Coffee and Friends and Lots of Fun

Well, last night was a blast. We started out with dinner at Potbelly’s Sandwiches with linnaeus, rustitobuck, tecknow, and, in a surprise appearance, lisagems (glad you could make it – I hope the company helped cheer you up a bit). The sandwiches were…OK. I think I prefer Jimmy John’s, but hey, it was convenient. Next month (and we will be doing a coffee gathering again next month), I think we might try Redder, the restaurant just north of the Southport El stop, instead.

After dinner, we walked across the street to Bobtail, and were joined by daveqat, jimcyl, perro, woodychitwn, and luckytheevildog. Much entertaining conversation took place, veering from convetnion geeking to interesting bar experiences to job hunting possibilities.It was great to hang out with a fun group like that. The folks at Bobtail were quite happy to have us there, even if we did take up an inordinate amount of space. It helped that we tipped nicely and cleaned up after ourselves 🙂 I had a really good time, and I look forward to doing this again next month, maybe on the 16th? Also, rumor has it that Linnaeus is thinking about putting together a Happy Hour (to borrow from the Chambana folks :-), which would be a lot of fun as well.

Well, off to go hunting for erythromycin!

Feeling All Accomplished-Like

Reservations have been made and tickets have been purchased, yay!

takaza and I will be flying out to Maine for the wedding of roho and genet in September. We’re flying into Manchester, NH, at 10:44 AM on 9/7/06, and departing Manchester at 5:22 PM on 9/12/06 (yay for Kayak for finding the cheapest airfares!). Also, by renting a car through AAA‘s website (and of course by having a AAA membership), we’re getting a full-size car for less than the price of a compact, going through Hertz instead of somebody crappy like Thrifty. This is going to be a wonderful trip – I haven’t been back to Maine in close to 25 years, and I really love that part of the country. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to make a day-trip up to Acadia National Park, and it sounds like there’s some seagoing boating in the offing as well. Oh, and lobster. Lots of lobster. Mmmmm….

Oh yeah, if anyone missed it, we’re hosting a coffee get-together tonight in Chicago!
What: Coffee (And Ice Cream) Night!
When: 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM, Wednesday, July 26 (this coming Wednesday)
Where: Bobtail Soda Fountain, 3425 N. Southport, Chicago, IL
That’s a half-block north of the Brown Line Southport station, and the El is by far the easiest way to get there. Street parking is available, though you may have to hunt a bit. Bobtail has very tasty (Intelligentsia) coffee, and excellent ice cream as well. They don’t serve much in the way of non-dessert food, but there is a Potbelly Sandwich Works right across the street. takaza and I will probably hit Potbelly at around 7 PM for a quick dinner if anyone wants to join us there. If you’d like us to save you a seat, just let me know, here or by e-mail!

Finally, I’m looking forward to Friday. I’m pocking up Dan at work at 4 PM and we’re going…somewhere. I’m not sure where, and he’s not telling me, but I know that we’re going to be spending a lovely weekend away, just the two of us. The last time we did something like this it was wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what he’s come up with this time!

More Than You Ever Needed To Know About Donkey Shows

Traffic in Chicago on Friday afternoons sucks; traffic on Friday afternoons when it’s raining is just downright retarded. This would explain why it took us two hours to get from Mount Prospect to Naperville last Friday afternoon. The trip was worth it, though! We had an OK dinner at Famous Dave’s (thereby scratching my yen for BBQ – almost. Now I just want some good BBQ). The company was excellent, though, as we were joined by wyldekyttin, foxish, emrldgirrl, datahawk, and linnaeus. After dinner we headed over to the theater and saw Clerks 2, which was a lot funnier than I expected it to be. Like most of Smith’s movies, it’s very quotable, and educational, too (hence the title of this post 🙂

On Saturday we had a pleasant morning and early afternoon of bumming around the house, then headed out to Sheffield Walk to see Carbon Leaf. That was a heck of a lot more people in too small a space than I was prepared to deal with. The sound mix, alas, was abominable, and between the crowds and incoming rain, Dan and I bailed about halfway through the set. We retreated to Bobtail for tasty ice cream, and were joined there by Linnaeus. Devin and Data picked up Kyttin and met us in Lincoln Square, but we eventually opted to adjourn back to Linnaeus’ place for dinner from the taquiera on the corner nearby. Dinner was yummy, and it’s always fun to hang out with friends.

Sunday found us driving up to McHenry County to visit with Dan’s mom. Her Tivo wasn’t connecting and we suspected we knew the problem but had to be there to fix it. Sure enough, the Netgear wireless router had somehow completely reset itself; fixing it was a two-minute thing, very simple. We got a delicious lunch out of the deal, though, and a nice afternoon of familial socializing. We headed home and lazed around the house for the rest of the evening, watching a little more Tivo.

