Morning Meanderings

Slow morning at the office, and no one really seems to want to get down to work. Fine by me! we’ve got the company “Holiday Dinner” today, which means a free roast beef meal for lunch (best advice from cow-orkers: “DON’T EAT THE SHRIMP SALAD!”). Incidentally, yesterday I applied for two positions here, one of which seems tailored to me: they’re looking for someone with a masters in chemical engineering who has experience with scale-up and a familiarity with a GMP environment. Hey, that’s me! Of course, there’s not a lot of chance that I’ll hear back from them, but hope springs eternal.

So, now we have snow in the forecast. Not a big deal, only 1-3 inches (though I note that while CBS 2 is saying 4-7 inches, the National Weather Service and Tom Skilling are sticking with 1-3). The big problem is that the heaviest snow is supposed to be late afternoon/early evening, which is to say, evening rush hour. Bring the pain! I’d leave early, or at least I’d have taken the train, except I have a doctor’s appointment at 4 PM in Lincolnshire. I figure if I get home by 7 PM, I’ll be doing good.

Hmm. Not much going on tonight – some leftovers for dinner, and the penultimate episode of Survivor for the season. I was revisiting some old episodes over at my favorite reality-show-snark website, Television Without Pity, and I came across this amusing comment in this week’s Amazing Race recaplet:
At any rate, a defensive posture for the finale — Anybody But The Weavers — is my personal plan. Because the season has already been boring and confusing, and if those people win a million dollars, it will become unspeakably evil.
Yeah, I think I can agree with that.

Your Daily Dose of Activism

Man, this is big and ugly. Basically: The Ford Motor Company caved in to a threatened boycott by the American Family Association and will now no longer create advertising targeting the LGBT market and will no longer sponsor GLBT events.

As reported at WardsAuto.com:
Ford Motor Co.’s decision to cease advertising in gay publications for its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands is part of a truce between the auto maker and the American Family Assn. (AFA) to avert a threatened boycott by the right-wing Christian conservative group, Ward’s learns….

As part of the latest agreement hammered out Nov. 29, sources confirm Volvo Cars will continue to advertise in the publications but will use generic ads not tailored to the gay community.

In addition, Ford has agreed not to sponsor any future gay and lesbian events but will continue to maintain its employee policies, such as same-sex partner benefits.

Well, at least that last paragraph is a small concession. Nevertheless, I somehow don’t feel particularly compelled to support Ford/Lincoln/Mercury/Volvo/Jaguar/Mazda/Land Rover/Aston Martin any time soon, particularly since they’ve attempted a full-scale cover-up of the matter.

2005 Midwest FurFest Registration Report

This is the Registration Report for Midwest FurFest 2005. This marked the sixth Midwest FurFest and my fifth year running registration. You’d think I’d have things down pat by now, but I am always working on improving and making things run smoother. This is the third year that I’ve tried to put together a comprehensive Registration report (see reports for 2003 and 2004), and while it helps me sum up the year and make notes for next year, I also welcome any questions or comments anyone reading this might have as well.
Click to read the report

Convention Musings

I’ve finished off all the data analysis for my annual Midwest FurFest Registration report and I have an outline for the report, but somehow the idea of actually starting to write the darn thing isn’t appealing right now. It’s notable that the report will be much shorter than last year’s, which was so big I had to split it into two reports. This year’s will be shorter because, well, so much went right, for a change. That made the whole experience much more pleasant, and I wasn’t nearly the basket case that I have been in the past.

I have gleaned some useful information from talking to folks during and after the convention: many people talk about how MFF has a different “feel” from other conventions. While this makes me glad (it’s always good to have something that sets your convention apart), at the same time it worries me, because if you can’t quantify something, you may accidentally screw it up and not find out until it’s too late. From my discussions, I find that a lot of things contribute to the atmosphere of MFF, from the hotel (the lobby, so well-suited for socializing), to the location (near so much shopping and restaurants), to the scheduling (an insane amount of programming through the weekend).

The biggest factor I found, though, was the staff. People found MFF’s staff pleasant and easy to work with, and that really enhanced their convention experience. So, to MFF staff and volunteers: every time you smiled and greeted someone, every time you went out of your way to be helpful, every time you worked hard behind the scenes for little or no recognition, you made Midwest FurFest the success that it is today.

Another year

Another year has passed. In that year, we survived living 700 miles apart, a cross-country move, new jobs, and working for two large conventions. We also marked our sixth year together. You continue to bring me comfort, and joy, and hope. You astonish me with your patience and care. And I continue to be the luckiest guy on earth. Happy 29th birthday, Takaza. I love you so much.

