Just ’cause

Here, have a rambling entry, just because. I’m feeling better today, even though I forgot to take the heavy-hitting cough syrup (mmm, codeine-licious!) this morning. I’ll stick with the OTC stuff to carry me through the day, I guess.

I’m vastly amused that an innovation from our old stomping grounds in North Carolina has been picked up on a lot of the tech blogs: Taco Bell/KFC Tries Out Touchscreens For Orders. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was one of Takaza‘s occasional lunch stops.

I’m still having fun at WikiFur. If you haven’t created an entry for yourself, well, why not? I’ll be happy to help with the editing and wikification, if needed.

We still need to try out some of the excellent restaurants in our area. Last weekend’s trip to Tre Kronor was a good start, but there’s so much more to try. Hey hartree – you need to come up and help us figure out the Korean BBQ place around the corner from us. It’s gotten rave reviews, but the prospect of navigating all the dishes and condiments is…daunting. I think I need to make a list to work from.

Speaking of restaurants, we’re looking at the possibility of hitting my favorite French restaurant in Highwood this weekend. Anyone care to join us? Plans aren’t set in stone, but if there’s enough interest, we’ll see what we can do. Fair warning: while it’s an excellent value for what you get, it is certainly not cheap! The Gourmet Menu ($32) and Chef’s Creation of the Day ($36) are a steal for a prix fixe meal.

Microsoft Word is the bane of my existence. I’ve successfully managed to crash it eight times in the last two days – either our templates are retarded (quite possibly) or my MS Office installation is borked (also quite possible). I’ll muddle through somehow, though.

Oh, and hi nymphara! Your comments about “the little Nazi” cracked me up, I must say 🙂 I hardly know the guy but my impressions of him have been, um, less than favorable.

OK, I’m off to immerse myself in my iPod and beat on Word some more.

Good Weekend, And Coughing The Night Away

Well, I’m starting to feel a bit better now, so I guess it’s time to update.

The weekend was quite pleasant. After going to the gym on Saturday morning, I bummed around the house on Saturday while takaza was at work. He got home just in time to pick up Linnaeus and I and give us a lift over to The Hopleaf to meet up with mirkowuff and siriuswolfstar. We had a couple rounds of the fabulous Belgian beers The Hopleaf is well-known for, as well as a couple of orders of frites with aioli (mmm, yummy!). We decided to break for dinner at around 6 PM; the first place we tried, L. Woods, told us it was a 60-70 minute wait for a table. Eh, Chicago is a big city, there’s plenty of other options. We instead went to Tre Kronor, a quiet little Swedish place right around the corner from where we live. The menu wasn’t extensive, but it was quite good (and inexpensive!). I had a beef stew with garlic mashed potatoes, and Dan had a sautéed chicken breast with Jarlsberg and ham. We finished off the meal with a yummy creme brulee as well as a very light chocolate mousse and some good, strong coffee. Excellent. We went back to the apartment and watched a couple of episodes of Dirty Jobs (Mike Rowe is such a cutie!) then Dan and I headed off to bed.

On Sunday, we had a nice lazy morning of laptop geeking, coffee, and Ann Sather cinnamon rolls (thanks Paul!). Then it was over to the Hyatt Regency Woodfield for the first in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year. It was a very useful meeting, and we hammered out a lot of details, though there’s still a good way to go. Afterwards, there was the usual after-meeting socialization in which we firmed up our Anthrocon rooming plans (still need to work on our travel plans, though). Dan was feeling under the weather so he headed home while about a dozen of us drove over to Fuddruckers for an early dinner. Fud gud.

I went to bed with a slight tickle in my throat on Sunday night and woke up Monday with a nasty, hacking cough. Oddly, no sinus problems or the like, just a sore throat and coughing. I felt poorly all day and wound up leaving work a little early to go home and nap. Once Dan got home he took good care of me, cooking up dinner and taking care of laundry. I’m a very lucky guy to have him.

Today I’m feeling better, though the cough and sore throat are still around. Fortunately, we have some excellent cough syrup that really takes care of things for me. No gym for me yesterday or today, though – that would be a bad idea all around, since it’s hard to exercise while you’re hacking up a lung. I’ll have to come in early for a couple days later this week to make up the time lost yesterday, but that’s not too big of a deal. I’m also happy to report that I have a lot more on my plate at work (compared to what was far too little), so I’m feeling a lot more positive about my job today.

Hopefully we should have some major announcements about MFF coming in the next few days – watch here or for those!

WWDTM, or “I blame those damn greedy Alaskans!”

Holy cow, that was fun! Last night, takaza and I made use of our respective Valentine’s Day gifts: Dan got home at 5:50 PM, and we raced out the door shortly thereafter to head downtown for a taping of Wait Wait Don’t Yiff Tell Me, “the NPR news quiz”. Getting there was easy, a short walk to the Brown Line, transfer to the Red Line at Belmont, and then a short walk to the Chase Building at Madison and Dearborn. We made a hurried stop at a nearby Wendy’s for dinner, then got to the auditorium at about 7:15 PM; the doors were only opened at 7 PM and the auditorium was already about 75% full! It wasn’t that big of a space, though – it only seats 400 (here’s a crappy phonecam picture of the stage).

It was a very, very funny show, I have to say (the show we saw should air starting tomorrow, February 18, I believe). If you listen to the show on NPR and enjoy it, you’re hearing maybe half of what is actually committed to tape – some of it is too off-topic, too blue, or just plain too silly to squeeze into the allotted fifty-some minutes. Taping started a little late, at 7:40 or so, and the gang was all there: Peter Sagal, Roy Blount, Jr., Amy Dickinson, Charlie Pierce, and Karl Cassell was even back, fresh from vacation. Peter is crisp, professional, and very smooth and very funny, and Karl was amusing, though mostly business. As for the panelists, Roy came off like your curmudgeonly grandfather, though he still snuck in some wisecracks; Amy had a couple of funny comments, but she really needs to be a bit more forthcoming. The real surprise was Charlie Pierce, who had a wisecrack for every topic and at one point got off on a truly hilarious rant about money-grubbing Alaskans that became a great running gag through the rest of the show. The “Not My Job” guest was the great Chicago harmonica player Corky Siegal, a true character in his own right. He favored us with a couple of impressive “blues harp” performances, at least one of which should make the show.

After the show was over (it took about and hour and forty minutes to tape), they recorded a couple of short segments for what will be the pledge week versions of the show. Because the material had to be “evergreen” (i.e. not topical, since it could be run any time), those segments were mostly pre-written and unfortunately a little more stilted and less funny, but still fun to watch. That was followed with about ten minutes of re-takes, where the various cast members re-did lines and comments that got flubbed or stepped on or were a little inappropriate for airing (Caller: I’ve never heard of The Thistle and Shamrock. Peter: Man, Fiona Ritchie is going to come kick your ass! Director: You can’t say that!). I thought it was pretty cool that Peter and the panelists went out to the lobby to meet and greet after the show, but unfortunately we had to head out due to the lateness of the hour.

Naturally, this was the time that the El had to have problems with signals at Belmont, and we wound up sitting on a Red Line train just south of Fullerton for the better part of a half-hour. At least the Brown Line train went express from Southport to Western to make up some time. We didn’t get home until 11:15 PM or so, and didn’t get to sleep until almost midnight. Five hours is not enough sleep for me. Ugh. I’m dragging today, for obvious reasons, and I may pass on hitting the gym tonight, electing instead to go tomorrow morning.