And here we are at today. Ever since Friday, I’ve had a pain in my right ear that has gotten worse and worse. I suspected I knew the problem, and I just got back from the doctor who confirmed it: Otitis Externa, or Swimmer’s Ear. A round of levofloxacin (a relative of Cipro) should take care of it, and the Tylenol with codeine to help the pain at night won’t hurt either 🙂 Having taken care of that, I’m off in a few minutes to pick up Dan and then we’ll wander our way down to Lombard to celebrate rustitobuck‘s birthday. Yay!

Oh, and for locals: if you haven’t seen it, there’s a coffee get-together in the city on Wednesday!

Coffee Get-Together-Thingy!

OK, so I’ve been feeling like organizing something, so here’s something:
What: Coffee (And Ice Cream) Night!
When: 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM, Wednesday, July 26 (this coming Wednesday)
Where: Bobtail Soda Fountain, 3425 N. Southport, Chicago, IL
That’s a half-block north of the Brown Line Southport station, and the El is by far the easiest way to get there. Street parking is available, though you may have to hunt a bit (the Cubs are not playing at home that night). Bobtail has very tasty (Intelligentsia) coffee, and excellent ice cream as well. They don’t serve much in the way of non-dessert food, but there is a Potbelly Sandwich Works right across the street. takaza and I will probably hit Potbelly at around 7 PM for a quick dinner if anyone wants to join us there. If you’d like us to save you a seat, just let me know, here or by e-mail!

Edit 7/24/06, 8 AM: In response to a question elsewhere, there is a chance this may become a regular gathering, though it would be monthly, not weekly like before.

A Night On The Town

Man, am I dragging this afternoon. I had a blast last night hanging out with perro and woodychitwn and (all-too-briefly) wipeout_ut; I’ll leave the sordid tales to Woody and Perro’s journals, but it was an entertaining reminder of why I’m not a huge fan of bars, though the denizens therein and the heavy-handed propositions were hysterical to watch. The cosmo I started with was OK, and the Chivas and soda was serviceable. Then Woody’s friend came on shift behind the bar and the margarita I ordered kicked my butt something fierce.It was probably half tequila, but unfortunately we’re talking well tequila here…gah. We had a lot of fun shouting talking over the music and I’d love to do it again, though maybe in a quieter setting.

By the time 11:15 rolled around I knew I had to hit the road. I took my leave of the merry crew as they went in search of quieter digs (and, as it turns out, weak, expensive drinks). The El ride back home was…interesting. When you’re riding the El and you’re tipsy, it’s not a good idea to think about motion sickness. Oog. No real problems, just a bit of nausea. I finally got to bed a little after midnight, then the alarm went off at 5 AM. Not. Enough. Sleep. You’ll understand why I feel like I’m about to faceplant into the keyboard.

So, it appears that we’re going to see Clerks 2 tomorrow night. Saturday, there’s a couple of possibilities, though I’m kind of hoping we might grab tickets to the Gay Games Closing Ceremonies at Wrigley Field, since they cut ticket prices in half and they’re now a much more affordable $25. Also, Carbon Leaf is playing at Sheffield Walk, so that’s a possibility as well. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

Whoa…

Breaking news…Just after 5 PM CDT it appears that a fire broke out on one of the wheel assemblies leading to the derailment of one of the Blue Line trains in downtown Chicago on the northwest part of the Loop. Scores of people were evacuated and are being treated for smoke inhalation. Metra is honoring CTA farecards to get people home. More updates at CBS 2 Chicago.

Our relaxing weekends sure are busy!

So, as I said in my last post of any substance, takaza and I spent Friday evening off together. He chose the hotel (with some help from steviemaxwell. Thanks Stevie!) and let me choose the restaurant for dinner. I knew exactly what I had in mind, but I wanted to surprise him, so I told him we were going to a good Italian restaurant in Naperville. It turns out that one of his cow-orkers lives in Naperville, so when he asked me which one I was caught flat-footed. LTH Forum to my rescue! Why, it’s Pasta Amore – fortunately, I chose one that actually had a pretty good reputation. Once we parked in downtown Naperville, we walked around a bit then I abruptly turned into a restaurant as we passed. Dan said, “Wait! That’s not the right place. That’s Heaven on Seven.” I replied that yes, it was the right place – that’s where our reservations were 🙂 Dinner was, as expected, completely fabulous. Dan’s country fried steak over garlic mashed potatoes was tasty, though not quite as good as past versions at other Ho7 locations. I had the “Feed Me Jimmy Junior” tasting menu, which included crawfish cake, gumbo, turtle soup, a cheddar-jalapeno muffin, a Voodoo chicken enchilada, beef tenderloin over garlic mashed potatoes, and chocolate pecan pie. Ye gods, that was amazing! Afterwards we retired back to the hotel room to relax.

On Saturday, I let Dan sleep in as I poked at my laptop a bit and got some of the free “breakfast” downstairs. Eh, a bagel works when it’s all ya got. Once we got rolling, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some things for Stevie then headed over to the LAFF softball game. We hung out there for an hour or so and chatted with friends, then retired over to crim_ferret and wyldekyttin‘s place for Crim’s birthday. We really enjoyed hanging out there, chatting, and the steaks were just delicious! Unfortunately, Dan was feeling under the weather so we had to take our leave on the early side.

