weather – a nasty mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain – but most everyone got to us OK and everyone got home safely (sorry you got lost, awfulhorrid and bookwurm! We’ll see you again soon, though, I hope. Barbarian, check your e-mail!). We had about 20 folks, various snacks and desserts, and three huge pots of chicken and dumplings. We got in some Lupus in Tabula, which was fun, but not quite enough games – we’ll need to work on that at New Year’s.

On Sunday I had lunch with unclevlad and datahawk at Osteria di Tramonto (yum! The roasted duck cavatelli is to die for!) then we toured the Westin Chicago North Shore to give them an idea of the Security challenges for the coming year. It was a great meeting and there was a lot of good discussion. I’m feeling really good about Security for next year, and I hope that Vlad is feeling a bit more comfortable with me in the chairman role. Afterwards I stopped by the Hyatt Woodfield to pick up a bag of mine that they found after MFF (yay!), then picked up some dinner for Dan and me on the way home.

Yesterday Dan took a day off to celebrate his birthday with a little time away from work. We had agreed that this Christmas we would get a single big item for ourselves, then get each other a smaller gift. Dan went out and bought that item yesterday: an 8 cubic foot chest freezer. We got a good deal through Best Buy on a Frigidaire that Consumer Reports recommended. To go with that he also got a Food Saver vacuum bag sealer, which will be a big help if we’re going to be laying in a supply of frozen stuff. We started things out by breaking up a 4-lb. tray of chicken breasts into small packages, and I’m pleased to say that everything worked splendidly! I expect that the 20 feet of bag stock that they supply probably won’t last very long, though, so we’ll need to pick up more of that.
Now we need to experiment a bit and see what other fun stuff we can do with the Food Saver (sous-vide, anyone?).

So today, Dan is flying off to Detroit for a few days of training, weather permitting. Although it’ll be weird being around the house alone, the quiet time can be nice, too. I have a couple of projects I want to work on, and maybe a bit of shopping as well. So, not a very exciting week, but after last month who needs excitement?

Need Contact Information!

As I mentioned in my long con report (the one that was so long, you probably didn’t read it 😉 on Sunday afternoon my phone (Sprint Motorola Q) ate its own head and crashed completely (Mmmm, taste the power of Windows Mobile. Or something). This means that all of my phone numbers were blown away. This coincides neatly with our decision to send out holiday cards this year, so if you would like to be in my phone book and receive a card, please respond with your name, address, and phone number. Replies will be screened, and if you already replied to Takaza‘s post you don’t need to reply here. Thanks!

Midwest FurFest 2007: Personal Observations

There’s not going to be a lot of order to this, but hey, bear with me.

  • I said it before but I want to say it again: I had the support of the most amazing group of people at Registration this year. They worked hard, and every single one of them deserves high praise: Neowolf2, rustitobuck, Rolliebear, CobaltFox, Little_Wolf, DaveQat, Ramalion, chsck83, Shy_Matsi, mutantur, Moiracoon, Woodychitwn, Bullethc, Chanur2000, Drew2u, Fordshepherd, Kellicjtiger, Street22, and Tozier_wah. Great job, folks!
  • I will freely admit I had some concerns about sabotlours and carol_kitty running Con Suite, mainly due to the complexities of running something as logistically complicated as Con Suite from Albuquerque. I am delighted to say that not only were my concerns completely unjustified, but also that they totally rocked the place, bringing foods heretofore unseen in MFF’s Con Suite (sushi! stir fry!). And I am very, very glad that they are returning to staff next year in the same role.
  • It is with mixed emotions that I leave Registration behind and move into the Chairman role. I’ve been running Registration for seven years (the first MFF, damnbear did a great job at it) and it’s time for a change. I’m a logistics guy, not a programmer, and it always bothered me that the Registration system was pretty much a black box to me (of necessity – I wasn’t expecting anyone to teach me to program, after all!). I’m glad that Neowolf will be taking it over; he will hopefully bring new life and new ideas to the department. As for being chairman: Wow. Daunting doesn’t begin to cover it. I have some ideas for the coming year, and I still need to talk to many of the convention staff to see what their plans are for 2008. We’ve got a terrific group of people on staff and my job will be to stay out of their way and let them do what they do best.
  • I get to sleep in next year! Well, at least until 8 AM. Sometimes it sucks to be a morning person.
  • Speaking of waking up early, props to crim_ferret and the other Security folks for having fresh coffee each morning. Thanks!
  • There will be another Fine Potables Party at Anthrocon, and at Midwest FurFest 2008 (“Chairman’s Reception”? 🙂 Those are far too entertaining to let fall by the wayside.
  • So we had three elevators in a four-story hotel and we managed to kill one of them. The Westin has four elevators for 16 floors. Well – this will be fun to manage.