As for tomorrow? Well, the gym in the morning, of course. mirkowuff is due to join us in the afternoon and we’ll probably hang out with siriuswolfstar as well. And of course there’s the Midwest FurFest staff meeting on Sunday, which will be the big kickoff meeting for 2006. Yay!

Finally, we had so much fun , we’re thinking about going to another taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Tickets are $20, and it’s general admission. It’s on a Thursday night, starting at 7:30 (we’ll be there by 7 PM, though), and typically runs until 9:30 PM. If we go on March 16th, Rasslor can join in the fun (assuming he’s interested, of course). Panelists that night are Adam Felber and Paula Poundstone, plus a Panelist To be Named Later. So, who’s interested?

Wait for my iPod?

As you may have heard, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Seeing that on a typical workday morning, I see takaza for all of five minutes before I head off to work (I go in to get dressed at 6 AM, when he wakes up), and given that there are a number of wonderful descriptions for Dan but none of them include the phrase “morning person”, we elected to exchange V-Day gifts when he got home in the evening. That evening, we both had tooth-rottingly cute cards for each other, and there was a folded-up piece of paper in mine. I opened it up and it was a list of upcoming showings for Wait Wait – Don’t Tell Me, a fabulously funny NPR program recorded right here in Chicago, for me to choose from. Dan then opened up the envelope I gave him with his card to find…tickets to this week’s taping of Wait Wait – Don’t Tell Me. We both burst out laughing. Evidently, we know each other well enough and share the same tastes enough that we got each other the same gift. It works out since Dan hadn’t actually bought the tickets yet, and he made my birthday so lovely that it all evens out. He then cooked up some tasty macaroni and cheese (with lots of thick-sliced bacon! arr num num num) and we had a nice relaxing evening.

Well, sort of relaxing. My iPod has become the bane of my existence. Well, not really; more accurately our MP3 collection has become the bane of my existence. We have about 35 Gb of MP3’s (about 8,300 tracks) that we have accumulated over the last six or seven years. Because they’re from a wide variety of sources the ID3 tags (information in each file that contains artist, album, and song title, plus other info) are of varying quality, from quite thorough to completely blank. With my last MP3 player, this wasn’t an issue because it relied more on the file name so I could usually figure out what I was listening to. The iPod, though, ignores file names and relies completely on ID3 tag information. If I want to, say, play all tracks in a given genre, or by a given artist, I’m out of luck if that information isn’t on a track.

I found an excellent program to fill in the ID3 information on a semi-automated basis. In my first pass I fed it all 8,300 tracks and wound up with about6,100 tracks identified and tagged and 2,200 tracks that had to be identified manually. Well, that wasn’t going to work, plus if I want podcasts and room for new music I was going to have to leave room on my iPod for those, and it only holds 30 Gb. So I sorted through the files and split them into those that I wanted to carry around, and those I could comfortably leave behind, with about 20 Gb of tracks going onto the iPod. I fed those files into MusicBrainz and this was better – after some whittling down, I’m down to about 630 tracks still to be identified manually. I think i can pare that down further, but I expect that in the end I’ll still have to sort through 400 files or so. I’m actually glad of it, though – I’m finding that we have a lot more electronica than I thought we did, and that’s my music of choice when working out at the gym.

Once I get all the files straightened out and uploaded to the iPod, I’ve found a nifty utility that will add album art to the files, which will show up on the iPod display when the track is playing. Then I need to start picking up podcasts; I’ve already got Wait Wait.. and NPR’s Story of the Day subscriptions set up, and I need to go hunting around to see what else tickles my fancy. altivo, I’ll admit I’m a slacker and I still haven’t checked out your podcasts, and woodychitwn had a good recommendation a while ago, though I’m not sure how I’d feel about listening to that while working out 🙂 I’ll have to see what I can find. Oh, and on top of all of this, I just found Azureus, and I’m having a lot of fun playing with it. I’ve found that when you have a flaky wireless connection, though, Bittorrent doesn’t work very well. I need to work on that.

Oh yeah, one more thing…

Genet‘s entry reminded me…I seem to have been added to many people’s Friends’ Lists and I honestly have no idea who you people are! If I’ve met you in person, I understand, but there are a number of names I just don’t recognize. If you could let me know who you are and how you found me, I’d certainly appreciate it. Thanks!

Won’t Get Fooled Again? Shyeah Right.

First off, my birthday came and went on Saturday. Thank you so much to those of you who wished me a happy birthday – it’s a bit overwhelming how my name kept popping up! I’m very fortunate to have such wonderful people around who care for me.

For my birthday, I knew that we were going away for the weekend, but takaza was being cagey about where we were headed. The story gets kind of convoluted from here…

Sometimes, Life Hands You Way Too Many Non-Sequiturs In A Row

Man in Tiger Suit Climbs to Top of Lighthouse, Is Arrested (Bonus link: here’s the guy’s website. We’re starting a collection to send him to web design school.)

Groundhog Day leads to groundhog movie leads to furries leads to Anthrocon. Oookay then. (This is a clip from the little-watched CurrentTV, by the way)

Here, have a Hello Kitty Belt Sander.

Worthy of note…

If you’re planning on going to Anthrocon, note that the Westin Convention Center (the primary hotel) is now 75% full and rooms are going fast. The overflow hotel, the Omni William Penn, is right up the street, but reserving now means you can spend your con in air-conditioned (and non-rained-upon) comfort.

Edit: jadedfox notes that all doubles and queens have sold out for Wednesday night, so all that is left that night is king rooms (if you make a reservation that includes Wednesday night, you’ll be told they’re sold out of doubles and queens for all of the nights, even though they’re not.)

“Don’t mess with me, Porkchop.”

It’s funny – whenever we are planning a weekend getaway, the week before compresses into a bothersome few minutes leading up to our departure time. That pretty much describes this week, though there have been a few notable spots. The first is that I’m getting back into the swing of going to the gym on a regular basis, though I discovered last night that the days that I do my full workout (i.e. cardio + strength training, vs. just cardio) it’s going to take me a good two hours between leaving home and when I return. Which is fine if I get home at 4:15; if I don’t get home until 5, well that kind of sucks. I’ll need to see if I can streamline things, or something. The downside of going back to a full workout routine, of course, is that my entire body aches today. Ah well, the price of progress…

Last night takaza and I stopped by to say hi to daveqat and jimcyl. Jim is definitely looking better, though there’s still some swelling a week after surgery. His jaw is wired shut, though, and will be for the next seven weeks – that’s just brutal. He and Dave have good communication set up between charades, pointing, and a handy Pocket PC. I think I would go insane. We talked about dinner and Jim urged us to go out without him (eating and drinking is a bit of chore for him these days), so we collected siriuswolfstar, and perro and drove down to The Celtic Knot in Evanston for dinner. woodychitwn joined us at the restaurant shortly after. The food was so-so (at least they had Magner’s Cider, though not on tap), but the company was excellent, and it was a very enjoyable meal. For all of my Irish dining needs, though, I’ll still stick with The Curragh in Schaumburg. We took our leave shortly after dinner and wound up going to bed far too late, something for which I am suffering this morning.