Sunday? Sunday was the kind of day where you look at the clock and say, “Huh. It’s 5 PM. I guess we should take a shower.” It was quite nice, actually, and dinner was tasty too (sautéed pork chops accompanied by potatoes roasted in goose fat. Yum!)

I didn’t sleep too well last night, and we’ve had a bit of surprising news today that has me a bit off-kilter and stressed. Nothing bad, just…wow. More on that soon, I’m sure.

On the verge of the weekend

Whoa, it’s Friday. Wasn’t quite ready for that, but I’m certainly not complaining!

Last night was quite enjoyable. After dinner, we were faced with another night of vegging in front of the Tivo, but it was such a darned nice evening out (temp in the low 70’s F and low humidity). I poked takaza into action and we drove over to Foster Beach and walked along Lake Michigan as the sun set. Just lovely. We didn’t see any border collies, unfortunately. After walking around a bit and being serenaded by someone’s last few firecrackers from the Fourth, we adjourned to Zephyr for a tasty dessert. Sadly, I found their homemade hot fudge somewhat lacking, but the ice cream was tasty!

And now it’s Friday. I dropped Dan off at work this morning, so I’ll be off to meet him after I leave work. I like this arrangement because it gives me a good 30-45 minutes to relax, read the paper, or nap before Dan’s ready to leave. After I pick him up, we’re going to find a nice restaurant out in the ‘burbs, and crash at a nice place for a quiet evening together. Yay!

For the weekend, we’ll be stopping by for a brief social visit, then it’s off to help celebrate a certain ferret’s birthday. And Sunday? Not a whole lot is planned right now, and that’s a Good Thing.

What day is it again?

Man, long holiday weekends mess with my head. Thank heavens my employer is closed today (even if I’m not getting paid or it).

I need to think up a good excuse not to go down to see the fireworks tonight. I seem to be failing in my search, which means I might have interesting times ahead…

I imagine this will be all over LJ by the end of the day, but hey – here ya go. Pittsburgh City Paper did a front-page article on furries and Anthrocon that hits the stands today, and it is surprisingly even-handed. The reader is left with the impression that furries are a bunch of people who are slightly weird and very geeky, but certainly not the sex fiends that the media has made them out to be. They even got most of the facts right! The web version leaves out many of the pictures that ran with the article, so scans of the article are below the cut (thanks to artemisfur for the scans).

Article below the cut. Woe betide dial-up users!

In case anyone missed it, tugrik has his amazing pictures from Anthrocon up and ready for viewing.

This is my favorite picture because it shows both the beauty of the venue we were in (David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, right on the Allegheny River) and the sheer number of fursuits gathered – almost 200!


(Click picture for a ginormous 6610 x 2149 version showing an amazing amount of detail)

Oh, and here’s how they got that shot (that’s PNC Park in the background).

Yeah, we’re weird, but it’s a good kind of weird 🙂

And Bingo Was His Name-O

Well, after Anthrocon and a very trying week at work, racing against deadlines, we came to the weekend. What would one want to do to recover? Hey, how about relaxing at home? Or maybe going to the Chicago Pride Parade? Or catching the Pride edition of Too Much Light?

No, we called bingo games, drove to Wisconsin, and went to meetings. Logic? What’s that?

On Saturday, takaza and I drove up to Vernon Hills for his company’s summer picnic. Man, it’s nice that he works for one of the few companies that isn’t cutting costs to the bone these days. The picnic was open to all employees and their families, though this was the first year that they didn’t offer free beer and wine (and attendance suffered somewhat, but not terribly). We were in charge of calling bingo games for two sessions, from 12:30 – 2 PM, then from 2:30 – 4PM. The organizers gave us a huge box of $25 gift cards to give away for everything from Jewel and Toys R Us to Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants and Wal Mart – probably close to $1,000 worth of cards total. Dan did some excellent pre-planning and made some signs that were a huge help, and although I’ll admit I was a bit unsure about things at first eventually I did have a very fun time. We alternated, first calling two games, then walking among the audience, answering questions, and checking cards. I think we called about 30-40 games total, and had crowds that pushed 100 or so by the end of the day.

That was pretty fun, but it gets better. First, Dan won a door prize: a $25 Lettuce Entertain You gift card (mmm, that’s two large, home-made apple strudels). They were holding a charity raffle to benefit Ronald McDonald House in which, among other things, they were giving away six Blackberrys. Dan took some of his leftover cash from Anthrocon and bought sixteen $5 tickets. As we were finishing up the last session of bingo, one of the organizers came over and told him he had won and gave him his prize…a 1 Gb iPod Nano. Which is all well and good, except that we both already have 30 Gb iPods. Dan ran into a cow-orker who mentioned that he had won $100 in gift cards to Best Buy; after some talking, they agreed to swap prizes, since the gift cards would be much more useful to us and the cow-orker’s son really wanted an iPod. As we were driving away from the picnic, Dan opened the envelope and pulled out one $50 card, then another $50 card, then another, unmarked card! One call to Best Buy’s automated number later, and we find that we actually have $150 in gift cards. Woo! To cap all of this off, after we helped last year we each got $40 in gift cards, so I’m assuming we’ll be seeing something similar this year. It turns out that it was a very lucrative afternoon, plus I had a surprisingly good time.