Reminder: Last Day for Early Pre-Registration for MFF 2006!

This is just a reminder to everyone that this is the last day to pre-register for Midwest FurFest 2006 and still get the special early rate of $25 for a membership or $100 for a sponsorship. After midnight tonight, the rates will be $30 for a membership and $120 for a sponsorship.

There are two ways you can take advantage of these early rates:
1. You can register online at http://www.furfest.org/onlinereg/. You will need a credit card or a PayPal account. Note that a PayPal account is not required if you are paying with Visa, Mastercard, or Discover. Also, note that any registration that is not accompanied by payment will be deleted and will not be eligible for the special early rates afterward.
2. You can mail in your registration using the forms found at http://www.furfest.org/ along with a check or money order. This must be postmarked today to qualify for the special early rates.

Thanks to all who have registered so far! Your early support means a lot to us.

Resurfacing

So I’m finally about ready to actually be sociable again now that I’ve recovered from Midwest FurFest. As usual, a convention report and a Registration report (or two) will follow, but they may be a week or so coming.

Before I get back into the usual went there-did that sort of thing, I wanted to wander down Memory Lane. Back in 1997-1998, I was a part of a Mage gaming group in Raleigh. We had a great group of players (ladyinthetower, walkinthewilds, jeymin, Thomas, Kim, and John) and a fabulous storyteller (vileone, with the help of his lovely wife vilejynx) who created a wonderful setting and memorable characters. The setting was modern-day Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Triangle Ascension ran for over two years, and we put together a pretty damn good website, I think. Of course, Rob giving experience points for player diaries helped generate content for the site, too. Rob and I ran the site during the campaign and we had readers around the world give us some nice feedback.

I revisited the website because I was reminded that this was really the last time that I wrote any fiction. There’s a little bit of gameplay mechanics in the stories, but I tried to write them so they stood alone. I have two favorites from all of the diaries I wrote: The first was a whimsical tale of how my character, Reuben (a dreamspeaker, or shaman), came by his familiar: When Reuben Met Dog. The second was a darker, sadder story: Loved Ones Lost.

I don’t know that I’ve ever linked to these from my LiveJournal before, but it’s a real pleasure to go back and read over some of the fun that we had then.

Now We’re Cooking!

Hey all you locals and folks-within-driving-distance:

Imagine if you will…a fullly-equipped kitchen, multiple ovens and cooktops, and comfortable seating for several dozen people. That’s Spice Rack Kitchen Suites in Mount Prospect, IL, and we’re kicking around the possibility of putting together a nice day of dinner and fun for all of our friends. Sound like fun? Surf over to Takaza’s journal and let us know if you’re interested and what dates might be good for you!

The Last Hurrah

One last post before Midwest FurFest. I’ve got an hour or so here remaining at work and then I’m headed over to the Hyatt Regency Woodfield. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be for the con, but as always I just can’t shake the feeling that something is falling through the cracks. And it probably is, but y’know what? Probably none of the attendees will notice.

Last night was insane, of course. We packed all of the Registration supplies plus most of our personal gear into my Blue Box (aka Honda Element), though Takaza wound up having to take some of the stuff as well; the two handcarts took up a huge amount of space and really cut into the amount of stuff we were hoping to get in there. With the change of the weather, the pain in my knee seems to be getting worse and worse, and I regret to say that I wasn’t a lot of help carrying stuff down the stairs to the car. Dan more than covered for me, though, and then showed his mad packing skillz and fit a huge amount of stuff in my car.

I came in stupidly early this morning so I could leave at 2:30. One thing you can say about driving at 5:15 AM, though – traffic moves! I had time to hit the ATM and Starbucks (ick) before coming into work. Right now, it’s cold out there, but it’s going to get a heck of a lot colder. 27 F, with a low tonight of 17 F. Light snow flurries have been blown around by 30-40 mph winds around all day, but the snow is melting on contact with the ground. The good news is that after tonight, things warm up slightly, with highs near 40 and lows in the 20s. It’s Chicago in November, folks.

If anyone local would care to join us, we’re going to be stuffing Registration bags and doing other prep work for the con in the Schaumburg Room at the Hyatt tonight starting at 7 PM (we’ll be there before then, though). We seem to be down a few folks this year, so if anyone can spare the time it would be very much appreciated!

So that’s about it for me, at least before the con. After I leave here this afternoon, my e-mail access is going to be spotty at best, though we’ll be getting net access tonight for sure for those last-minute details. I hope everyone traveling to Chicago has a safe trip, and that those who can’t make it know that you are indeed missed and I hope you’ll be able to see the fun we have at Midwest FurFest sometime in the future. Take care, all!