Since I’ll be leaving work at 11 AM tomorrow, I’ve been coming in each day at 6 AM. There’s a nice tranquility here at that time. No one else shows up until 6:45 or so, and the cafeteria opens for breakfast at 6:30. The only drawback is that by 2 PM I’m ready to go home. Ah well, one more day and I’ll be done with it.

So tonight, we’ll be finishing off the week’s laundry, packing, and maybe doing a spot of housecleaning. datahawk and moryssa will be crashing with us tonight since they’ll be in the city to see Great Big Sea. We’re passing on GBS this time – they play a great live show but their last two albums haven’t really excited me, and I’m sure they’ll be pulling heavily from them. Plus, very late night at a concert + waking up at 5 AM = very sad Tom. I’m sure they’ll have a great time, though I don’t expect I’ll see much of them.

OK, back to making billions of Visio drawings…

Well, we didn’t have any plans, but…

You know, you go into a weekend with no plans, and stuff just kind of happens. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you!

After a quiet night in on Friday, takaza and I slept in (I got up at 9:15! Woo!). I enjoyed a nice morning of coffee, newspaper, and laptop, with some mellow music playing in the background. Once Dan was up and we had showered, linnaeus joined us and we drove up to the bustling metropolis of Antioch, IL, where we met up with roho and genet to see Hoodwinked (My favorite review: “Finally, a Rashomon for the whole family. This cartoon version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ tells and retells its story from a variety of perspectives, all of them boring”). It wasn’t quite that bad – it had random moments of humor – but the animation was substandard and all in all I’m really glad I only paid $2 to see it.

After the movie, we went to the Antioch Armanetti’s liquor store (motto: “Better stocked than we have any right to be!”), where we found that we arrived about five minutes to late to take part in the huge beer and wine sampling event they were staging. Phooey. We made a couple of good purchases, though. They had a good price on Apfelkorn (take note, lisagems!) so I got a bottle of that, as well as a bottle of Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka. Dan picked up a bottle of Thin Mint Liqueur and a bottle of Sgt. Peppermint. The best buy of the night was a Grey Goose Vodka gift set that was a box big enough to hold two bottles and included two martini glasses, a shaker, and a pony/jigger. Normally it sold with two bottles of vodka but without the bottles it was $5.99. Score! We now have a nice portable bar 🙂 (This may sound like a huge booze purchase, but for those of you who know us, this is enough liquor to last us for the next six or eight months!)

After a quick stop by the grocery store, we headed back to Roho and Genet’s place. A tasty dinner of burgers followed, and feren eventually joined us as well. We determined that while Drunken Apples to Apples is a very fun game, Drunken Cranium is not quite as much fun. We had fun anyway, though. The next morning we made our usual pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for a delicious breakfast, then it was back to the house for an orgy of Nintendo DS gaming. We left at around 3 or so to head back to the city. Siriuswolfstar came by later once he got off from work and we capped off an excellent weekend with some sushi and some Family Guy.

After a restless night’s sleep, I’m trudging forward this morning. We have a lot to get done with week – errands to run after work, and some cleaning around the house as well – and on Friday we head towards Pittsburgh for some pre-Anthrocon strategizing. Since Friday will be a half-day, that means I’ll be coming in extra early Tuesday through Friday to make up for the lost time, yay. And now, off to see what joys my inbox has for me…

What Goes Up Must Come Down

And yesterday was going so well, too. Had a pretty productive day at work, and was even able to leave a bit early (because I got in early, of course). Traffic was minimal, and I was home in record time. I took a short walk over to the gym, and put in some quality cardio workout time, followed by a nice long soak in the hot tub. The hot tub makes it worth it 🙂

As I was walking home from the gym, about a half-block from home, I graciously stepped aside for a passing neighbor…onto a patch of ice. Slip – BAM! Flat on my back. Man, that hurt. Considering what could have happened, I’m really amazingly lucky. As it was, I landed hard on my hip and right elbow, bruising both thoroughly. I limped home and Takaza, bless his heart, took care of me, making sure I had an ice pack and was resting comfortably, then making a yummy dinner and cleaning up afterwards, and dealing with the laundry as well. I slept rather poorly, unfortunately, waking up every time I rolled over or moved my arm. About 24 hours later, the good news is that outside of some surface tenderness, my hip is fine. I’m having some flexibility issues with my elbow, though, and certainly the point of my elbow is quite sore. I don’t think it’s anything more serious than a hard bruise, but I’ll be spending a bit more time with an ice pack when I get home, I think.

I have my last gym appointment today, where (fortunately) we’re focusing on lower-body strength training. Dan might be working late tonight, and we might get together with a friend for dinner – we’ll see how that works out. Wow, tomorrow is Friday, and we have no plans for the weekend yet, something that I rather like actually. Wow, maybe I can sleep in until 8 AM or something crazy like that.

Are You Seeing What You Think You’re Seeing?

By the way, just a side note: If you normally stay logged in to LiveJournal, you were logged out back on January 20 and again late last night due to some security issues (also, Sidekick users are not staying logged in). What this means (among other things) is that while you think you may be seeing your friends’ journal entries, you may not have seen their friends-only posts. Click here to be sure you’re logged in.

Edit: As was pointed out in , the new cookie is rather amusing:
v1:u435974:s206:aYmJIc5RayK//Thanks+for+signing+in+/+LiveJournal+loves+you+a+lot+/+Here+have+a+cookie

Meanwhile, In Another Part of the Forest…

Well, that was a lovely little impromptu little trip. As I mentioned in my entry on Friday, I hitched a train down to St. Louis for the weekend, got to hang out with some fun folks, got in some family time, and got a nice change of scenery. It was a lot of fun.

On Friday I left work on the early side and caught the El down to Union Station. As I was getting on the Brown Line at Kedzie, I heard a mother and her daughter inquire about how to get to Union Station; when they reached the platform I volunteered to show them the way. This opened the way to an interesting conversation all the way downtown. The daughter was in the middle of a multi-week tour to visit college campuses and they were just returning from North Park University, which is right around the corner from where I live. Given that she was leaning towards Wellesley and didn’t think much of North Park, I reckon they won’t be back. Anyway, we had fun chatting and once we got to Union Station we parted ways.

The Business Class upgrade that I had purchased turned out to really pay off, since they had us board the train first, well ahead of everyone else. In all, I think there were eight people in a section that seated eighteen. The seats were wide and relatively comfy and since we were at the front of the car right behind the engine, there was no foot traffic. The middle of the car was the “snack bar” (a couple of refrigerators and a microwave – I was glad I’d picked up something at the station!), then the rest of the car was something akin to restaurant booths for people to eat and socialize. The trip too five and a half hours, and while it was somewhat boring it was nice that I could plug in my laptop for entertainment. I watched the first disc of The Fellowship of the Ring, then listened to MP3’s the rest of the way. I also worked on sorting through my inbox in Eudora, paring it down from 1,600 to 700 e-mails (some back to 2003. Um, whoops). We arrived a few minutes early at 10:40 PM and takaza pulled up to the station not long after. We retired to the La Quinta Westport and quickly went to bed.