After the picnic, we headed up to Milwaukee to have a going-away party for Straif (colliedoc). It was a lovely, low-key affair. The company was excellent, the food was good, and the wine very tasty 🙂 (Steele Carneros Pinot Noir, of course – you can’t go wrong with that!) unfortunately, we were both feeling the effects of the long day outside and had to take our leave early – I slept a good bit on the drive home, and poor Dan was feeling pretty sleepy too, but we made it home OK.

Sunday featured the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Not much to say about that, though do check out our spiffy new website, courtesy of hooktail. Really nice work! We lazed around at home a bit in the evening, and continued slooowly going through the first season of the new Doctor Who by watching “Daleks” – yet another strong episode.

Today has been a pleasant day at work, a lot less stressful than last week! It sounds like Dan will be heading down to the St. Louis for his employer tomorrow for a few days, but with the possibility of late nights there the prospects of socializing seem regrettably small. In the meantime…Anyone want to go out for sushi tomorrow or Wednesday night?

So I was commenting back and forth with rooth and he mentioned that people needed more to do on Sunday night of Anthrocon, and maybe something like a scavenger hunt would be a good thing to keep them occupied. Well, I have some experience with treasure hunts, and hmmm…

And right about there is where Takaza bopped me with a rolled-up newspaper. Because yeah – what am I really good for by Sunday night? Sleep, and that’s pretty much about it.

Now Thursday night, on the other hand…

🙂

The usual panic

Just because I haven’t said much, don’t assume there’s not a lot going on 🙂 The last few days have been spent in pre-convention stress mode before Anthrocon. I’ve printed up all the forms, handouts, and MFF flyers we’re going to need and we’ve been working on a packing list for everything that we’re going to cram into Dan’s Element. Naturally, work hit me with a big deadline so the last few days here have been unpleasantly stressful, but that’s past and even though I’m still here, my brain has already left for vacation.

The biggest problem I have right now is insomnia – the past two nights I’ve woken up at 3:30 AM; Monday morning I was able to get back to sleep, but this morning I finally said t’heck with it and got up at 4 AM to check e-mail and such. I’m sure I’ll be paying for it later tonight, but at least I got some stuff taken care of before coming into work at 6 AM. I just chugged down a Monster, so I expect jitters to start soon.

As for tonight, I need to pick up some boxes for sorting receipts in Artists Alley and then make a stop by the grocery store for last-minute supplies. Then it’s back home to start packing and run a last load of laundry. We’ll be up at 5 AM tomorrow morning (if not before) to hit the road to Pittsburgh. It should be an easy drive out of town, and we should arrive there before rush hour. Then it’s a couple of meetings, and hopefully a chance to grab some dinner in between.

Hope to see many of you in Pittsburgh at some point this weekend!

Where Did The Weekend Go?

Yes, we do indeed have a personal life too, and I’m sure y’all are tired of reading about FRAC, so enough about that for now.

On Friday, even though takaza had driven in to work we decided that it would be better if I picked him up and we left his car at his employer’s over the weekend. I really enjoy meeting him after work on Fridays because I usually get there 30-40 minutes before he’s ready to go so I have time to read or nap or just relax, and the weather on Friday was ideal – 70’s and breezy. I parked under a tree for some shade and read the paper, and dozed a bit too. Once he was done for the day, we drove deep into the darkest wilds of Evanston, to explore the mysteries of the Central Street shopping district. Although my initial target was The Spice House, we also found Foodstuffs, which is an evil, evil place, and checked out a couple of interesting restaurants (Jacky’s Bistro was tempting, but a bit too spendy for us that night). We wound up opting to drive down to the Davis Street business district, which wasn’t nearly as interesting even if it is bigger (too many national chains represented there). We tried to drop in on siriuswolfstar at work, only to find that he had traded shifts and was well on the fast track to inebriation elsewhere. We wound up at Trattoria Demi, a “red-sauce Italian place” that I found to be…eh. Nothing exciting, but at least it wasn’t too expensive.

Saturday found me poking around on the net in the morning to try to find something to bring to wyldekyttin‘s birthday party that evening. I utterly failed at matching the theme (“something that can be deconstructed”), but I did come up with an extremely tasty Asian chicken salad. I sauteed up some chicken breasts using The Spice House’s delicious Argyle Street Asian Blend. I stole the dressing and fried rice noodles from this recipe, only I used a nice spring blend for greens, and added snow peas, scallions, and baby bok choy. Once the chicken breasts were cooled, I tore them apart by hand. The nice thing about this was that I could I put the noodles in one bag, the greens in another, the prepared veggies in another, the chicken in another, and the dressing in a plastic container; when it was time to serve I just dumped them all into a bowl and tossed. Quite tasty, too.