Tick…tick…tick…

Man, what a crazy weekend.

Friday was not quite as fun as I had hoped it would be. Our department at work was rewarded with a day out to celebrate, um, doing well, or something. OK, fine by me! We met up at the Sears Tower and went up to the Skydeck, then caught the train up to Cafe Iberico. The food there was excellent, the service, not so much. We had a surprisingly good time, though. I suspect the sangria helped.

The next stop was supposed to the Shedd Aquarium, but since I had lost part of a filling the day before, I opted out and headed home instead. Takaza was a complete sweetheart and not only looked up what dentists were covered by our insurance, he also called around to see if they could see me on short notice. He found a dentist within a mile of where we live and at 2:30 or so I was in the chair. As you might have surmised from my previous entry, what should have been a small repair wound up being a root canal. I have four more visits with the dentist before the end of the year – wow, won’t that be fun.

On Saturday, I was up well before Takaza, too damn early, in fact – 6:30 AM, but I couldn’t sleep anymore. After showering and coffee, I was on the road! First stop, up to Wauconda to pick up the staff badges. Trust me, they’re purty. People will really like them, I think. From there it was southwards, first with a detour through Palatine to locate Emmett’s Tavern (this will be useful a week from today!), then to the MFF storage unit in Lombard. There, grabbed all of the Registration equipment we’re going to need.

After that I was pretty much done for the day so I wandered over to Windycon to see how things were going. See, the majority of the MFF security crew provides staffing for Operations and “Adult Supervision” at Windycon, and I got a first-hand look at why they view MFF as their “vacation con”. All I’m saying is that people who complain about how outré furry conventions are have never attended a single science fiction convention. Wow. Anyway, I wound up sticking around for quite a while, and just enjoying the fact that I wasn’t responsible for any of it 🙂 I do hope I didn’t annoy those who were working, and I have to say they were doing every bit of the excellent job one would expect of the fine MFF Security team.

On Sunday, I was again up early, this time for a drive up to Libertyville for an MRI test on my knee. That was dispatched reasonably quickly and then I was headed northwards to Antioch and roho and genet‘s place. We were joined by Neowolf2 and headed over for a tasty brunch (mmmm, Las Vegas Restaurant’s Vegas skillet). Afterwards, we walked over to the little games store and were pleasantly surprised to find that the place had a good stock of games and comics, including Furrlough. Roho also picked up a nice addition to the charity auction: a 24″ tall inflatable Brian (from “Family Guy”).

Then it was back to their place for the reason for the trip: pre-printing staff and dealer badges. Roho did a good job wrestling with the database for a while, but we finally got some very helpful advice from rustitobuck that made things flow much more smoothly. It then took a couple of hours to debug the printers and determine that not only were the color cartridges in them bad, so were the brand-new ones that had been purchased last year. One expensive trip to Wal-Mart later, we got that resolved. After all that, printing was a snap, though one of the printers might have some issues with the paper feed mechanism. These have served use well for five years, but I suspect we may be in the market for new printers next year. (And yes, Ramalion, I’ll be sure to look into top-loaders 🙂

So now it’s Monday, the first day of a three-day week for me. In between wrapping up some documents for work, I’ve been mopping up last-minute details and posting information stuff about the convention. There’s still a lot to do, and a lot to be packed up, but I’m pretty confident that we can get to con with a minimum of stress. After that, well, we’ll see…

Root canals suck. Emergency root canals suck more.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be wrapped around the bottle of ibuprofen.

Stressed/Not So Stressed

And so the week trudges on. Yay.

The last two days were rather stressful. On Monday I was inundated with MFF-related stuff, and tried to get it all cleared away, with mixed success. At the same time the pressure was on at work to get some documents out, and now it appears that they will be up for review next Wednesday – my last day before my MFF “vacation”. I had hoped to leave early that day – I hope it can get through with minimal corrections. In the evening, both Takaza and I were snappish, and we stayed up for too late talking over convention-related stuff with Linnaeus

Yesterday, work was hectic again. Afterwards I had a doctor’s appointment in Vernon Hills (see my next post for that). I didn’t get out from there until 4:45 PM, and in the meantime it appeared that someone has dropped a big ol’ stupid bomb on all of the northern suburbs of Chicago. The expressways were completely stopped, and I wound up having to go off to surface streets, and even then I pretty much had my very-detailed road atlas open because I had to do some exotic navigation*. I didn’t get home until just before 6:30.

Dan had beat me home (that’s pretty unusual), and he met me at the door. After helping me take my jacket off, he led me back to the bedroom and gave me the most wonderful back- and foot-rub ever. And to top it off, he made dinner, too! My husband is pretty damn wonderful, I think. I took a break from MFF stuff for the night and found that helped a lot, too.