On Saturday we lazed about the room a bit, then met up with ramalion and KBear. We grabbed a quick lunch then went over to their lovely house and watched a few episodes of Firefly (while entertaining Sammy the hyperactive black lab). We chatted for a while then drove up to meet Tygercowboy, spikerotty, and mauilovich for dinner at a diner/pancake house. The food was tasty and the company was excellent. From there it was over to Webster University for an interesting film, Three of Hearts. It was about the creation and ultimate dissolution of a three-way relationship between two bisexual men and a woman. Seeing the pushes and pulls of the relationship was fascinating, and while I don’t think I would have the constitution for a polyamorous relationship, there were a lot of interesting insights to be found about relationships in general – how they’re formed, how we cope, and what it takes to sustain one. I’m really glad we went. Afterwards we parted ways with T.C. and company and Dan, Rama, K, and I hit a Cold Stone Creamery (in Kirkwood, right near St. Joseph’s Hospital where I was born! 🙂

Sunday was equally slow getting started, but hey, we were on vacation! Once we got up and got checked out of the room, we met up with my sister’s family at Macaroni Grill. The meal was fun and it was really nice seeing them again, even though it was all too short a visit. Then it was time to hit the road for the five and a half hour drive back. Outside of some heavy fog near Braidwood, the drive wasn’t bad at all.

And now we’re back into the work week, yay. Not too much planned for the week – I have an appointment at the gym tonight to plan a workout routine, and tomorrow I have to take my Element in for its 10,000-mile checkup. No plans for the coming weekend, which is good since we’ll be the on the road again the weekend after that. No rest for the wicked, and all that…

Monday Morning Linkage

Weekend recap to come, but here’s some links which caught my eye this morning.

Supervalu wins Albertsons bidding war. Supervalu (which owns Cub Foods in the Chicago area) picks up all of the Jewel/Osco stores in Chicago, plus a host of other grocery brand names, including Acme. Stand-alone Osco stores in the Midwest will be going to CVS. A separate investment group is picking up Albertsons and Super Saver stores in Dallas/Ft Worth, Northern California, Florida, the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest.

The West Wing has been cancelled. The last episode airs in May. I checked out from this show after Sorkin left, but it was good while it lasted (even “Toby” didn’t think much of it at the end, though).

On the bright side, it sounds like there are four Futurama films in the works, to be released direct to DVD. (And by the way, last year I heard an extended interview with Billy West. He’s a very funny, very personable guy who has some interesting opinions on the state of voice acting talent industry today.)

Do you take the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94) in Chicago? Starting in March, be prepared to AVOID it for the next two years. Hmm – time to investigate that Skyway-to-Lake Shore Drive shortcut…

Oh yeah, and have fun voting, you Canuckians!

Stay Home? Not Gonna Happen

Gosh, this seemed like it was going to be a nice calm week when I made my last post. Yeah, right…

Takaza got the word on Tuesday that he was going to be going down to his employer’s St. Louis, Missouri, branch to help out with some training there. Once they got the scheduling worked out, I went to work to figure out how I could get down there economically and we could hang out for the weekend. Flights were out at this late date – the cheapest I could find was over $100. Amtrak, though…they even had a schedule that worked for me. A nice bonus was that I found a great website that posts discount codes for Amtrak (typically these are the ones that are mailed out to their Guest Rewards program); that netted me a quick 25% off.

So, for $60 I’ve got a business-class seat on the Route 305 – State House train from Chicago-Union Station to St. Louis, departing at 5:15 PM on Friday and getting in (theoretically) at 10:43 PM. I say theoretically because, looking at the last week, the train arrives somewhere between five and thirty minutes late. Eh, it’s worth it, I think. We’ll be down there through Sunday afternoon, and Dan will be at the regular Friday night Furry Coffee gathering. On Saturday we’ll be hanging out with ramalion and K and hopefully tygercowboy and company as well. Sunday we’ll do lunch with my sister’s family before driving back to Chicago.

Also, in a nice “Power of the Internet” moment, I just spent the last ten minutes or so using Google Maps to talk Dan through a detour off of I-270 around a nasty accidenton the Illinois side of the Mississippi River that had stopped traffic for miles. It was very odd to be talking to him and relating what he was seeing real-time to landmarks I saw in the satellite photos.

Going back a bit earlier in the week, I did have my physical health assessment at the gym on Monday, as I mentioned. The good news is that I’m not quite as bad off as I thought I was – I weigh a little less than I thought I did and my nutrition is “average” where I thought it would be “poor”. The bad news is that apparently, for a 37-year-old I have the body of a 50-year-old, according to their “Body Age” testing thingy. Yeah, that’s something to work on, I reckon. I’ve got another appointment on Monday evening to set up a program for cardio and strength training, and then I’ll be good to go. I’m such a creature of habit – once I can get a good regimen going, it’s pretty easy to stick with.

Oh, and finally, two cool items from today’s paper of interest to roho, genet, and feren: a comparison of stir-fry restaurants in the Chicago area, and a nice review of my favorite tea house, Infini-Tea.

Old School, Baby!

This made me laugh out loud.

Oval Office

You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the

presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.


There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The

presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-

length mirror upon the wall.


What do you want to do now?


> INVADE IRAQ

You are not able to do that, yet.


> LOOK MIRROR

Self-reflection is not your strong suit.


> PET SEAL

It's not that kind of seal.


> EXAMINE CHAIRS

They are two several chairs arranged around the center of the room,

along with two couches. Under one couch you find Clinton's shoes.


> FILL SHOES

You are unable to fill Clinton's shoes...

Cameras and WAPs and Vacuuming

Ugh. Monday’s here, and I’m still feeling pretty bleah. On the bright side, it doesn’t feel like my sinuses are 1.5 times bigger than my head anymore, but I’m still dealing with a bit of runny nose. The coughing seems to have abated somewhat, which is good. I figure in a couple of days I should be back to normal and ready for the next cold, which is sure to hit by the end of the week. Oy.

Not a terribly exciting weekend, really. I woke up very late Friday night with chills and a fever, so all of the plans we had for Saturday were put on hold while takaza and I relaxed around the house. We did finally motivate later in the afternoon and got some cleaning done, which was good. On Sunday, it was more of the same. I’m not complaining, mind you – it was a nice, laid-back weekend break that I needed. Heck, I slept until 9:30 on Saturday morning, which is usually unthinkably late for me! We did a bit more cleaning on Sunday, and made a trip out to Best Buy. They had a good sale on digital cameras and we splurged a bit and got a new one: a Canon Powershot A620. I’m really happy with this camera – it’s extremely easy to use and gives demonstrably better results than our old digital camera (which, granted, is four years old now). I see us using the camera a lot more now that it’s so much easier to deal with.

We also picked up a new wireless access point in hopes of fixing some of the issues Dan was having losing connectivity with his laptop (and Nintendo DS). I’m not particularly impressed so far, though when it connects, it’s fast! I’m debating on messing around with directional antennas (now that we have a WAP that can handle different antenna inputs – the old Netgear did not). We’ll see what I can come up with.

Not too much else going on this week. Tonight I have my first appointment at the gym where they size up my current physical condition (I’m holding out for “ramshackle”), which will provide a basis for a workout program to be determined at a later appointment with the trainers there. I’m annoyed that the only time available was 8:30 PM (when we usually go to bed at 10 PM), but I can tough it out. More interesting is the fact that I’m not supposed to have a heavy meal in the 3.5 hours before the appointment, so dinner will be either early or small-ish (or both, given that I had a sizeable lunch).