The party was great fun, and crim_ferret did a sterling job on grill duty (mmm, Asiago cheeseburgers!). Alas, the fact that I had woken up at 6:30 AM caught up with me and we left the party at an unconscionably early hour because I was close to falling asleep.

Sunday was spent working on Anthrocon stuff – Dan on signage, me on Artists Alley and Con Store prep. I’ve almost gotten the work schedule in place, I just need to give it a once-over before sending it out to my staff. Thank heavens I was able to recruit enough folks this year so that I don’t have to schedule myself, since I get pulled in four different directions at once during the con and I need to be able to deal with stuff when necessary. We took a break in the afternoon to grab some food, do a bit of shopping, and finally pick up our rings from the jeweler. This ordeal has taken over two months, but we finally have both rings back and I’m once more wearing my wedding band – no more cruising the bars for me! {snicker} Once home we watched some Good Eats and worked on more Anthrocon stuff (this will be our refrain for the next week).

Incidentally, for those that care: we’ve made a slight alteration in our Anthrocon travel plans. We will be driving, leaving Chicago sometime between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM (when we normally leave for work anyway) on Wednesday, June 14, aiming to arrive in Pittsburgh by 3 PM EDT; we’ll be departing Pittsburgh before noon on Monday the 19th. We were originally going to put in half-days at work and leave Chicago at noonish, but we realized that the loss of hours for me is more than made up for by the decrease in stress in not getting in late to the hotel and not scrambling to get stuff done Wednesday night. Heck, we might even be able to take a swim before the con starts!

We don’t have a lot of plans for this week, since we’re trying to save a small bit before the con. Mostly finalizing Anthrocon stuff, and clearing up the huge backlog we have on the Tivo (NINE episodes of Doctor Who? I need to get watching!)

And Now: FRAC 2!

Furries Race Across Chicago (or FRAC) is the name of a treasure hunt that we conduct periodically; the object is to visit a set number of checkpoints scattered throughout the Chicago area in the correct order and return to FRAC Headquarters in the shortest amount of time. This past weekend was the second FRAC. Here are the Rules For FRAC for your perusal. In presenting the summary of FRAC 2, I’m going to post the questions and answers in sections over a the next couple of days, along with a bit of commentary. Here’s the start of the race:

This time around, we had seven teams:
Team Crossing Gates: posicat and stormdog
Team Bi-Bitches: lisagems and wooisme
Team Yuk: Linnaeus and mirkowuff
Torgo’s Angels: tincrash and Max
Minoriteam: steviemaxwell and sylverfox
Team Jonathan Hitler’s Magic Aston Martin with the Vin Diesel Hubcaps (see, this is what happens when the poet name the team): daveqat and mstegosaurus
Team Simbius: siriuswolfstar and simbalion

Teams were instructed to gather in the hotel conference room at 10 AM, which we almost accomplished (HA!). Once there, they were informed that they would be taking a quiz to determine the starting order. Teams had 15 minutes to complete the quiz, which would be graded on both the number of correct answers and how fast they were turned in. What we didn’t tell them was that the team that scored highest left last, and the team that scored lowest left first. Ostensibly this was to even out the field a bit, but in hindsight it just meant that the teams tended to bunch up a bit more. That didn’t turn out to be a problem, as you will see. So, how hard was the trivia quiz? Click below to find out…

IT’S TRIVIA TIME!

Wuffmeet 3 is done!

The weekend is done and we are pleased to report that Wuffmeet 3 was a success! Thanks so much to the wonderful folks who showed up to make the weekend so much fun: artemisfur, crim_ferret, werellama, datahawk, daveqat, dancingninny, genet, foxish, linnaeus, lisagems, Max, mirkowuff, mistletoe, wooisme, mstegosaurus, neowolf2, posicat, roho, simbalion, siriuswolfstar, steviemaxwell, stormdog, jimcyl, tincrash, tremaine, unclevlad, vidarwolf, and wyldekyttin. Many beverages were consumed, much food was eaten, and I laughed more than I have in quite a while!

Things kicked off Friday with some tasty food for dinner: beef stew, chicken white chili, and kielbasa, kraut, and potatoes. Judging from the alacrity with which the food disappeared, I gather it was of acceptable quality (or everyone was really hungry). As requested, I’ll post the recipe for the white chili here in the next few days. Saturday was FRAC (Furries Race Across Chicago), followed by a pizza feast and socializing into the wee hours. Sunday was a late start for some reason (gee, where’s all those empty bottles come from?) 🙂 We took a sizable crowd over to Emmett’s Tavern, where we had a delicious lunch and enjoyed a sampling of their beers. Later, we sent out for various cuisines for dinner, which were all distinguished by being pretty much awful. And this morning, once we got everyone rousted up and checked out of their rooms, we grabbed a late brunch at Apple Villa, which turned out to be an excellent alternative to the dreadful IHOP which was next to the hotel. From there, everyone scattered to the winds, to head home and crash.