The Midwest FurFest Website has been updated, and has not only the video that we showed at Closing Ceremonies to introduce the Westin but also links to reserve your hotel room and register for MFF 2008! Yay!

So, now there’s nothing to worry about until next year. Oh, except for Wuffmeet. And Anthrocon (and creating an entirely new point of sale system for that). Yeah, no worries whatsoever…

Coming Up For Air

Well, it’s been almost a week since Midwest FurFest, and I’m finally able to sum it all up: DAMN. And I mean that in a good way 🙂

Let’s see if I can condense this down to something readable. I do want to preface this by saying that if I don’t mention your name it’s because it was all a blur – please don’t think any slight is intended.

Wednesday

New Midwest FurFest Website and Video Now Available!

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We’re all still slowly recuperating from a great convention, but I did want to let folks know that a brief summary of 2007 and a preview for 2008 (including a copy of the video that was shown at Closing Ceremonies and a link for hotel reservations!) is available from our website, http://www.furfest.org. Enjoy!

Home. Ow.

Takaza and I are home.

My cell phone is out of commission; it crashed and had to be mailed to Sprint for service. If I’m lucky I’ll have it back my Wednesday; if not, I assume it’ll be sometime next July or something.

I slipped off the truck as we were loading it and not only seriously whacked my knee but twisted my back and my ankle. Consequently I haven’t been much use in moving the massive amounts of stuff that require both Dan and my cars to get home. Oh, and Dan’s sciatica flared up again last night.

Whining aside, the con went well. No major problems, and a lot of very pleasant surprises. I’ll have a Registration Report sometime in the next few weeks and perhaps a personal report when I can. Now, I’m going to go collapse.

It’s That Time of Year!

Here’s a way to get that festive Midwest FurFest spirit before Midwest FurFest is even here!

We will holding the 8th Annual Midwest FurFest Bag Stuffing on Wednesday, November 14, at 7:30 PM in the Rolling Meadows/Arlington Heights rooms of the Hyatt Regency Woodfield. There is sure to be much laughing and merriment as well as bag stuffage and, if we can wrap up early enough, dinner with friends! Everyone is welcome because we’ve got 2,000 bags to stuff – many hands make light work, and all that.

Hope to see you there!

The Things We Do For Fun

Wow, a week since I last posted. As you might guess, my life is sort of exploding at the moment. Last week was a flurry of last-minute preparations, and everything seems to be falling into place nicely. There’s just a few loose ends to wrap up this week (including printing sponsor coupons and temporary badges for the evenings) and we should be good to go. At this point, we’d better be in place or, well, tough luck!

And in the midst of all of this, we worked Windycon. Now, this may seem like madness, but there is a method to it: the idea was to have a weekend where we didn’t deal with MFF stuff at all, and we could just act as drones and do what we’re told. Yeah, that was the theory anyway.

See, here’s the problem: This was the 34th Windycon. And it showed, badly. They have too many people who are in a rut, who are pretty much down to taking the approach of “let’s just do everything like we did it last year, and the year before, and the year before that.” Please don’t get me wrong – in most cases the folks who run the convention are lovely people, and I wouldn’t mind spending time around them. But even the best of us gets jaded. The other problem is that over the years, turf wars have erupted. His clique hates her clique, and that person doesn’t play well with that other person. The entire thing is grossly dysfunctional, and communications have broken down. A couple of examples: 1. There was an information desk near the Dealers Room. They were serving much the same purpose of Operations (where we were working). There was zero communication between the Information Desk and Operations. 2. Registration didn’t open at all on Sunday, due to too few memberships typically being sold. Instead, attendees were supposed to go to Operations to buy badges. We knew that we were selling badges overnight, but when people started coming in to register at 8:30 AM, we told them that maybe Reg opened at 9 AM. Then 10 AM. Then 11 AM. At 11:30 AM we finally found out that Registration wouldn’t be opening at all that day but never communicated that fact to Operations.