OK, back to more calculations and surface areas, oh my!

EDIT: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Things I Do For Excitement

So I have this thing that isn’t quite a cold but it’s pretty annoying. Slight nasal congestion, sore throat…but not much else. Oh, and an occasional cough that sounds horrible, but isn’t really. My cow-orkers are all offering me cough drops, so I’m guessing they’re tired of listening to me. Lucky them!

I’ve spent the morning calculating surface areas, and I’ve only scratched the surface (heh) of the stack I have to complete. This is boring and tedious, but it’s good to know I need a masters in chemical engineering to calculate the area of the lateral surface of a truncated cone. At least I have my MP3 player. So far I’ve been through the Garden State and Hedwig soundtracks, and I’m listening to Princess Mononoke now.

Had a couple of nibbles from recruiters lately, which is encouraging. This weekend I need to fluff my resume a bit on Monster and Careerbuilder (read: make the resume appear newer on database searches). It’s a pity that I don’t want to completely ignore the first seven years of my work experience, otherwise I could take any of the nice low-paying jobs that I’ve been offered. On the bright side, takaza is in line for quite an impressive raise, which opens up the acceptable salary range for me. But I’m still not going to take any of this entry-level crap.

Well, ’bout time for lunch now. The cafeteria here is quite adept at taking a good idea and rendering it into something barely edible; we’ll see what they put in the slop-buckets today.

And for those of you who are of The Cult of the Mac

Here’s the scoop Steve Job’s keynote address at MacWorld today from macrumors.com:

10:29 am “One More Thing…”
10:29 am Showing a Powerbook G4. Trying to shoehorn a G5 into the Powerbook. We’ve done everyhing possible…
10:30 am But power consuption. Now discussing Peformance per Watt.
10:30 am Today – MacBook Pro
10:30 am New laptop computer.
10:31 am No more Powerbook. Intel duo Core.
10:31 am 2 processors in every Macbook pro.
10:31 am 4-5x faster.
10:32 am Fastest notebook ever.
10:32 am Hair thinner than the 17″.
10:32 am 15.4inch LCD. bright as cinemas.
10:33 am iSight Camera.
10:33 am Demoing the new MacBook Pro.
10:35 am IR sensor. Apple Remote.
10:35 am New feature: New Power Adapter is magnetically held in. If yanked, comes right out.
10:37 am 5.6lbs. iSight, Front Row; $1999 1.67 Core Duo; 667 DDR bus, x1600; $2499 1.83GHz.
10:37 am Shipping in February.
10:38 am Taking orders today.

Oooh, sounds pretty. It’ll be worth checking out, I suppose.

Where Have I Been?

If it’s Monday, it must be another…Weekend Recap! Well, OK – maybe more than just the weekend. Let’s go back to, um, Wednesday, I think. Linnaeus and I went over to his gym and signed me up for a membership. I like their egalitarian approach to “family” memberships: you can sign up two people for a discounted membership. Those people can be spouses, roommates, neighbors, whoever – it doesn’t matter. So the net benefit is that I get a reasonably-proced membership to a very spiffy facility, and Paul gets a discount on his current membership. Yay! Like my last gym, they start you out with three introductory sessions to assess where you are now, what reasonable goals for you might be, and what you need to do to meet those goals. I really like this, as it gives me some good structure within which to work – I thrive on structure. The downside is that because I joined at the beginning of the year just like every other schmuck trying to make good on their resolutions, I have to wait until Monday, January 16th at 8:30 PM for my first session. Grrr. I’m having a bit of trouble getting myself motivated to go to the gym in the interim, but I’m sure that once I establish a routine it’ll get better.

Wednesday night and Thursday we chatted with Uncle_Kage a bit online and talked about Dan and my respective positions with the convention. I’ll be doing Artists Alley again, and Dan will be taking on a newly-created cash handling position to try to streamline the flow of cash through the convention. One thing led to another and now it appears that we’ll be heading out to Pittsburgh the weekend of February 4th to meet with some of the staff and get an early look at some of the facilities. Woo!

On Friday, Takaza was feeling under the weather so he came home from work early. I was all set to go to the gym right after work, but first a little Sly 3 – just to wind down. And then suddenly it was three hours later. Wha? Ah well. I made up for it a little by walking to pick up dinner – sushi for Paul and I, and a tasty cheeseburger for Dan. Afterwards, we relaxed and watched some Tivo.

Saturday, Dan, Paul, and I had lunch with roho and genet at Opa! Estiatorio in Vernon Hills. The Greek food was excellent and very filling. We rambled around Hawthorn Mall for a bit, then we parted ways with Paul since he had some stuff to take care of back home. After a quick stop in Antioch and at Woodman’s in Kenosha, the four of us arrived just in time for fritzie_pup‘s surprise birthday party that colliedoc had secretly arranged. Fritzie was completely floored and extremely surprised. Siriuswolfstar, lisagems, and datahawk were there as well. What followed was an extremely enjoyable evening of yummy appetizers, tasty chili, some very strong (but good!) cosmopolitans, Klaus the adorable but incredibly destructive German shephard puppy and the requisite Drunken Apples to Apples. It was a real pleasure to see more of Straif and Fritzie, and I do hope that we’ll be seeing more of them in the future. We headed back to Roho and Genet’s place after midnight and slept quite soundly.

Sunday morning, Dan wasn’t feeling too well. While the company the night before was excellent, I don’t think either of us dealt with the copious cigarette smoke too well – my throat was sore and still is, and Dan had to hit his inhaler before the day was out. We motivated over to Las Vegas Restaurant and this time I opted for the chocolate chip pancakes, which were delicious. We were joined (an hour later) by the rest of the folks from the previous night’s party, just in time for us to head out to the movie theater. It was a bummer not to be able to hang out with them more, but them’s the hazards of planning stuff after a party, particularly when some of those folks don’t go to bed before 5 AM 😉 Datahawk joined me and Dan and Roho and Genet to see The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe at the Antioch Theater. Hey, for $2 for a matinee, even if the movie was lousy I wasn’t going to complain too much! It wasn’t of course – it was quite lovely, and the effects were just plain astonishing. The plot showed the books’ young-adult fantasy roots, but that’s to be expected. I really enjoyed the movie and I’m glad we saw it. After the movie, Dan and I drove back home. The Midwest FurFest post-mortem meeting took place online and that ate up the majority of the evening, then we watched Family Guy, then it was off to bed.

And so for this week, I have a bit of followup from last night’s meeting to take care of. I need to get to the gym at least three nights this week, even if it’s just using the treadmill and recumbent bicycle. And I need to start organizing some of the Artists Alley paperwork from last year and make some lists for what I need to do this year.

Oh, for those interested: it sounds like we’ll definitely be going to Musher Mania down in Monee this coming Saturday afternoon. If anyone would like to join us you’re quite welcome! There won’t be much, if any, snow on the ground but that’s OK because they have wheeled sleds they can use. Plus…huskies! What more reason do you need? If you’re interested, just let me know.