So today, it’s back to work, nose to the grindstone, blah blah blah. I have some scheduling to work out (I had everything exactly right, then there was a slight change and someone yelled “JENGA!” and the whole thing fell apart). Still, the reason for the change is a good one and the net outcome is better so I don’t really have any complaints.

* {Take a deep breath} Tri-State (wait in backup) to Edens Spur (wait in backup) to Waukegan Road (wait in backup) to Dundee to Meadow to Shermer to Willow to Patriot to Chestnut to Lehigh to Harlem to Oakton to Central to Howard to Lincoln to Jersey to Kedzie to Carmen to Troy to HOME!

One Last Weekend of Sanity

A week and a half until my head explodes. What fun.

Friday night we bummed around the house and Takaza was kind enough to run down to the corner taqueria for dinner for us and Linnaeus. After dinner and some Tivo goodness, we called it an early night.

I woke up far too early on Saturday morning, at about 6:30. Ick. This gave me time to make coffee, read the paper, and stare at my laptop for a while, which was nice. We had originally intended to meet Roho and Genet for breakfast in Antioch, but Dan was feeling a bit oogie so we delayed our departure for a bit. Instead, we met them in McHenry, where we toured the (small) facility of the charity for Midwest FurFest this year, Wildlife in Need. WiN is a tiny organization dedicated to the rehabilitation and return of injured wildlife. It was formed after the small animal sanctuary that was run by McHenry County Conservation District shut down in 1995. We met Bill and Karen, a very nice couple who handle WiN’s raptors in one of the three or four enclosures in their back yard. Monica, the foundation president, handles waterfowl at her house in Woodstock, and another person handles small mammals at a third location. They only have two raptors right now, and these are the two that will be at MFF: a red-tailed hawk and a great horned owl (I’ll try to post some pictures when I get home). Both of these birds are imprinted and thus cannot be released to the wild, so instead they help with the foundation’s educational efforts.

After a quick tour (in the rain, which started right when we arrived), we had a nice chat about their work, what we were hoping they could do at Midwest FurFest, and what to expect. I suspect that they are going to have a really good time, once they get around the weirdness, and I’m sure they’ll be touring the convention and buying stuff in the Dealers Room before the weekend is over.

Roho and Genet opted to go to lunch with Bill and Karen, but since we had just eaten we instead too our leave to run some errands. We ran into a horrible thunderstorm in Fox Lake (torrential downpour, 1/2″ hail), but then were able to get over to our storage unit, where we picked up a few things we’ll be needing for MFF. Then we made a couple of stops in Antioch, including the always-yummy Antioch Packing House, where Dan got some beautiful strip steaks. From there it was back to the city.

Dan cooked up the steaks when we got home (yum!) and then Paul and I hopped the El over to perromutt‘s place, where we arrived earlier than expected to help celebrate his 27th birthday (oooh, so old. Not). I had a really fun time seeing a bunch of folks, some new, some not. I’d list them all but I have to head home momentarily :-)Both Paul and I started to get tired early, so we took our leave and slogged back home through the pouring rain. At least we had umbrellas!

On Sunday, we have the last in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Good meeting, and we got lots of last-minute details ironed out. I have a ton of work to do over the next week and a half, but once things start it’s all downhill. I have an excellent Assistant Director in Neowolf2, and a fabulous staff that I know I can rely on. Those two things make the prospect of the convention a heck of a lot more palatable.

After the meeting, Dan and I came home and got into a small cleaning frenzy, bringing some order to the living room and kitchen. We ordered some pizza and relaxed for the rest of the night, watching Tivo. All in all, an excellent weekend.

Hey comics geeks!

A friend here in Chicago, woodychitwn, is planning to open a comic book store near Loyola University with his partner. He’s furry, or at least furry-friendly (or would you consider yourself perhaps fringe-furry, Woody?).

He’s doing a bit of market research right now, asking folks what titles they would be interested in. Read his entry and give him some input! They’ll also be doing Internet sales, so you don’t have to be local for this.

Another weekend comes and goes, and the clock ticks…ticks…ticks towards the middle of November. Agh!

So, anyway. We wound up doing very little on Friday night, which was pleasant – it offered some nice time to wind down. Datahawk continued her visit into Saturday, and we spent the day bumming around the house. I made some nice pancakes for brunch. I highly recommend whipping the egg whites – it makes a huge difference in the texture of the finished product. Also, I recommend keeping a can of Saco’s Buttermilk Powder around for those recipes where you just need a little buttermilk. It keeps for months, too.