We have helped in Windycon Operations for the last few years as a favor to unclevlad, but he’s moving on to another position next year, and we’re done. The convention holds no interest to us. So we’re done – no more Windycon after this. If nothing else, though, it served as a nice reminder that Midwest FurFest is amazingly well-organized and functional. Also, the Dorsai were helping out with Security Adult Supervision, so we got a chance to talk with Rene a bit, which is always a pleasure. It would be crazy, but we’re giving serious consideration to helping out the Dorsai with Magfest this year. We’ll see what happens after MFF, though…

Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep well at all all weekend, so I’m dragging a bit today even after last night’s sound sleep. That makes life fun, eh?

The Downward Spiral

And so we enter the last few weeks before Midwest FurFest. Saturday was spent doing a good bit of preparation for Midwest FurFest 2008, the fruits of which I hope will be evident at this year’s Closing Ceremonies. After takaza and I met mirkowuff for lunch, Dan headed home to work on Publications stuff (yes, still). Mirko and I worked on The Super Secret Project, then drove into Chicago. We had some time to kill so we tried a couple of nicer restaurants around Lincoln Square, but either their menus were unexciting or they were completely booked for the evening. Man, I hate trying to eat out on Saturday nights. We wound up settling for a small taqueria at Lincoln and Montrose that was actually amazingly good, and cost about a fifth of what dinner at any of the other places would have run. Great horchata, too! Afterwards, we headed over to an impromptu party that woodychitwn was hosting. I’m sure descriptions of who was there and that accompanying embarrassing pictures will show up in his journal soon, but suffice to say that I had a good time and it was fun to meet his other friends. Alas, Mirko and I had to head home on the early side (i.e. before midnight), so we missed the various eating-of-cake-off-body-parts, etc. Ah well.

Sunday brought he final planning meeting for Midwest FurFest 2007. It was pretty much the shortest meeting we’ve had all year (36 minutes!) because really, if you don’t have your act together this late in the game, you’re pretty much screwed anyway. Fortunately, every appears to be on their game and we’re in for an excellent convention, I think. For my part, pretty much everything that needs to ordered is in, with the exception of badge blanks and at the door registration forms, which will hopefully be sent to dexcat tonight. Our numbers are looking good, with not only our total attendance following past normal growth patterns, but our sponsorship numbers are matching last year’s as well. The latter is a nice confirmation that we’re doing something right.

After the meeting broke up, roho, genet, and linnaeus joined us back at our place, and we were shortly joined by steviemaxwell and magicpaw. Pizza was ordered, tasty cheese and crackers (and wine) was enjoyed, and we had a good time watching the season premiere of The Amazing Race 12. I was quite pleased with the outcome of the first leg, and I see several teams in there that I will really be cheering for this time around.

The rest of this week will be helping Dan with the last bits of Publications, including a really nice innovation he came up with last week: a small pamphlet for staffers that has all of the information they’ll need, from telephone extensions to emergency procedures to quick schedules, and a lot more. With luck, that will be wrapped up tonight or tomorrow and we’ll get a night or two to relax. On Friday we’re going to Windycon in Rosemont, where we will be working on Operations staff and in our spare time maybe helping out the Dorsai. It should be a fun weekend, and it’s a nice change of pace since neither of us is actually in charge or anything 🙂

Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

Another year, another frantic scramble to get everything required for Registration set up. It stuns me to realize that this is the seventh year I’ve been doing this, but I’m also realizing that it’s really a good thing that I’ll be handing off the reins for this next year. A certain sense of “just do it the same way we did last year” sets in, and that’s not good when we’re pushing for innovation and excitement about the convention. I’m sure neowolf2 will bring some great new perspective to the position and go great places with it.

So, what has consumed all my time over the last few weeks? Well, let me tell you…

Awesome.

So apparently Websense, the filtering service that $employer uses, has determined that any and all URL’s that begin with http://community.livejournal.com are sex-related and must be blocked.

Yeah.

Hopefully that will be fixed quickly.

Two Items of Note

I almost forgot! I wanted to mention two things.

First off, Halloween is upon us. takaza went all out, ordering some nifty stuff from Oriental Trading Company to give to the trick-or-treaters. Then I checked the Village of Hainesville website: “The official trick-or-treat time is Sunday, October 28, from 1 PM to 4 PM.” Wow. Trick or treating in the daytime? Could they do anything more to sap the fun out of it? Maybe require everyone to give out coupons for healthy carrot and apple snacks instead of candy? Gah. I could rant about this so much but I just won’t. Anyway, we got all of five trick or treaters. Five. Two of those didn’t even have costumes, just stood at the door with an outthrust grocery bag, and one of those only said “Trick or Treat” when Dan asked, “Can I help you?”