Back to work…

It’s a Tuesday that’s like a Monday. Whee! Actually, what it means is a short work-week, which is never a bad thing. Today finds me up to my ears in Visio, trying to make it do things it wasn’t designed for – dangit, if you want me to do isometric drawings, give me Autocad! On the bright side, it’s very absorbing work, and I can sit down and work on it for a while and look up to find an hour has gone by. It’s a great way to may the day go fast!

So last night I started to make a wonderful recipe from Cook’s Country, a very tasty garlic roast beef. Of course, it wasn’t until I had the potatoes roasting in the oven and was about to rub the roast down with the garlic-thyme paste that I saw the line I had missed when I first read the recipe: “Place roast in refrigerator for at least four hours or overnight.” Hmm. Time to re-think dinner. Fortunately, I had also picked up a pork loin, so I quickly cut that down into some nice boneless pork chops and we had pork chops for dinner instead. On the bright side, this means, there’s a very tasty roast beef in the fridge right now that’s going to be an excellent dinner. I need to pick up some potatoes on the way home so I can make mashed potatoes, too.

Apparently, Takaza didn’t sleep well last night. When my alarm went off at 5 AM and he wasn’t in bed next to me, I knew it couldn’t be good. It seems that between his wrist and a nasty sore throat, he woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Sweetheart that he is, though, he had coffee and scrambled eggs waiting for me when I stepped out of the shower. I suspect he’ll be going to bed early tonight.

So as we were driving all over over the weekend, Dan and I had a chance to talk about planning of future events. After looking at the number of people who responded, the cost of the facilities, and the probable cost of the food, I don’t think we’re going to be able to pull off the dinner event that we had mentioned. I think we’d have to charge at least $35 per person, and not only is that pretty pricey, I would want to make sure that people felt they were getting a good value for their money, and with what that would leave for food expenses, I’m not sure I could do that. Plus, the one date that seemed to work is the same weekend as Capricon, so that might have presented scheduling difficulties. Instead, we’re going to focus our efforts on the upcoming Wuffmeet/FRAC 2 (which I just realized will be three weeks before Anthrocon. Ack!). We have an idea for a gathering of folks in March, too, but I need to talk to some people before we start making any plans in that direction – more on that soon!

A New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I type this sitting in our room at the Country Inn and Suites in Gurnee, Illinois. Last night was the LAFF New Year’s Eve Party and it went off flawlessly, I think. Linnaeus will have the final numbers, but I believe that we exceeded last year’s attendance, though not by too much.

Yesterday, Paul and I drove out to the MFF storage locker to borrow the large coolers for the party. We scored and excellent price on plastic champagne glasses at Schweppe’s Restaurant Supply, then picked up some important supplies at Sam’s Wine and Spirits. Afterwards, we headed home, where takaza was waiting. Siriuswolfstar showed up and he and Paul took Dan’s Element for more shopping for supplies while we took my Element and picked up lisagems, then headed up to Gurnee. Once we secured our room, we started setting up the meeting rooms we would be using. Dan did an amazing job of getting the food set up and ready for the incoming masses, and once that was done we chatted a bit, since we were actually ready for people by about 5:15 PM but we weren’t slated to start until 7. The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur, but I can say that people seemed to have a good time, many games of Lupus in Tabula were played, as well as quite an arrangement of video games and movies. I can also say that cosmopolitans made with apple-cranberry juice and spiked with Apfelkorn are just plain dangerous. At midnight everyone toasted the new year with sparkling grape juice, and I got my eighth (!) annual New Year’s kiss from my dear husband. Afterwards, I snuck back to roho and genet‘s with a couple of folks and we toasted the new year with tasty cider and champagne and munched on pizza pockets (“The official snack food of five year olds and drug addicts!”). A little after 2 AM, I went down and helped with the tail end of the cleanup and we did a reasonable job of restoring the rooms to their original state (less some mopping and vacuuming), then Dan and I went to bed.

Everyone is slow to get going this morning (gosh, I wonder why?). I didn’t sleep too well, unfortunately, and woke up at 9 AM. I’ve been puttering around ever since, but I haven’t seen too many people awake. Once we get rolling, I’m hoping well his Las Vegas Restaurant for brunch, then we’re off to Dan’s mom’s place to give her the Gift of Tivo 🙂

So here’s to 2005! It was a rocky year, but we survived. May 2006 be a better, happier year for everyone!

Hockey and Music Criticism: Two Great Tastes Together!

Well, that was different. Last night, takaza and I availed ourselves of the fine Chicago public transportation system and rode down to the United Center for a hockey game, the Chicago Blackhawks vs. the St. Louis Blues. Now, mind you, I don’t care one whit about NHL or hockey in general, but these tickets were provided by his employer. We entered through a special, uncrowded entrance and quickly found our way to one of the lovely suites. A full dinner layout was provided, as well as an open bar. The game was pretty dull, with the ‘Hawks playing being downright mediocre, but the food was surprisingly good. One of the highlights was when the Blackhawks mascot, Tommy Hawk, came into the suite and acted like he recognized Dan – which, it turns out, is actually a possibility.

Because we wanted to get home at a decent time, we left the game after the second period with the Blues leading 2-0 (they eventually won, 2-1). We waited a good twenty minutes at the corner of Madison and Damen for a bus, and just when I was thinking about grabbing a taxi the Damen bus showed up. We got home gratifyingly quickly, but didn’t get to bed until 11 PM. That has made today long and very sleepy (it’s hell when you gotta get up at 5 AM).

Not much else to talk about, except for the absoutely horrid cover song I heard this morning. Apparently a few weeks back Bono and Alicia Keys released a cover of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up” to iTunes. Now, first granting that it’s a benefit for charity, I will say that everything about this version is wrong. The original was a masterful example of low-key arrangements and subtle interplay between the singers. In this version, Bono destroys Gabriel’s phrasing, transforming it into some kind of bizarre scat singing or something, and Keys injects strange R&B-inflected vocals into the song which are completely out of place. Just horrible.

Sorry, I needed to get that off my chest 🙂

Radio, radio…

So, when you drive 24+ hours over a few days, you get a chance to listen to the radio a lot. Thank heavens we got Sirius installed in my car again, because that was a real life-saver. Sirius recently quietly added a couple of channels that we really enjoyed: Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s CBC1 and CBC3 (alt-rock), as well as Iceberg Radio (all-Canadian alt-pop) and a couple of francophone channels. For listening to music we kept it mostly on Iceberg, which had a good mix in spite of their predilection for old Rush songs. CBC1 had some great programming, too, including The Current (“The Voice” can read the phone book to me any day!) and National Playlist, hosted by former Moxy Fruvian Jian Ghomeshi).

We came across the show Ideas (which I later found is rebroadcast on PRI) and caught a truly amazing two-part documentary on Christmas Mummers. If all you know of mummers is the Philadelphia Mummer’s Parade, you’re in for a surprise when you find out the roots of the tradition. Both parts of the documentary are downloadable from the Battery Radio website (alas, only with Realplayer, though). It’s a wonderful example of folk traditions traveling across the ocean and changing with the times.

Of particular furry interest was the segment at the beginning of the second hour where they talk about the hobby horse, which in this context is far different from the tame toy we know – it’s a menacing, mad creature. They interview one of the hobbyhorsers and he says (paraphrasing) that when he plays the hobby horse, he’s a different person – he does what the horse wants, not the other way around. This made me smile a bit, thinking of fursuiters we all know. If you have a chance, I urge you to click and listen to the show, though – it’s a great documentary, and a little-known topic.