For dinner, we met Ed and Chouette for dinner at Reza’s. The food was quite tasty, but we found unfortunately that Persian is not a good cuisine for Takaza – too much onions mixed in. Afterwards we walked around a bit and allowed dinner to digest while Chouette talked programming stuff by phone with Hartree. We found a (relatively) new ice cream place on the 5300 block of N. Clark, just up from the Starbucks. They carry ice cream from a small operation in Madison, WI, and it is absolutely divine. I had a hot fudge sundae made with Zanzibar chocolate ice cream (three different kinds of cocoas and almost black), which Dan got a cup of some delicious cinnamon ice cream. Their baked goods looked pretty good too.

Ed and Chouette offered to give us a ride home but we declined, figuring we’d take the Foster bus. Well, we found out too late that the Foster bus had stopped running two hours earlier. Ah well – exercise wasn’t going to kill us. We walked the 2.5 miles home, and it was actually quite pleasant.

On Sunday, Data took her leave. After a suitable amount of procrastinating, lazing about, etc., Linnaeus joined Dan and me in a venture down to Sam’s Wine and Liquors for a, um, pre-MFF reconnaissance mission. Man, one of these days I’ll get out of Sam’s for under $60, but I haven’t managed it yet. I picked up a lovely bottle of apple wine and a bottle of the extremely tasty Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal cognac. We’ll have these in our room at MFF, of course 🙂 Afterwards, we attempted to navigate the zoo that is the parking lot in front of the adjacent Whole Foods Market, leading to many and varied comments on my part on the intelligence of the average driver there and how the world would be improved with their swift and efficient eradication, preferably in the most painful way possible. Nevertheless, we were able to park and we picked up a very tasty bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with basil for dinner. We headed home, cooked up dinner, and life was good.

Today is a nice, slow day, for both Dan and myself (a welcome change for Dan!). He had some car trouble that I’ll let him talk about (since he never seems to post to LJ – {poke, poke}), but all is well. I’ve got some grocery shopping to do tonight, and we’ll probably take at least one evening after work this week to do some shopping in the Schaumburg area; there’s a couple of items that I want to look for around there.

Man, it feels like it’s 2 PM for some reason…

Bring on the Food Porn!

Courtesy of the Chicago blog Gaper’s Block, here are two photo tours detailing excursions into what can only be described as Food Pornography, dining experiences in which all five senses are used in a nontraditional approach to dining.

An evening at Alinea (and an overview of past menus)
Dinner at Moto

These are two of the hottest restaurants in Chicago right now, and with that hotness comes the attendant sticker shock: $160 at Moto and $175 at Alinea. But…damn. Were we a bit more financially flush, I would seriously consider it.

Half of a Useful Weekend

Hmm. Sox tonight, but also Amazing Race. Good thing we have Tivo…

So. The weekend. Saturday was a busy day for us. Takaza got up early (10 AM!) and we made the drive that I know so well up to my employer for the biannual Open House. It was pretty neat, actually – Dan got to see some of what goes into manufacturing tablets and capsules and hopefully got a little better insight into what I’m supposed to be doing up here every day. After the tour I showed up for my timeslot for the department “entertainment booth”, which is to say a toy 4-foot-tall basketball hoop in the middle of a hallway. Compared to other departments (DDR setup with full amp and mixing board, baseball with radar gun, free popcorn) we looked pretty crappy, but the kids seemed to like it when they made a took a couple of shots and got a free trinket. As a nice surprise, on Monday my supervisor instructed me to add the two hours we were there to my timecard, so that was a nice little bit of overtime.

That evening, we picked up unclevlad and gave him a ride to the party in honor of some-event-in-his-life-which-is-not-his-birthday, held at
emrldgirrl‘s place. The party was fun, and I had a good time even though I’ll admit I spent the majority of the evening hiding on the balcony. I don’t want anyone to think this is a criticism of the party, which was fabulous – it’s just that the loud music got to me a bit. That’s my own personal peeve, though; everyone else seemed to be having a good time, so hey – it’s all good. We headed out relatively early at 11 PM, just before the serious drinking started, I’m told 🙂 The blueberry cobbler I made seemed to go over well, so that was good.

Sunday? Well, I had all of the great things I wanted to do on Sunday. In reality, we relaxed around the house and generally were lazy. I did make some peanut butter cookies, which were quite tasty, and made dinner. Dan printed up some Registration postcards for me and was kind enough to grab them on Monday morning on his way to work, then cut them to size, stamp them, and mail them for me. I have the bestest husband!