Planning this event was a world of fun, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. I was pretty stressed on Friday hoping that everything would work out right and that takaza and I had budgeted properly, but I should have trusted my wonderful wolf – everything worked well, with the exception that we came up a few cans short of diet sodas on Sunday. Dan and I came up with a good approach this year: I took the early shift and he took the late shift. That meant that I was up early to make sure that everyone had their coffee, kringles, and oatmeal, and Dan stayed up late to clean up and lock up when everyone went to bed. The downside of this is that he got to bed at 5:30 AM this morning; needless to say, he’s taking a nap as I write this. We hope that everyone enjoyed themselves, and we look forward to the next Wuffmeet!

And what about FRAC, you say? How did it go, and who won this time? You’ll have to wait for that! I’ll be putting up some lengthy posts tomorrow detailing the clues, the hints, the answers, and the winners (with pictures!). But for now…time to collapse and relax.

And they’re off!

At 10:46 AM, the first team left FRAC HQ to start FRAC 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s noon now, and all seven teams are in the field. Let’s see whose navigation will reign supreme…

Stress, and a meme

I can be an annoying ball of stress sometimes, and over the least important stuff. I’m trying to get better, but in a lot of ways that’s just how I am, and about the only way that’d ever change is through medication – but that’s a bit more extreme than is necessary, I think. This is why as things approach that I enjoy doing (Wuffmeet, Anthrocon, MFF), I become more and more irritable and worried. The good news is that once things get going, I’m fine, everyone has a good time, and I’m able to enjoy myself. But the few days leading up to the event…yeah. Which is a long way of saying, if I seem snappish to anyone over the next few weeks, I apologize in advance.

My FRAC stuff is done; takaza has a few more things to take care of and we can start assembling everything. In the meantime I can worry about the food I’m cooking for Friday; I’ve got a white chili recipe that I’ve synthesized out of a number of recipes I’ve found on the net (I can post the recipe if people are interested); I’ll be making that tomorrow night. I’ll also be making a nice big pot of Kielbasa and sauerkraut with boiled potatoes – it’s easy and tasty. I will admit that it never occurred to me to rinse the sauerkraut before using it, but it’s probably a good thing to do to cut the acidity a bit. Tonight, though, after a quick visit to The Spice House on the way home, Dan and I are off to see the White Sox play Oakland in some kind of baseball thingy.

Oh yeah, woodychitwn, tagged with a meme. You bastard! I’m supposed to name 6 weird facts/things/habits about myself.

  1. I have broken each arm twice, and have had reconstructive ankle surgery on my right ankle.
  2. When I was 12 or 13, when we lived in Southbury, CT, we had a house fire. Mostly it was just smoke damage, but it was scary. The one thing I remember the most was the rotten neighborhood kids making fun of us because our house was on fire. How broken do you have to be to sink that low?
  3. I have been in four car accidents, three of which occurred while I was driving. The first was when I was 10 or 11 and our family car was broadsided (no injuries). The second was when I was 17 and I took a curve too fast with sand on the road – I spun out and wound up in a ditch. No injuries there, either, though I didn’t do the car much good. The last two were fender-benders in Chicago in 2004 and a few months ago.
  4. I won the Latin Award when I graduated high school, for having the highest grades in Latin in my graduating class. You may think it’s geeky, but that gave me a basis for vocabulary so I can somewhat understand written Spanish and French (curiously, Italian eludes me completely).
  5. I was seneschal (regional president) of the Barony of Black Diamond (Southwestern Virginia group) in the Society for Creative Anachronism for a little over a year. I was in the SCA for seven years total, and made many dear and wonderful friends there. I also learned that fen are fen, and you can change fandoms but you’ll still meet the same people 🙂
  6. I have maintained the same set of web pages (with slightly varying and updating content) online for the last 11 years. My coming out page attracts the most hits, and I still get nice e-mails at random from readers.

Now I’m supposed to tag some people to do this meme. I tag perro‘s mom 😉 (oh, and anyone else who just feels like doing it)

Busy weekend, but busier week ahead!

That was a very satisfying weekend. On Friday I took takaza to work (it means I don’t get in until 7 AM, when I usually get here at 6:45 – no loss). This meant that when I got out from work, I was able to spend a lovely half-hour alternately reading and dozing in the sun while waiting for him to finish work. We walked around to Randhurst Mall (which is very, very sad) before meeting up with linnaeus and Dan’s cow-orker nymphara to see Over the Hedge. The verdict from me: Not great, but it had some very funny moments. Bruce Willis played Bruce Willis, which bores me. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as the porcupines cracked me the hell up and really made the movie (OK, Steve Carrell’s Sammy was good too).

On Saturday I was up and motivated on the early side, so I walked the two miles or so over to where wooisme was participating in a garage sale. I had a pleasant time chatting, and Paul joined us not long after. Paul and I ducked out at around 11:30 and in the interest of time caught a bus back to our place. Dan was feeling under the weather, so he opted to stay in while I picked up mirkowuff from O’Hare and we headed out to LAFF softball. Thanks so much to woodychitwn for providing the comfy viewing arrangements! That was perfect way to chat with friends, enjoy the beautiful weather, and be completely and utterly lazy 🙂 After the game we had ambitious plans to go out to dinner at a nice place in Andersonville and see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Unfortunately, we were all tired and that devolved into dinner from the taquiera around the corner, some family Guy from the TiVo and an early bedtime.