On the Road to Anderson (without Hope and Crosby)

And so, five days and approximately 1,800 miles later, we’re home again. A quick recap:

On Thursday, we left for my parents’ place in Anderson, South Carolina. We only drove about two-thirds of the way there, stopping for the night in Knoxville, Tennessee (sorry we didn’t call, partran, but we got in pretty late). We got up early the next morning and drove the last five hours down to my parents’. We tried to stop in Canton, North Carolina, to return the NC license plates for the Alero and Dan’s old plates for his Element, but first we found that the DMV office had moved, and then that it was closed for the day. We shrugged and continued on, getting in at around 12:30 PM. My sister, her husband, and my two nephews were already there, having driven in from St. Louis the day before.

It was a great weekend, and it was really good to spend time with my family. takaza seemed to have a good time as well, and got along well with Chris (age 10) and Tim (age 8). Ruth and I did most of the cooking during the weekend, which I’m sure was a welcome break for my mom, and Dan and Marvin (my brother-in-law) did yeoman work with cleanup detail. Dad was looking fantastic for someone who had had back surgery just a few weeks prior. I was glad to see him up and standing for hours at a time, when before the surgery he was able to remain upright for less than a minute.

We did the traditional gift-giving on Christmas morning. Chris and Tim, of course, got a pile of loot; they seemed to enjoy the Legos and video games they received, and judging from the background noise from last night’s phone call, Dan’s choice for Apples to Apples Junior for the family was a huge hit. Ruth and Marvin will get a lot of use out of the accessories we got for their new digital camera, and Mom and Dad seemed to like our gift to them: a Tivo. I think they’re still figuring out how to work it and why it’s such a wonderful thing, but I suspect they’ll come around with time. We had some fun trying to set it up since they had no telephone jack in the room we put it and even if they did, all they have is Vonage, which does not play well with Tivo. We wound up having to take the Tivo back to our hotel room for it to dial in and get all of the program updates. Fortunately, we had prepared for the possibility and we had picked up a wireless router and adapter for the Tivo; once we had all the program updates it was a breeze to get it hooked into the network. They should be good to go!

For Dan, I got a gift that I know he will enjoy: A night out on the town, with gift certificates for dinner at Heaven on Seven and two tickets for Blue Man Group (I’ll point out those are to be used for him and anyone of his choosing – it’s tacky to buy someone gifts that you’ll use yourself 🙂 I won’t list all the gifts I received except to say that they were all wonderful, and all very much appreciated. (OK, I will mention that I’m going to really enjoy the Thermapen that Dan got me, though!)

Christmas was over all too soon and yesterday we hit the road at 5:45 AM Central Time. We made great time; the only bad weather we ran into was some light rain/snow flurries and high winds through the NC mountains. Surprisingly, the traffic into Chicago wasn’t horrible and we pulled into the garage right around 6:00 PM – darned good time!

Today, Dan is off from work, but I’m here like a good worker drone. Naturally, about half of the office is out until next week, but that makes things a bit more bearable. Linnaeus, who is already babysitting a surprisingly well-behaved large, white bird (I thought it was a cockatiel, but looking at pictures of them now I’m not so sure), surprised me this morning with another friend that he’s keeping an eye on: Nita (she’s in the center of that pic). She’s a real cutie, but alas, only visiting for one day. But hey, any dog time is always good.

I slept poorly, so I suspect today is going to drag. Nevertheless, it should be pretty mellow – I’ve got some projects I’m working on, and it’s nice to have some peace and quiet in which to do it. Looking ahead, Dan and I are going to see the Blackhawks tomorrow night, and then there’s the LAFF New Year’s Party this weekend. I’ll be in touch with those of you who have volunteered to help out at the door – with luck, we can keep it down to 30 minutes apiece, leaving folks time to go and have fun with other stuff. But now, back to work!

Your Daily Linkage

I’ve come across some useful links that I wanted to share:

– Joss Whedon gives up on Firefly: “‘In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,’ says Whedon, adding that it appears the Firefly saga has reached its conclusion.”
(See comments for why this is incorrect. Thanks cyohtee!)

– Speaking of franchises being reborn due to popularity on DVD, Matt Groening thinks the prospects for more Futurama are good.

– And while we’re on the topic of animation, Venture Brothers co-creator Jason Publick has a LiveJournal with notes and stills from the upcoming season (no word on the exact date for the premiere, just “Spring, 2006”).

– I’m not a fan of Saturday Night Live and haven’t been since the early 80’s or so. Nevertheless, the “Lazy Sunday” segment from last weekend’s show (aka “The Chronicles of Narnia Rap”) is drop-dead hilarious. You can watch it here and read the lyrics here.

– Please excuse me if I occasionally mutter the phrase “breathtaking inanity” and giggle to myself all day today.

“What do you mean, MLK, Jr. isn’t saintly?”

Been sort of quiet here for the last few days, hasn’t it? Let’s see, what’s been going on?

On Friday we belatedly celebrated datahawk‘s birthday by going with a whole crowd of folks down to tour Macy’s Marshall Field’s Christmas displays. The general consensus was that they intentionally made the displays suck so that people won’t miss them when they don’t do them next year. We spent a very entertaining time critiquing the other displays while the cancer-addicts of the group got their smoke fix, then we adjourned up to Heaven on Seven. Although they have other locations, this location, on Wabash on the seventh floor of an old office building, is the original. They’re only open for dinner one night out of the month, and we were lucky enough it was the night we planned on going downtown. The meal was absolutely amazing! They are a New Orleans-style restaurant, and I (a former Tulane student) and genet (a Louisiana native) gave it an emphatic thumbs up! The hurricanes were fabulous. My shrimp po’ boy was quite tasty, and roho‘s shrimp and cheddar grits were yummy as well. takaza‘s country-fried steak and mashed potatoes were by far the best, though. We ate ourselves silly, then came the tasty chocolate-caramel cake that siriuswolfstar had picked up at Bittersweet. It was the perfect end to a wonderful evening.

The original plan for Saturday was to stay at home and relax. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, Dan and I drove up to Antioch to have brunch with Roho, Genet, feren, and neowolf2 at the always-tasty Las Vegas. Afterwards, we walked over to the surprisingly-well-stocked game shop where Feren picked up a bunch of Christmas gifts, then stopped next door at the small shop that sold record players and old vinyl albums and Feren got a new turntable. Then it was back to Roho and Genet’s place where we filled the afternoon with chatting and then a bit of shopping at Wal Mart. We also used their nice, heated garage to park my car so we could finally install my Sirius radio in it, which had been sitting idle since I took it out of my Alero when I sold it back in August. Linnaeus joined us not long after and we ordered pizza and got down to a serious game of Drunken Apples to Apples. It was very, very funny, even if I didn’t do very well until right up at the end of the game. Somehow, Neowolf skunked us all. I also learned that Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka is very tasty, particularly when mixed with Cruzan Rum Cream. It’s also very potent (woo!).

We got a late start on Sunday – no surprise there. We spent the afternoon doing some Christmas shopping, and we finally picked up a replacement electric blanket, since the one we bought earlier this year was going haywire (the center third of the blanket was getting far too warm for comfort). The evening was spent catching up on TiVo and being all domestic and stuff.