This week should be a lot less hectic than the last. Datahawk is couch-surfing with us because it works out well for her work schedule; four people living in Linnaeus’ apartment may get a bit close, but I think we can work it out, plus it’s always a pleasure to see her (occasionally) smiling face 😉 On Thursday Dan and I are having dinner with Chouette to celebrate her putting MFF Programming to bed – well, theoretically, anyway. And there’s always more work to do for MFF…

Can’t Sleep, Con Will Eat Me

And so ends a particularly crappy week. Fortunately, the weekend is looking up.

I’ve been spending a lot of time this week working on Midwest FurFest related stuff (yeah, I know – such a shock!). Most of what I needed to order has been ordered, and I’ve already proofed a good bit of it as well; that’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Now it’s down to a lot of small tasks between now and the convention, which thankfully I can split up a bit more between neowolf2 and myself. I’m blessed with a fairly high level of interest from my Registration staff in working again this year – thanks guys! – and a registration server that works well and is even getting some slight improvements. Oh, and the restaurant guide is ready and just needs final proofing before being sent off for formatting and printing. Things are definitely going well.

Takaza was in training all week – his company is rolling out SAP companywide and his region is one of the pilot regions. They are so abundantly screwed, but that kind of goes hand in hand with SAP. Anyway, my poor wuff has been in training from 7:15 AM – 5:15 PM each day, then having to go back to the office and work another couple of hours. On the bright side, since he’s hourly he’s racking up a lot of good overtime. For me it’s been a pretty quiet week at work, but that lets me work on, um, outside projects. For instance, I was able to rewrite much of the travel information for the MFF website, incorporating a lot of the comments that I got last year. I sent it off to Puma just a short while ago, so it may be a bit before it goes up (if there’s links to hotel, air, train, and driving info at the top of the page, that’s the new page).

Tomorrow is the open house for my job, for which Dan and I will be here. Normally I would have skipped it, but it will offer some neat tours of tablet and capsule manufacturing and packaging, and it’s something I know Dan will enjoy. After that it’s off to a small get-together. And Sunday? Gloriously, nothing is planned! We’ll see if it stays that way, of course…

Oh yeah, the rest of the week…

So, there was indeed life after FRAC, which I sadly have failed to document (and I’m sure everyone is on the edge of their seats, oh yes).

After breakfast last Sunday (10/9), Takaza and I decided to opt out of any planned entertainment and head on home. We crashed hard when we got there; I napped for about an hour, and Dan slept for a good four hours. We had a small dinner after that then went to bed early.

Last week wasn’t too exciting. The big deal for me is that I started the Midwest FurFest Registration Buying Season, in which I spend thousands of dollars of other people’s money, yay! I placed the first few orders and visited with one of my vendors on Thursday after work. That visit was conveniently-timed, since I was able to go from there (in Wauconda) down to Schaumburg. I stopped by Ikea to pick up some nice (and cheap!) wine glasses, then it was over to Fuddruckers for the LAFF Western Suburbs Dinner. I admit I was a bit anti-social and mainly chatted with folks out in the parking lot, primarily because I couldn’t deal with the soccer team of 6-8 year old girls who were sharing the dining room with us. I had a good time, though.

We relaxed around the house on Saturday and I got some MFF-related work done. Then siriuswolfstar came over and I made a hyooge pot of chicken and dumplings. mirkowuff joined us later in the evening and Dan commemorated the moment by making a batch of yummy Good Eats chewy chocolate chip cookies.

On Sunday, it was it was the MFF staff meeting. Typically, the meeting was over in an hour, and the after-meeting chat lasted twice that. It was a very useful meeting, and we got a lot hashed out. I’m still working on a good location for Registration on Thursday night of the convention – we’ll see what layouts I can come up with. Afterwards we migrated over to Portillo’s for dinner, then went home and vegged out for the rest of the night, eventually going to bed by 9 PM because we’re old and boring that way 🙂

As for this week, it’s more ordering and more preparation for MFF. We’re now inside of a month, and I’m really trying to keep my stress level lower this year. Dan, bless his heart, puts up with me, but it’s not fair for him or linnaeus to have to deal with my crabby self for the next few weeks. We’ll see how successful I’ll be…

Observations

Funny, but when I play Blue Man Group on the drive in, I always seem to get to work a good five minutes faster. This probably not a good thing.

Also, happy commemoration of the day on which you entered the world and started down the road to pain, sin, taxes, and, eventually, death to roho, yotogi, and gatcat!

Happy birthday {stomp} Happy birthday {stomp}
Doom and gloom and dark despair
People dying everywhere
Happy birthday {stomp} Happy birthday {stomp}

Well, that was a fun weekend!