I woke up at 6:30 AM on Sunday and couldn’t get back to sleep. Curse being a morning person! On the bright side, this allowed me to go out and enjoy the crisp, breezy morning. I drove over to the Broadway location of Intelligentsia and picked up a couple of pounds of beans for this week and Wuffmeet, then took my (free!) cup of coffee over to the lakeshore at Foster Beach and spent some time watching the lake and admiring the skyline. Truly, a wonderful way to start the day! We had a nice morning of coffee, newspaper, and a bit of video games before Mirko, Paul, and I headed out to the MFF staff meeting (Dan was still feeling pretty oogy, unfortunately. He’s doing much better now!). The meeting was quite useful, and we accomplished quite a bit. Afterwards, the dinner at Portillo’s was enjoyable as well. I picked up some dinner for Dan on the way home and we had a quiet evening in, though we stayed up a bit later than I would have liked nailing down more FRAC stuff.

And so this week: it’s going to be pretty crazy. We have a lot of prep for Wuffmeet to do, I need to run a good number of errands, and on top of that I’ll be going with Dan, Woody, and perro to see a White Sox game tomorrow night. Oh, and I need to cook two full meals for Friday night, too. Whee!

How did midweek suddenly get this busy?

So, as predicted, we did spend a delightful evening at roho and genet‘s in the company of ottr and riecka. Charcoal Grill in Kenosha provided tasty burgers and so-so drinks (note to self: next time stick to the mai tais – the Long Islands there suck), then back to R&G’s where Diesel proceeded to clean our clocks at Texas hold ’em. It was a lot of fun, and many thanks to R&G for putting us up for the night!

Tuesday was going to be a quiet evening at home, but a call from a friend who had locked their keys in their car prompted a pre-emption of dinner plans and a trip out to the burbs. Dinner became Potbelly Sandwiches, which I must admit I’m starting to like. Unfortunately, I was reminded of the perils of raw onions too soon before bedtime as I had one of the worst attacks of reflux that I’ve had in quite a while that night, after midnight. I stayed up for almost an hour waiting for things to settle down, and still have a nasty “scorched” throat to show for it. We really need to make an attempt to eat earlier, I think, and I need to watch what I eat a bit more closely.

Last night I was feeling terrible when I got home from work – a pounding headache just this side of a migraine. I forewent the gym and instead lay down for an hour or so, though even with ibuprofen the headache wouldn’t go away. Dan came home and, after seeing the state I was in, grabbed some massage oil and administered a heavenly neck and shoulder massage that drove the headache away. I’m so fortunate to have a husband as wonderful as him! Not long after, we were graced by the presence of datahawk, who crashed with us for the night so we could watch the finale of The Amazing Race. The hippies won, yay! It was a great ending to a so-so season; I’m just glad that they renewed it for next year, though I’m not sure how I feel about a Sunday time slot for the show. On the other hand, it’ll be right after 60 Minutes, which is a hell of a lead-in. We stayed up a bit too late hammering out some details on FRAC, and I’m pleased to say we now have a good two-thirds of the clues done and ready to go. And just so I can get my reality double-doe, I see that the Top Chef finale (Part 1) recorded last night. That’ll be some good Tivo fodder for tonight.

And so today I need to make a quick stop by the grocery store on the way home, then it’ll be back to the gym after too many days away.

Hmm…we need to make some plans for the weekend. Stay tuned for a post about that…

FRAC Update!

Wuffmeet and FRAC are fast approaching! Today, we need to talk about FRAC. Right now, we have the following participants signed up for FRAC:
DaveQat
Linnaeus
Lisa
Mirko
Moira
Simba
Sirius
Stormdog
Synicism
Posicat
Osiris

That’s great! Except for one slight problem: eleven is an odd number. We need one more person! (or three more people – what the heck 🙂 If you are reading this and are thinking about participating, or know someone who would make a good addition to Wuffmeet, we need to know immediately! It’s only $12.50 to participate, and we guarantee a fun and exciting afternoon.

As for teams, right now I know that DaveQat and Syn, and Sirius and Simba are teaming up – the rest of you, I’m not sure. Talk amongst yourselves, and figure out who’s one whose team, then tell us your team name. We need teams and team names NO LATER THAN SUNDAY!

And now, the rules. These are only slightly changed from FRAC 1, but it’s worth re-reading them:
Click here for FRAC Rules

I Need a Weekend to Recover From My Weekend

Weekend. Right. Yeah, we had one of those, I think.

On Friday, I picked takaza up at work and we braved the insane Friday traffic to drive down to visit a friend who was in the hospital (good news, though – he was discharged the following day). We were pretty tired afterwards, so we grabbed dinner from Charcoal Delight and I crashed on the early side.