This is a short week for me. I have one more day at work then on Thursday, right after rush hour, we hit the road for South Carolina. We’ll be making a stop somewhere along the way Thursday night, then getting in on Friday morning. After a far-too-brief stay, we’ll be driving home on Monday, making the entire 14-hour trip in one day. It sucks, but I have to be at work on Tuesday, so that’s the way it is. Hope everyone’s holiday preparations are going well!

Party…quietly?

Let’s hear it for Friday! {crickets} Oh, that would be because more than half of the office here has taken off for the afternoon. Must be nice to have vacation and stuff. To that end, I’ve been passing the last hour or so applying to positions in and around the Chicago area – we’ll see if anything comes of it.

So apparently folks down in South Carolina and Georgia had a bit of fun with ice storms yesterday. I called my parents and was surprised when my mom said they were holed up in the La Quinta Inn since they had lost power at the house at 3 AM. They should be home by now, since the temperatures were supposed to get back up to 52 degrees there today. And here in Chicago? Snow showers and 30 mph winds, yay! We’re supposed to go down and look at the store windows downtown tonight, which should be fun, if really freakin’ cold.

It’s shaping up to be a lazy weekend, which is good since after this weekend it’s going to be insane. About the only thing that MUST get done is we need to install my Sirius radio in my car. Since we’re driving down to South Carolina (14+ hours each way), Sirius is a sine qua non for the trip. Plus, it’s been a good long time since I’ve had my OutQ fix, and the Canadian channels they’ve added sound interesting too. Anyway, other than that, I look forward to spending the weekend sleeping in and lazing around the house while it snows and blows outside, interrupted only by a possible trip to the movies. Our list of movies to see is getting a bit long – Rent, Narnia, and now Brokeback Mountain. If anyone is interested in seeing one of these, maybe on Sunday afternoon, let me know.

Time to wrap up a few things, then head on home. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Ford Reverses Decision

Since I mentioned this before, it’s only fair that I follow up with this:

Ford to Advertise in Gay Press (Washington Post)

Ford Motor Co. yesterday said it will resume advertising Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles in gay-themed publications, following an outpouring of fury from gay groups that said Ford’s recent decision to pull the ads fed anti-gay sentiment and emboldened enemies of gay rights.

“I think we’re back in gear with Ford,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. “They responded to each of the concerns we raised in a positive way. It’s a great outcome.”

In a letter addressed to the groups, Ford said not only will it resume buying corporate ads featuring Land Rover and Jaguar, it will begin advertising Ford’s other brands in gay-themed publications as well. In the past, Ford had not purchased advertisements for the Ford, Mercury and Lincoln brands in gay-oriented publications.

Thick Chocolatey Goodness

Man, am I dragging this afternoon. I don’t think I slept too well last night; takaza woke me (for the second night in a row) pointing out I was showing signs of apnea. Oh, dandy. Hmm, my blood pressure is high, my knee is crappy, and now sleep apnea? Maybe I’m way off base here, but I think maybe, just maybe, it’s time to get rid of some of this weight I’m carrying around. A gym membership is going to have to wait until we work out the cash flow nightmare that is Christmas and New Year’s.

Meanwhile, last night was pleasant. siriuswolfstar came over and joined us in a gourmet meal (snrrk), but he was also kind enough to bring some tasty caramel syrup from Starbucks and, more importantly, Chantico mix. If you haven’t had this “drinking chocolate” from Starbucks, and you enjoy dark, rich chocolate, I do have to say that you’re missing out. Yeah, it’s $2.60 a pop, and yeah they only give you a 6 oz. serving, but you’ll have to trust me when I say that 6 oz. is all you want of this – it’s that rich. Dan mixed up a batch and it was indeed delicious. We chatted for a bit and watched some Tivo, then Sirius took his leave and we went off to bed.

Tonight datahawk and posicat are coming over to watch the season finale of The Amazing Race with us (C’mon, anyone but the Weavers!). I think we’ll be cooking up some cheeseburgers for dinner. And then there’s tomorrow. According to the National Weather Service, we’re supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow, with the highest probability of snow falling occurring between 6 AM and 5 PM. Given that if I take the train I’m looking at leaving at 6:15 AM and not getting home until around 6:30 PM, I think I’m going to take my chances with driving. If I leave the house at 5:30 AM I can leave work by 2:30 PM, and if nothing else that puts me on the road earlier than the worst of the stupidity. Even if it takes me three hours to get home I’m still doing pretty good. We’ll see how successful this plan is tomorrow, though.

Looking way, WAY ahead, Dan and I are starting to make plans for the next Wuffmeet/Furries Race Across Chicago. Watch this space and keep Memorial Day weekend free, ’cause that’s when it’s going to be!

No Really, Stop And Go Traffic Turns Me On!

So, on Friday it was a fellow contractor’s last day so we went out for lunch at the very tasty Opa! Estiatorio in Vernon Hills. I had the moussaka, and it was delicious. I had come into work a little early so I was able to leave at 2:30 PM. I swung over to the Lake Bluff train station and got there just as the Takaza‘s train pulled in. After a brief stop at the Lake Forest oasis for gas and munchies, we were on the road towards Champaign-Urbana! Of course, until we stopped, about five miles later, as traffic slowed to a crawl. It turns out that the Tri-State Tollway was pretty much backed up its entire length from Lake Cook Road south. We headed off-road and wound up taking Route 45 all the way down to I-80. Yeah, it took three hours (ugh), but at least we were moving most of the time! From there it was a short trip down to Chambana. We got in at around 7:30 or so and went out for dinner with mirkowuff to a small Italian restaurant. Afterwards we went back to his place and hung out for a bit, then went to bed.

On Saturday we were slow getting going, slow enough that even with a late start Linnaeus was able to join us for lunch when he arrived. I was reminded why I really should avoid the ButterBurger at Culver’s, but the rest of the meal was OK. From there we went in search of a Christmas tree for Mirko’s house, ending up at the local grocery store. That was fine, since we needed to pick up some groceries anyway. We went back to Mirko’s place and did some decorating while he made chili, then folks started showing up for his annual Candlestick Lane party. We house-lighting went well, and then everyone retired indoors, out of the cold and snow, and a night of tasty potables and lots and lots of food ensued. It was a lot of fun.

On Sunday, it was back to the House of Lard for the traditional brunch. Excellent company, and a very tasty meal made it a nice way to cap off the weekend. The trip back was surprisingly quick, taking just a hair more than two hours. If nothing else, this confirmed for me that working a half day before we leave for South Carolina for Christmas is a Very Bad Idea, since traffic gets pretty much retarded very early on. We spent the rest of the day doing laundry, putzing on laptops, watching the Survivor Finale (Boo! I was cheering for Rafe) and chatting with rustitobuck, who stopped by to make forty or fifty pounds of cookie dough.

Looking ahead to this week, we hope to be somewhat social during the week with a few friends, though I note that there is an impending snow storm on Wednesday/Thursday that could really complicate matters. And next weekend? No plans at all, gloriously! We’ll be relaxing before we drive down to SC the following weekend to spend Christmas with my family.

And now we’re up to date! Back to work I go…