Medical fun and dinners with friends

Good news! I have too much blood in my cholesterol system. Or rather, I don’t have too much cholesterol in my blood system. Well, I do, but it’s not something I need to take meds for – I’m classified as “high borderline” on most counts, but compared to last year the numbers are declining, so all my work at the gym has paid off. My weight hasn’t really changed much, unfortunately; this means that in the diet-exercise balance, I need to work on improving my diet. The even better news is that everything else checked out, and I’m pretty healthy otherwise.

This week has gone by pretty quickly. Tuesday we helped woodychitwn pick up some shelving for his about-to-open comics store (they do mail-order, too!), and had a tasty dinner at Heartland Cafe. Last night siriuswolfstar and simbalion joined us for dinner, and tonight we’re going to have dinner with daveqat and jimcyl. I reckon we’ll have to have dinner with perro and prfanity at some point just to complete the apartment trifecta 🙂 Tonight should be fun, though – we’re going to check out Tweet, which gets good reviews from The Reader.

Planning continues apace for Wuffmeet. To those of you who are attending and have not yet made your hotel reservations: DO IT NOW! We’re being asked to give up some space because it appears (to them) that we don’t have many people in our room block. The sooner you reserve, the more bargaining leverage we’ll have. If you need the info again, just let me know.

Back to work now!

What We Did On Our Weekend Vacation

As promised, takaza and I retreated to the Hoffman Estates La Quinta on Friday after work for a weekend of relaxation and planning. Once we had a chance to decompress a bit we took to the car and went in search of dinner. Our wanderings took us to Woodfield Mall, and while we briefly considered trying out the new meat faucet there, we instead opted to cheap it out and resorted to the food court instead. After that it was back to the hotel to relax and sleep, eventually.

We were up relatively early on Saturday. The plan was to research the FRAC route, though we were racing the weather to do it since the forecast predicted incoming steady rain starting that afternoon. We had a couple of funny things happen that I can’t really talk about since people who will be participating in FRAC will be reading this 🙂 Maybe later. Anyway, the rain started to pick up at about 2 PM so we called off the scouting (we got about 75% of the work done, I’d say) and instead went in search of what is alleged to be the best hot chocolate in Chicago. We tried it, and we’d have to agree – extremely tasty!

Since the rest of the day was shot for FRAC research, we gave siriuswolfstar to see what he and simbalion were up to. It turns out they were just a few blocks north of us, so we met up at North Bridge Mall and amused ourselves with a bit of window shopping (and taking some amusing pictures in the process). We wound up grabbing a table and just chatting for a good hour or more, which was a nice break after all the walking we had done all day. After we parted ways, we headed back to the hotel. We weren’t feeling hungry until late, plus we were too lazy to actually drive anywhere, so we ordered pizza and pasta for a local joint. We have a winner for Wuffmeet, I think. The tortellini alfredo that I had was enough for three people, and I think it would nicely supplement any pizza we order.

On Sunday I snuck out early in the driving rain and spent some time at a nearby Panera having breakfast and reading the paper. Around 11:30 I went back to the hotel to find that Dan had just woken up. We got packed up and checked out and talked to the front desk folks to make sure that everything was in order for Wuffmeet. We then went made a Sam’s Club run to check prices for Wuffmeet budgeting, then a stop at American Science and Surplus to see if there were any useful knickknacks that might come in handy at our upcoming conventions. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing at home and catching up on Tivo.

Not too exciting for a weekend away from home, but that’s just fine by me!

I hear the voices in my head/I swear to god I think they were snoring

Well, it’s been a real up-and-down week. On Wednesday, I heard from takaza that things weren’t going well at work. I skipped the gym and met him after work and we had a nice walk in a nearby park and talked some of his stress out. After that, we drove around a bit, exploring some of the northern burbs that we hadn’t seen before, and then wound up at Old Orchard Mall where we splurged a bit for some not-bad hot cocoa and some excellent chocolates. I’d like to think that helped Dan a lot and made the rest of his week a little better. We capped off the evening with a nice episode of The Amazing Race, though we’re bummed that the oldsters got bounced. They seemed like genuinely nice people.