Another weekend, another party. After much planning and preparations, Wuffmeet II came and went last weekend, and everyone seemed to have a great time. This time around we were at the Courtyard By Marriott in Glenview, IL. It was a nice hotel, but the general agreement seemed to be that the La Quinta in Hoffman Estates had more comfortable rooms. Unlike the La Quinta, which only has an outdoor pool, the Courtyard had a nice indoor pool and hot tub which was quite lovely, especially on Saturday night when our group was the only one in the place (the three(!) wedding parties that we were sharing the hotel with were partying hard elsewhere, I guess. Fine by me). This time around we tried a conference room as the general gathering area, and which it worked OK, certainly a space with sofas and more comfortable furniture would be preferred. We’ll look into that for future gatherings.

Thanks to everyone who attended: Aeto, Cheetah, Cobaltfox, Datahawk, DaveQat, Hartree, jimcyl, Linnaeus, Mirkowuff, moryssa, Mistletoe, wooisme, Neowolf2, Posicat, Ralkor, rcking, Rolliebear, Rustitobuck, Siriuswolfstar, steviemaxwell, Stormdog, UncleVlad, werellama, and Wyldekyttin. As usual, takaza did a fabulous job planning and purchasing all of the food and drink, and I’m happy to report that we pretty much broke even, which is exactly where we wanted to be. Takaza also did a fantastic job of keeping me sane 🙂

After seeing the walking dead attempting to have breakfast yesterday morning, we’re considering only holding these parties on three-day weekends, though. After staying up late on Saturday night (or well into Sunday morning, for some), check-out time on Sunday morning comes punishingly early. Plus, two days is just too short! Well, we learn as we go, and each party gets better.

In addition to the party, we introduced FRAC: Furries Race Across Chicago!, a combination race, scavenger hunt, and puzzle game. I’ll post more about that later today…

See, this is why I like organizing events – it lets me get all of my recreational stress out of the way. Yeah, that’s it. I woke up with a coughing fit at 3:20 AM this morning and was unable to get back to sleep, though I might have dozed slightly between 4:30 and 5, when the alarm went off. Don’t ask what I was worrying about, it was all silly stuff (did we remember to do X? Do we have enough Y?) that was quickly dispatched with a few questions once takaza woke up. It’s safe to assume that I won’t be staying up late tonight.

And now there’s the long day ahead. I wish I was buried in work, so the day would fly by. Sadly, I’m not so much buried as I have work up to about my ankles. There’s a few nice things about being underemployed, but boredom on the job is not one of them.

As long as I’m whining, I’ll throw this out: what the heck is going on with morning traffic? Back in the summer, leaving the house at 6:10 AM got me here by about 6:40 or so. It seems that since about the beginning of this month traffic at that early hour has really increased, to the point where it was stop and go on I-94 (Edens Expressway) this morning, and I got here at 6:50. Yeah, it’s just another ten minutes, but where the heck are these people coming from, and why are they out so early? And, most importantly, why can’t they GET THE F**K OUT OF MY WAY?

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, that’s what’s going on right now. Long day, but the fun starts at 3:30 PM!

I Love the Smell of Toner in the Morning!

Wow, I just love these mornings when I come in at 6 AM. Well, usually. This morning the lovely hour before anyone else shows up was spent fighting network printers and trying to print up the 160 (!) postcards I need to send out. Well, I got the job half-done, anyway – the rest I’ll have to do at home, on our laser printer that isn’t really fond of cardstock. Oh well.

So, it’s been a few days since I last posted, it would appear. On Friday, we joined linnaeus, rustitobuck, and muganga in seeing Serenity. The experience was much-improved over the preview that we saw earlier this year – much better music, and improved effects. I thought that they changed around one of the scenes at the end, but I may be wrong.

Saturday, we bummed around the house and worked on some party planning and MFF stuff, then Hartree showed up. We grabbed a tasty dinner at Charcoal Delight, then bummed around the house for the rest of the evening, chatting. Sunday brought sparsely-attended MFF staff meeting, but we nailed down a few useful things there. Afterwards, mirkowuff came back to the apartment and we ordered some sammitches. Tasty.

This week has been so-so. I finally shook off the cold/whatever I had picked up, but I had a lingering cough that was kicking my butt and keeping me awake at night. That finally seems to be subsiding, though, much to my relief. So now it’s back to planning for the upcoming gathering this weekend and MFF stuff as well. I’ll be much happier once I can get all of the stuff I need to get ordered for MFF taken care of, which should be by this time next week. I hope.

Back to work!