I sure hope we get more kids by on Wednesday night, ’cause we sure do have a lot of candy left.

On a brighter note, I finally got around to trying the Aeropress coffee maker I picked up the other day. Oh. My. God. So good. This was really amazing coffee. It’s not really espresso as much as coffee concentrate. You brew it at 165-175 degrees F (much lower than usual) and there’s only about ten seconds of contact between the coffee grounds and the water, then you press. I used as much coffee grounds as I usually do for three mugs of coffee (my standard morning dose) and got about 2/3 of a mug. Then I got stupid and made another round. Um, yeah – the caffeine is totally still in there. I think I was vibrating slightly for a good half-hour. Anyway, the coffee is every bit as smooth and rich as they say it is. I highly recommend it!

A Semi-Lazy Weekend

Well, as lazy as weekends can be, given the proximity to Midwest FurFest.

On Friday, takaza and I had talked about possibly going out for a quick and simple dinner. Dan lay down to relax a bit at 7 PM, and long about 9 PM I went up and tucked him in for the night ’cause we weren’t going anywhere. Eh, I’d had a big lunch, so I had a little cheese and crackers and called it dinner. At least I got caught up on South Park and Drawn Together.

Saturday, I helped Dan with the MFF pocket program and con book, then ran out to do a little shopping. Dinner was tasty homemade buttermilk fried chicken with mashed potatoes. Dan worked hard on the con book into the evening until I suggested he take a break; we relaxed a bit in front of the Tivo then went to bed.

It was more of the same on Sunday, except that while Dan put the finishing touches on the con book and the room setups (since he’s Hotel Liaison, too), I worked on dinner. perro and wolphy came over and Perro and Dan hammered out the last of the Programming details while I was all domestic in the kitchen and Wolphy noodled on his laptop. For dinner we had baked polenta (imagine lasagna made with strips of polenta instead of noodles, layered with a Bolognese meat sauce and béchamel sauce, with a sprinkle of freshly-grated Parmesan. For dessert, we had hot fudge pudding cake with vanilla ice cream. Yum! Once the programming shop talk was done, there was a lot of good conversation about MFF ’08, and general chatting. It was a lot of fun, and it was a real pleasure to hang out with those two!

Then came this morning. I slept poorly, and Dan had to wake me up when the alarm went off at 5:30 AM (he usually sleeps until 6 AM). In spite of dragging a bit this morning I’m doing a lot better now. After work I’ll be heading down to our usual staff badge engraver (the shop right around the corner from our house quoted me a price twice what we usually pay, so back to the old reliable). We should be getting a ton of packages this week, from sponsor goodies to A/V equipment to credit card terminals. Somehow our house became Midwest FurFest Package Central! We’re going to need to figure out where to stick everything around the house for a few weeks, but we’ll make it work.

OK, back to work with me!

It’s That Time of Year

Crunch time is upon us for Midwest FurFest. This past weekend was spent preparing several different orders for sponsor and Registration items, gathering information, etc. I won’t bore you with the details, but that pretty much ate up most of my Sunday. Saturday was a lot more fun, though! While takaza slaved away on the Con Book and hotel issues, I made a savory sweet potato casserole which was simply divine. I figure anything that’s made with half a pound of bacon and three-quarters of a pound of cheddar cheese can’t be bad! I’m not a huge fan of sweet potatoes, but this was just delicious! I was fascinated by the way the sweet potatoes added a complex, almost curry-like flavor to the dish. The dish was my contribution to unclevlad‘s birthday party; once it was done I packed it into a cooler with layers of towels to keep it warm and drove on down. The casserole was a hit (yay!) and the party was a blast. I was able to chat with perro, darkwolph, and linnaeus about con stuff (sorry if the smoffage put everyone else off!) and had a great time chatting with all of the other folks there.

On top of all of this we have the preparations for Midwest FurFest 2008. I was vastly relieved to get confirmation of our second (of three) guests of honor yesterday. The third slot will probably remain open until early next year. A theme has also been chosen, so we can go ahead and add those to the promotional materials for next year. (What’s the theme and who are the Guests of Honor? Come to Closing Ceremonies and find out!) This is a nice weight off my mind, though.

Unfortunately, Dan’s health issues continue, with good days and bad days. I worry about him a lot, and it’s frustrating that there’s really not a lot I can do to help. We’ll muddle through this somehow, but I do hope it passes sooner than later.