Yesterday was relatively unexciting – work, then a cardio workout at the gym. Because of my knees, I’m sort of limited in the cardio I can do, so I vary between the treadmill and the recumbent stationary bike. If I ride the bike, I can definitely get my heart rate up, even though I top out at about twenty minutes and about 130 calories burned. If I use the treadmill I can go twenty-five minutes (and longer – I need to push that a bit) and that theoretically burns 320 calories or so, but my heart rate doesn’t really get into the “cardio” range. I need to figure out how to better balance these. I’m alternating those with one day of shoulder and abdominals exercises and one day of arm and leg exercises; that seems to work pretty well, but I’m having a hard time sticking with the five-times-a-week schedule my doctor has suggested. Well, some is better than none, anyway.

This weekend we’re rewarding Dan a bit for the two weeks from hell that he’s had by spending it at the La Quinta in Hoffman Estates. It isn’t all fun, though – we’re checking out the hotel to make sure they’re ready for Wuffmeet, and on Saturday we’ll be scouting the FRAC course, taking pictures, making notes, and making evil plots 🙂 On Sunday we’ll be hitting Sam’s Club to check prices for food and drinks and play with budgeting a bit more. In between, though, we’ll be doing a lot of relaxing, which I’m looking forward to.

Gotta get some work done, but look out for some links coming up this afternoon!

Sleepless in Chicago

When last we left our intrepid heroes, they were prepping for a big weekend. Well, sort of. Takaza wasn’t feeling well when he got home on Friday night, so we had a quiet night in. On Saturday I was up bright and early, ready to enjoy a beautiful day. Dan was feeling better, so we headed down to the Cadillac Room at Soldier Field for the event of the day, Night of 100 Champions, a fundraiser for Gay Games Chicago. Considering that there were over 80 tables, with ten seats each, and seats were $75 each, this was going to be quite a fundraiser. Over the course of the weeks leading up to it, we had been told that we would have a variety of jobs, but ultimately they all collapsed down to “Setup”. We started at about 11:30 AM and worked pretty much continuously until the event started at 5:30 PM. We did a quick change into more dressy clothes and assumed our roles as facilitators for the silent auction – checking that bids were following the proper increments, answering any questions anyone might have, that sort of thing. the auction was pretty impressive, too – stuff like flights anywhere in the US, cruises, extravagant dinner and theater packages, artwork, and even a signed, framed tennis racket from Billie Jean King. The auction was supposed to end at 8 PM, then it got pushed back to 8:15, then 8:30, then finally 10 PM. This wasn’t too big of a deal – the object was to raise the most money possible, of course, but communications were poor at best, and there was a lot of confusion.

I should say that the volunteers and almost all of the organizers that we worked with were great, and we had a lot of fun with them; the only downer, and it was a BIG downer, was one of the organizers who was completely and obviously incompetent. She had a tendency to rush in and micromanage, pull you away from the tasks that you were working on to do stuff that was important to her, change her mind on how things should be done and snap at you when you didn’t read her mind, and generally being completely annoying and difficult. When she changed the (previously arranged, sensible and organized) plans for assembling the winning bids and accepting payment for winning items for the auction right as we were trying to close the auction – that was when Dan and I decided we’d had enough. We packed up our stuff and went home.

Initially, I think we were both pretty pissed off and really doubting what our participation with Gay Games might be for the next few months, I’ve come to realize that we were having problems with one person and one person only (though someone should have seen the problems and told her to knock it off). We also learned that if you’re competent, you’ll find yourself in a leadership role pretty darned quickly.

I was tired and sore Sunday morning and Dan was even worse off, suffering a dual curse of respiratory nastiness and a flare-up of the pinched nerve problems from earlier. He elected to stay home and I attended the MFF meeting. I was still in a pretty grumpy mood from the night before so I probably wasn’t the most pleasant to be around, but the meeting passed quickly. We spent Sunday night hanging out and being laptop geeks, as usual 🙂

Last night Dan was facing a recurrence of the god-awful all-nighter from last week. faced with dinner alone, I opted to walk up to Tom Yum, the sushi/Thai place around the corner from us, and had a tasty and inexpensive sushi dinner. The walk back was pleasant and perfect after a good meal. Dan didn’t leave work until after 11 PM, and didn’t come to bed until after 1 AM. We talked a little about the silliness that had kept him so late, and that got me more and more irritated until i couldn’t get back to sleep. I finally got to sleep again at about 3 AM, so you understand why I’m dragging a good bit today. Bleah. I’ll still hit the gym today, though, and we have a nice dinner of fettuccine carbonara lined up for dinner. Pasta makes everything better 🙂

Time to head home!