Tasty Dinner and Busy Weekend

Last night’s dinner was perfectly fabulous, I must say. We tend to get into a bit of a rut with the same-old, same-old menus (pork chops, sauteed chicken breasts, burgers), so I tried to break out a bit. I poked around America’s Test Kitchen‘s recipe archive and I found an excellent recipe for pan-roasted chicken with a sage and vermouth sauce. I really like how nice and browned the chicken came out, and the sauce was relatively simple and quick. I’ll append the recipe below since ATK seems to demand you register just to access the recipe.

This week has dragged by slowly. Dan had some kind of nasty upper respiratory infection and initially it looked like I caught it too, but since I never developed a fever I guess it was just a nasty cold. It’s all but gone now, leaving me with a slight cough and sore throat and a rather hoarse voice. I’m sure it will all be over with by the end of the weekend.

Registrations for Midwest FurFest are pouring in as people try to beat the 9/30 deadline for cheap registration, and this makes me very happy. After the slow start in getting online registration up earlier this year I was concerned that our overall attendance might take a hit, but all that seems to have happened is people put off registering until the last minute. This is confirmed by the rate at which people are reserving rooms at the hotel. A word of warning: last year we came extremely close to selling out the hotel; this year I would not be surprised if we did in fact sell out. More importantly, as the hotel fills up, certain types of rooms become harder to get (i.e. double, king, whichever) and not being able to get one type or the other can really throw a wrench into people’s plans. Take my advice and reserve now.

Looking ahead to the weekend: Well, there’s Serenity tonight, of course. Tomorrow I have a ton of MFF stuff to work on, and rumor has it that we’ll be joined by hartree. Sunday is the MFF meeting, and while we’re out that way I want to duck into Ikea for a few things.

As promised, here is the recipe for Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sage-Vermouth Sauce:

Kennel cough?

Well, that was actually a pretty productive weekend. Our agenda was pretty short, since takaza has been fighting an upper respiratory infection (or as linnaeus called it, “kennel cough”) for the last few days and so was not up for a whole lot. On Friday, Datahawk joined us after work and he had a pleasant evening of chatting, tasty pork chops, and (heaven help us all) We {heart} Katamari, the sequel to Katamari Damacy. Paul was off for an early bike ride thing so he turned in early and we were all pretty tired so we turned in around 10 PM. Sorry we couldn’t join you, Woody – it sounds like it would have been a fun time!

On Saturday I met up with partran and we walked around Little Italy for a bit, then caught a bus up to Wicker Park and walked around there some. I looked lustfully at some recumbent bikes but they didn’t have anything in stock for under about $2,200. Yeah, I’m thinking not. There’s a place up in Niles that has a pretty lenient test ride policy – I need to try them soon and see what their prices were like.

On Sunday, Dan was feeling well enough to go in to work to catch up on some of the work he’d missed. In the meantime I enjoyed the quiet apartment and got a lot of work done on Midwest FurFest stuff (sorry about all those e-mails, neowolf2!). I still have a ton of work to do on the Restaurant Guide, but otherwise I’m in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, while I was working all afternoon I started to get a tickle in my throat that blossomed into a full-on sore throat. Last night I slept very poorly, with lots of sinus problems and coughing. I’m getting by today, but I think the pseudoephedrine I took is starting to wear off; fortunately I brought more. I’m going to hold off on calling the doctor unless I’m actually running a fever – she can’t really do much besides treat the symptoms anyway, and we have meds for that. Now, if I can just keep from falling asleep…

For Want of a Nail

So I stopped by the Illinois Secretary of State‘s (aka the Department of Motor Vehicles) office yesterday afternoon, because I’m a masochist or something. Actually, it’s because Dan’s car still has North Carolina license plates, and they expire at the end of the month. So I went in to find the place blissfully uncrowded. I got the forms needed and started to fill them out, until I got to the line: FILL IN YOUR IL DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER. Um, whoops. See, I’ve never quite gotten around to getting an Illinois driver’s license, even though I’ve been here for about a year. Heh. My bad.

Well, the Drivers License office was right next door, so I figured what the heck? I opened the door and was shocked to see that it, too was uncrowded. I was directed to a large, unsmiling man who asked me what I wanted and what documentation I had. I handed him the bundle of papers I had, he looked through it and said, “Where’s your Social Security card?” Aw, crap. I haven’t seen my Social Security card in more than five years. And if it’s still around, it’s somewhere in our storage locker – good luck.

So now it looks like I need to come in a early one day next week and leave by 2:30 PM so I can get to the Social Security office in Waukegan before they close at 4 PM. There’s an office right near us in Chicago, on Lawrence between Western and Damen, but it too closes at 4 PM. And me with a 40-60 minute commute to get there? Yeah, I’ll go to Waukegan. And theoretically all of this needs to get done by the end of the month. Um, yeah. We’ll see.