In happier news, a couple of nice things from yesterday: 1. My Aeropress came in the mail. I may make my first cup of coffee with it tonight (early in the evening, though!). 2. With CBS canceling the apparently-execrable “Viva Laughlin”, the gap in the schedule opens the door for the premiere of the new season of The Amazing Race on Sunday, November 4 at 7 PM CT. Yaaaaay! Anyone interested in making a social event of the premiere?

Then Again, Maybe Not

Well, due to some last-minute illness and takaza‘s continuing health issues, we are going to postpone this weekend’s River Trip. I won’t say I’m not disappointed, but I’ll survive. We’ll probably try again come late April/early May of next year, and who knows? Maybe we can add to our caravan. As the time comes closer, we’ll spread the word around. It’s probably just as well, since Dan and I both have a lot of work to get done for Midwest FurFest, including almost 300 postcards to label, stamp, and mail out.

Meanwhile, I came across some interesting and fun links this morning. Mark over at BoingBoing TV (who has excellent taste in coffee beans) demonstrates a coffee gadget so nifty I bought one this morning (See the exhaustive discussion here as well). Also, Adam at The Amateur Gourmet gives us a nifty video tour of a cheese shop and discusses some cheese basics with the cheesemonger there. Finally, happy 40th birthday to LOGO, the first programming language I ever learned. And I’ll note that I’m a lousy programmer. Correlation? Who knows?

Cheeseland, Indian Food, and Lots of Driving

Goodness, I guess I’ve been a bit quiet of late. We’re dealing with some health issues reasonably well, which makes me feel a lot better. So. The weekend…

Saturday morning I woke up on the early side and was feeling…spontaneous. Yeah, this is surprisingly rare for me, sadly enough. Anyway, I decided to make a quick run up to Milwaukee to check out the Milwaukee Public Market, since I’ve heard good things about it. Plus, Milwaukee is all of an hour from our house yet we never go up there.

Well, I discovered one good reason not to go up there: I-94 is under some serious construction by the IL/WI state line, then again in downtown Milwaukee. I navigated around that, though, and found my way down to the market. Wow, that place is pretty darned nifty! I picked up a number of interesting cheeses (including litteria, a Romano-like cheese native to Wisconsin, as well as Juusto, which I’ve been curious about. I also got some fabulous homemade pasta, a tasty loaf of asiago-garlic bread, and a couple of other goodies. When I finished at the market, I ventured further north into downtown to The Spice House, where I picked up some spice blends we had run out of (apparently my timing was off; if I’d been around earlier I might have run into the Furconsin crew!). I finished off the visit with a trip by the lakefront location of my drug dealer coffee purveyor, Alterra Coffee. I found that 1.) their parking lot is wholly inadequate, 2.) the only thing worse then stupid people is stupid people in groups, and 3.) I want to have Alterra’s triple latte’s babies. I had fun getting lost as I left town (I’m sure I went right by rolliebear‘s place, though!) and avoided the worst of the construction on the way home with some judiciously-timed detours. Dinner for takaza and I was an alfredo-esque sauce made with the litteria cheese over fresh pappardelle. Delicious!

Sunday found me driving allover Schaumburg and Rolling Meadows finishing off gathering data for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. We dropped about 10-15 places (closed, have closer locations to the hotel, etc.), but we picked up a couple too, including Pierogi Place, my new favorite place for a quick bite anywhere near Schaumburg. When I was done, I met up with steviemaxwell and midwestcougar for a truly delicious lunch buffet at Gaylord India Restaurant. I’m pleased to say that the restaurant is everything that the effusive Restaurant Guide review that I inherited promised that it is. The northern Indian cuisine was a wonderful contrast to the southern Indian of Bombay City in Gurnee both were good in their own way, but very different flavors. I’d love to go back and order off the menu!

And here we are well into the week already. The great news is that it looks like the River Trip coming up this weekend is still on, and the weather is going to be fabulous. takaza and I will be joined by linnaeus and daveqat. Our itinerary is (loosely) going to include spending Friday night in Moline, IL, then Saturday night in Decorah, IA. Sunday, we’ll probably skim southeastern Minnesota (sorry, foxfeather! We just won’t have time to visit this time around) and either head up to La Crosse, WI and then down on I-94 (boring!) or head due east from Prairie du Chien, WI (and with a name like that, how could I not go there?). The latter route would take us through little towns like New Glarus, WI. Now whatever could we find there, I wonder?

And now, back to watching Heroes!