Do the Friday Dance!

Don’t know what the Friday Dance is? Just jump up and dance around because the next two days won’t be spent stuck at a desk all day. YAY!

Last night was lots of fun. After pulling an all-nighter, Takaza was told that a sizeable bonus is in the pipeline for him. This, coupled with the nice chunk of change I’m getting back on my federal and state taxes will help to pay down some of our debt that much faster, which makes us very happy. To celebrate, Dan informed me (as I was relaxing, exhausted from the gym) that we were going out to celebrate! We stopped first at Martin’s Big and Tall, a nice little shop in Lincoln Square. I had thought that they were a bit expensive in the past, but since Dan and I both needed shirts, we stopped by to see what they had. It turns out that they had some great shirts at reasonable prices (MUCH better than Casual Male’s shoddy crap), so we bought several, including the spiffy shirt I have on today.

From there we decided to explore Lincoln Park a bit (and hang out with trixies and chads) and took the Brown Line down to Armitage. Dan was in the mood for steak and while we were looking around we stumbled onto Select Cut Steak House at the corner of Armitage and Halsted. The steaks were good. We both got combos; Dan had a strip steak and chicken breasts (“it’d be good on a chicken sandwich, not so much by itself”), I had the strip steak and ribs. It’s telling that as I dipped my fries, Dan pointed out that it was probably barbecue sauce I was dipping into and not ketchup. It took me a couple of fries to tell the difference. We also felt a bit rushed by the waitron, which was silly since the place wasn’t busy at all. All in all, it was an OK meal but I don’t see us going back. We finished off the night by stopping by my new favorite place for desserts, Bobtail, just off the Southport El stop. I {heart} the Brown Line!

So tomorrow is Night of 100 Champions. We’re supposed to be showing up at around 11 AM at Soldier Field and help set up the raffle and silent auction, then (tentatively) will be helping to sell tickets and pimp the auction items. Theoretically, we’re also supposed to be helping out with the brunch at the same location on Sunday, but that’s even more loosely-organized. I think I’ve been spoiled by the conventions I’ve worked on, because volunteer organization for this event is a bit lackluster and disorganized; I’ve always followed the guidelines that volunteers want to know what they’re going to do, where they’re going to do it, and when they are going to be there. There’s a few gaps in these facts for this event. This is a shame because there’s plenty of people willing to help, but I fear that by the end of the night it’s going to be a valiant few who have stuck around through the chaos who have to clean up. I hope I’m wrong.

I had a few other items to touch on, but work calls. More stuff to come!

Bet you didn’t know accountants pull all-nighters too

Poor takaza. He went in to work at 7 AM yesterday and got home just in time for my alarm to go off this morning at 5 AM. Theoretically this is the last of these crazy overtime blitzes, but we’ll see. His boss has dangled the prospect of a spot bonus for him when this is all over (one of those “might be $20, might be $thousands” kind of things). All I’m sayin’ is, it better be on the north end of that range.

Dan’s home sleeping now, thank heavens, and told his boss that he’ll be unavailable before 2 PM, and even then he’ll only be working from home (which I think is generous, but I’m a bastard that way). A nasty side-effect of this is that I kept waking up last night, worrying about him. At 3 AM, I woke up and imagined horrible scenarios of Dan in a car wreck on his way home, so I had to get up and IM him to make sure he was still at work and safe. What can I say? My mind works in weird ways when I’m sleepy.

So now it’s 9:30 AM and I’m yawning up a storm. Even after this morning’s three cups of coffee, the can of Monster on my desk looks awfully inviting, but I’m going to save that until this afternoon, when I’m really gonna need it.

Wherein Our Hero Eats Out a Lot and Has a Really Fun Weekend

Goodness – one public post in the last week? Honestly, last week just wasn’t that interesting. The weekend, however…

On Friday, I got home and just felt generally tired. I skipped the gym and was even thinking about grabbing a nap when takaza called on his way home and suggested we go out and do a bit of shoe shopping. He needed my help because he has been dealing with a nasty pinched nerve in his back which limited his mobility somewhat (he’s very much on the mend now, fortunately). After some shoe shopping we decided to grab dinner out. We opted to investigate Lincoln Square. We grabbed a good parking spot and had a brief browse through The Chopping Block, a neat kitchenware store, and enjoyed a bit of music from the busker in the square. Our first choice, though it looked quite tasty, didn’t really tickle Dan’s fancy, so we walked a bit further down to La Bocca della Verita’. Dan had a very tasty (though somewhat plain) gnocchi pomodoro, and I opted for the ravioli Anatra, which had a duck breast, sage, and shallot filling. Rather good, I’ll say. Alas, the atmosphere was a bit too bustling and loud, and I doubt we’ll return.