Saturday found me up and awake at 8 AM, as per usual, but that left me time to read the paper and have my coffee. I woke Dan up and we headed out the door to spend the day nailing down a route for FRAC. I’m happy to say that after a few false starts and some disagreements on where to go when, I think we’ve got a good course for the race in hand. We still need to work out several elements, but hey, we’ve got twelve days to go, right? After all that traipsing around, we met siriuswolfstar and simbalion for dinner at The Grafton, a place I had visited before with Linnaeus. I regret to report that the place has not improved on my initial dismal opinion of it, and we won’t be returning. The food was uninspiring at best, and the service was quite poor. Ah we.. We capped the night off with a nice chat back at our place, then I stumbled off to bed, though Dan stayed up quite a bit later.

On Mother’s Day we drove up to Dan’s mom’s place in McHenry County. On the way there we stopped by our storage unit to visit our stuff (“Hi! Did you miss us?”) and we dug out our 32″ television. After our last visit to his mom’s I had noticed that her TV was in terrible shape, and ours has just been sitting in storage for the last year and a half. Plus, I suspect that when we do get our own place we’ll be in the market for something a bit bigger and shinier (curse you, feren! Curse you and your 52″ flat-panel HDTV!). After we dropped off the TV, We headed over to Woodstock to the Tip Top Bistro for their Mother’s Day brunch. It’s a pleasant little place, and the staff there were friendly and helpful (which must have been tough on a crazy day like Mother’s Day!). They had a nice brunch buffet with a tasty Waldorf salad, seafood paella, fettuccine puttanesca, leg of lamb, eggs benedict, and bananas French toast. The complimentary champagne (well, prosecco, technically) with free refills was nice too 🙂 After brunch we returned to Dan’s mom’s house where Dan spent the next hour rearranging her A/V equipment, making sure the VCR(s), Tivo, and TVs all were connected properly. I…well, I fell asleep on the sofa 🙂 Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I think. We headed home and made a stop by the corner taquiera for a light dinner. We stayed up too late to catch the Survivor finale (Bleah. I’m skipping next season, and this time I mean it!) and then I went off to bed, though again Dan stayed up too late (silly wolf!).

So tonight we’re going to be hanging out in Antioch, spending time with roho and genet and the visiting ottr and his wife, riecka. I foresee a wee bit of alcohol, some tasty food, and me getting the bejesus beaten out of me at poker…

Ring Closure

Well, I’ve got some good news to report on the wedding band front. I took takaza‘s ring by the store after work yesterday and we agreed that, yes, it was indeed different from the ring that they had sent. Amanda (who, by the way has been fabulously helpful) checked against their catalog and we found the problem: someone had fumble-fingered the model number when typing in the order. She called the manufacturer and they said they had the correct ring in my size in stock, so they’re priority shipping it; it should be at the store by Wednesday, and Amanda wills end it out the same day for engraving. With luck, it’ll be in my hands by Thursday or Friday at the latest. Yay!

Oh, and in reference to my last entry, my mom asked what’s so great about a Thermapen? Well, it’s a very nice, very accurate instant-read thermometer with a nice big digital readout. What I like is that the hinge gives you a good angle to stick the thermocouple into roasts, chicken, etc. Theoretically, it’s very durable as well, but obviously they need a bit of work there. I’m pretty confident they can resolve the issue quickly, though.

Hmm. Need to make a grocery list and plan out the menu for the week. We’ve been eating out a lot, which gets a bit pricey sometimes…

Tales of Consumer Woe

Well, not all woe: there’s some good, and some bad.

Let’s start with the good: Back in March, I mentioned that my coffee pot had died. Special thanks to kwikdog for pointing out that the warranty was still applicable! I sent it off and, after about a month, I got it back, with a new pot (which contains a lot of the electronics). Total cost: shipping to the repair shop. That’s it. Yay!

Not long after that, I noticed that my wedding ring was cracked. Now, it just so happens that the place where we bought our rings only has one location in all of Illinois – and it’s on the way home from work for me. Perfect! I dropped off my ring and received a slip and a promise that it would be repaired and back to me in 8-10 days. Well, it’s been over a month now, and the ring came back from the manufacturer last week. The local store had to have the engraving done themselves, so it wasn’t ready until Saturday. yesterday Dan and I went to pick it up and…it’s not the same ring. Yes, it’s a ring of yellow gold with a white gold band around it, but it’s a different design, a much heavier weight, the difference between the white and yellow golds is barely discernable, and honestly it’s not a design that we would have chosen. So now we need to figure out with the store what we’re going to do; the object was to have two rings that matched – that’s kind of the point of the rings. I’m going to meet with the store manager this afternoon and see what’s to be done, but I am not happy. To her credit, she’s been very helpful and pleasant up until now, and the whole transaction has been free. We’ll see how it goes today.

Oh, and a new tale to add to the stack: My Thermapen has died, after only five months of use. Yeah, that ain’t gonna work. I bought a new battery to see if that was all that was necessary, but that isn’t it. I’ll be contacting the manufacturer this week.

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 🙂