On Saturday, Dan had to go in to work. I spent the morning and part of the afternoon hanging out with datahawk (who had spent the night) and filing my taxes (hey last-minute folks: Taxact will e-file your state and federal taxes for $16!). After some false starts (I fumbled some employer ID numbers on my W-2’s), I submitted my taxes and had notification back within a few hours. The nice refund of $900 will go…well, it’ll all go towards credit cards, which is pretty boring. Yay for debt reduction, though!

At about 4 PM Dan, Data, Linnaeus and I headed out on the El down to River North for a truly wonderful early dinner at Heaven on Seven. We were joined by emrldgirrl, wiktowasichu, siriuswolfstar, simbalion, lisagems, Moryssa, Dan’s cow-orker nymphara, Data’s mom, and Data’s brother R.C. Dan had the extremely tasty country fried steak (again), and I splurged a bit and got the “Jimmy Jr. Feed Me!” a four-course meal of whatever the chef decides to give you (the larger “Jimmy Feed Me!” is seven courses). This was truly amazing. I started off with two demitasses, one with their delicious gumbo and the other with a delicious turtle soup. This was followed by a jalapeno-cheddar corn muffin and Cajun-seasoned halibut that was nothing short of astonishing – flaky, tender, and perfectly-cooked. Not too spicy either! After this was beef tenderloin served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes. Yum! (By this point I was sharing the dishes all around because there was no way I could finish all of it myself!) They finished things off with my choice of dessert from their dinner menu; I opted for the chocolate pecan pie, which everyone agreed was tasty, but the crust was a bit too tough (Lisa guessed, and I agree, that they probably let the dough get too warm as they were rolling out). Regrettably, we were a bit rushed by the end to make our next appointment, but I would absolutely order this again when I have time to savor things a bit more. It’s a hell of a deal at only $24.

After dinner we stumbled downstairs and stuffed an insane number of people into a cab and headed over to the Cadillac Palace Theater for the evening’s main event: the final Chicago performance (this time) of the musical Rent. Dan and I both went in cold, not having seen the movie or listened to (much) of the soundtrack. The performances were solid (although the actress playing Mimi was rather dreadful and in the first act wandered off-key several times) but the experience was marred by an incompetent sound mix that rendered the vocals into mush. When you have a performance where all of the exposition is sung, this meant that I spent a lot of the time trying to guess what was going on, who was who, and what each character’s motivations were. As a result the play really fell flat for me, because I was unable to connect with the characters or really care what happened to them. The songs were pretty good, though, so the evening wasn’t completely wasted. I hope to watch the movie sometime soon and hopefully will maybe get a bit more out of that. After the play we dispersed (slowly – inertia being what it is), but made a stop by the truly tasty Bobtail Soda Fountain for some ice cream with Lisa, Sirius, Simba, and Data. Then it was on to home and collapsing into bed.

Sunday started out slowly, as might be expected given the late night Saturday. Dan had to tend to a few work items, though he fortunately could do that from home. Later in the afternoon we drove up to McHenry to Dan’s mom’s place to drop off her taxes (which Dan had filled out) and visited with her for a bit. We drove back to the city through the pouring rain and arrived just in time to meet Simba and Sirius for dinner at Calo Ristorante. Much pizza was eaten, and it’s always fun hanging out with friends. We trundled off to bed shortly after we got home.

So then we have this week. We have the final volunteers meeting tonight for Night of 100 Champions. This will pretty much be eating up our time next weekend, both the gala on Saturday and the brunch on Sunday, so we’ll probably miss the MFF staff meeting on Sunday. Other than that, I have a couple of MFF registration projects I’m working on that I would like to finish this week. Right now, though, there’s work here I need to do so I’m off. Hope everyone has a great week!

Saturday Parties and Lazy Sundays

Well, that wasn’t too bad of a weekend. datahawk came over on Friday night and we hung out (mostly her keeping me company while I cooked up a massive amount of chicken broth for chicken and dumplings). takaza didn’t get home from work until after 8 PM, and data was kind enough to run around the corner to the taquiera and pick up some dinner for us. We didn’t eat until late, though, and because of a nasty attack of reflux I wound up staying up until almost 1 AM, long after everyone else had gone to bed.

On Saturday, Dan had to go into work again, so I passed the time relaxing and chatting a bit with data and Linnaeus before doing the final prep work for the chicken and dumplings. When we headed over to siriuswolfstar‘s place at around 4 PM, Dan still wasn’t home. After the requisite circling (only about ten minutes, though) we found a decent parking spot and trudged upstairs. The evening is a bit of a blur and not because I was drinking that much (though that Stolichnaya Elite vodka was very tasty!). Dan and Paul showed up at around 7, and I’m really glad they both made it. People seemed to like the chicken, judging by the locust-like rapidity with which it was consumed, and the rest of the party was quite entertaining. Alas, the previous evening’s late night, combined with Dan being tired from a long day at work led us to bow out early once again. As usual, it sounds like the party got a whole lot more entertaining after we left, but them’s the breaks.

I spent a good bit of Sunday morning quietly reading the paper and drinking coffee. I say quietly because Data didn’t get in until 5 AM and was fast asleep on our couch 🙂 Long about noon, though, we managed to get everyone awake and were joined by mirkowuff and perro for an extremely tasty brunch at Tre Kroner. Amazingly, we only had to wait 15 minutes for a table, and while we waited Dan picked up some adorable hand-carved animals at the Swedish Shop next door, a wolf and a fox. After brunch we found out that Dan wouldn’t have to go in to work after all, which was a little annoying since we hadn’t made any plans for the day because we assumed he would have to go in. Instead, Perro, Mirko, and Data went their separate ways and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening catching up on our Tivo backlog. That wasn’t a bad alternative, actually.

As for the rest of the week, I’m hoping to be a bit more diligent on my gym attendance, and we’re trying to improve our dinner menus as well. I hope to get the Registration budget for MFF wrapped up as well, and get caught up on Registration confirmation postcards, too. Lots to do!

Friday Linkages!

Just some stuff that struck as amusing today…

Here’s a couple of intriguing products:The Lazy Drinker is a cooler that holds 16 bottles plus ice and automatically meters out any of 5,000 preprogrammed drinks. A steal at only $750!

A bit more attainable is the AeroPress, a device which squeezes foxes…no, that’s not right. Sorry, it’s a one-cup coffee maker that’s purported to make an excellent (as rated by coffee snobs!) cup of coffee in less than a minute. I’m intrigued, but I’m not sure if I’d go through the hassle to make one cup at a time. Good for traveling, though.

ursulav amused me immensely this morning with her post comparing the Bible to Jesus fanfic. I especially liked the speculation that some of the proto-gospels were crappily written
and full of Mary Sue disciples who all had green eyes and Jesus fell madly in love with them and…wait, was that the Last Temptation of Christ?

Via the ever-useful Lifehacker, we have Tab Mix Plus, a fabulous extension for Firefox which is an excellent tab manager, plus is saves your session if Firefox crashes, so you can pick up where you left off, and a couple of other nifty things. I just installed it last night and I like it!

And finally: Happy birthday, siriuswolfstar!

Um, whoops

Overheard on this morning’s traffic report:

And on the Kennedy, a dump truck flipped over and spilled a bunch of dirtbags into the roadway. Um, bags of dirt. Topsoil, I mean.

Gotta keep those lowlifes off the freeways 🙂

Wednesday? What happened to Monday and Tuesday?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, time to get some work done!

Anthrocon hotel update

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

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

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

Congenial is over, and ringlessness

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

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

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

Oh, and finally: happy birthday, woodychitwn!

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

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

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

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

My Thursday Evening, or tl;dr

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now, to work!

I’ve Seen Better Days…

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

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

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

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

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

Right then: The weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday Linkitude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmm…

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

EDIT – Done. Thanks badger and roho!

Coffee Disaster!

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

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

Furrypalooza Weekend!

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

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

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

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

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

Friday Linkage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dancing Huskies? Not Likely.

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

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

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

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

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

Feeling Happy and Gay!

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

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

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

Cat Weekends Are Good For Dogs

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

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

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

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

And since I’m posting this everyplace else tonight…

Midwest FurFest announces Guests of Honor, theme for 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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