Wow, it’s been a good week. Dinner with Daveqat and Jimcyl and kittylad at Geja’s Cafe was excellent (though maybe not worth what they charged for it – I’m thinking fondue is something best done at home. At least the wine was good). On Wednesday, I had dinner with partran and Linnaeus at The Hopleaf. Oh. My. God. Take a 11 x 17 sheet of paper. Cover it front and back with 8-point type – that was their beer list. And one side is devoted entirely to their specialty: Belgian beers. I want to live at this place. The food was pretty tasty too!

Following that, the LAFF Coffee Night was fun as well, and I got to have a good chat with unclevlad about Worldcons and Chicago SF fandom. Last night was a nice quiet night; I did some laundry and finally finished Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. That only took about six months, and by the end the game was really starting to annoy me. So I guess I need to pick up a new addiction for the few hours a week I have to play PS2 games…

And then we have today. I’m very excited right now. Things were pretty good with our original plans, where takaza was going to catch an evening flight up and arrive at O’Hare at 9 PM or so. However, things got interesting this week when one of the managers at the Mount Prospect office called one of the managers in Dan’s office in Raleigh and said, “Hey, I know you’ve got a guy looking to transfer up here, and we have this accounts receivables job that we’re going to post in a couple of days…” Phone calls and e-mails were exchanged, resumes were sent, and the upshot is that as I write this Dan is on a flight to O’Hare. He’s going to meet with the branch manager in Mount Prospect, as well as the person the position would report to. This isn’t the actual interview, but I think it’s something better – a “we want to get to know you and see if you’ll fit” kind of thing, which I’m certain Dan will excel at. I’m very excited about this!

Once he finishes meeting with folks down there, the plan is that he’s going to hang out for a while with chouette (who never posts, dangit!). I’m going to pick up datahawk on my way home, and I’m thinking that we may all meet up with Linnaeus at The Hopleaf for a tasty dinner. Tomorrow, it’s a full day of geekery as Dan, Linnaeus, and Data and I all go to NoCoasterCon for a full day of presentations by amusement parks from around the country on what new and exciting rides they are rolling out for 2005. Tomorrow night we’ll be hanging out with feren, then on Sunday it’s the first MFF Staff meeting of the year.

This is a going to be a great weekend, made even better by the fact that I get to see Takaza again, which always makes me happy. I’m keeping my fingers crossed since good news on the job front seems to be epidemic around Chicago this week.

Good news everyone!

As many of you already know, Midwest FurFest has been lucky enough to welcome the amazingly talented artist kenket as one of our Guests of Honor for next year. If you’re not familiar with her work, hie ye hence to her website and be impressed.

Last night, our esteemed chairman (and really cute wolf) takaza confirmed our other two Guests of Honor. First off, we have a talented writer and the editor of the long-running fanzine Tales from the Tai-Pan Universe: genebreshears! It will be a pleasure to welcome Gene to his first MFF in grand style!

Second, we have a gifted artist who’s definitely on the rise. a longtime supporter of Midwest FurFest, and a contributor to Furry Ninja High School: tincrash!

Congratulations to all of these fine folks!

I finally got my car dug out on Sunday and now we have an ice storm coming in. Dammit. Ah well, another few days taking the train in, it sounds like…

I’m going to try out Geja’s Cafe tonight with daveqat and jimcyl. Should be good, and I’m looking forward to some tasty fondue! With luck, linnaeus will be well enough to join us.

Finally: At last, the secret behind takaza and my short haircuts can be revealed: Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With Socialist Lifestyle!

A very funny Dork Tower strip lies beneath this cut

Six Apart to buy Live Journal

Six Apart is the parent company of TypePad and creator of Movable Type blogging software. By all accounts they’re one of the Good Guys, and I’m guessing the purchase will be transparent to most users. If anything, I’m hoping this might mean incorporation of some of the better blogging features out there (like something similar to BlogThis!) into LJ, but we’ll see. I’d reckon this will mean quite a windfall for brad, though – good for him!

In other news, gatcat just ain’t right!

Well, that was a busy few days.

In my last (non-tipsy) post, I mentioned that I was going to be heading up to Roho and Genet‘s for dinner. And so I did, and we went to the Double Eagle in Antioch. In spite of it sounding like a leather bar, it’s actually a passable restaurant, though the service needed some slight improvement. The beer was cheap, though! After dinner Roho and I went down to their basement and watched some Family Guy while Genet went to poke at Evercrack 2 for a bit.
Surprises That Aren’t Surprising, But Nonetheless Welcome

It’s 2:11 AM, I’m way tipsy, and Takaza surprised me and flew in to help me celebrate the new year.

Life is mighty damn good. And 2005 is going to be even better. I know it will be.

May 2005 be better and better for all of you as well!

I saw something that reminded me of one of the topics of discussion down at mirkowuff‘s place: a review in today’s Trib of Aloha Grill Hawaiian BBQ. (Bugmenot link if needed)

Yes, they serve “that uniquely Hawaiian combination of barbecued meat, macaroni salad and perfectly cooked rice in a foam container”. The menu even includes Spam musubi. Gack.

Oh, right. LiveJournal. I knew I’d forgotten something these last few days. See, I took a little trip…

Well, as expected, it’s me and two others in the office now. Not a lot of work getting done, I’m mainly just making time until I can get out of here. If by some freak chance I can get to O’Hare early enough, I can make a try for the 5:20 flight to Raleigh-Durham, but I’m pretty much resigned to the 8:02 flight that I booked. I’m not going to kill myself, but if I make it, cool. The weather’s going to be something of a shock – it’s about ten degrees out there right now, and down in North Carolina it’s about 50 with thunderstorms. Looks like it’ll be sticking in the 30’s and 40’s over the course of the weekend, but that sounds downright toasty right now! The good news is it sounds like by flying I’ll be skipping over the worst of the weather in the Ohio River Valley – ramalion, jarrodhenry, tahamaki, animist, aerofox, loriana, tarirat, berin – y’all stay warm and stay safe!

It appears that there’s been a slight change of plans and we’re going to be hosting friends for dinner on Christmas night. Sounds cool to me! We’ll work up the menu and do some shopping for groceries tomorrow. We’ll probably play some games or just hang out and chat – that’s always fun too. I’m really looking forward to it, but not as much as I’m looking forward to seeing takaza!

I’m sure I’ll be posting from NC once I’m down there, but for those of you who will be away from LJ: No matter which holiday you celebrate, I wish joy and peace to you and your loved ones, and a happy and safe holiday. Take care, everyone!

And so the downward spiral of Christmas week continues. We’re down two (out of seven) people in our office, and tomorrow it’ll be three or four, until by Thursday it’ll be just me and the other two Manpower drones left here. This makes things a bit more relaxed, which is pretty cool. If I haven’t said it enough, I really do like this work environment – the people are nice, the atmosphere is comfortable.

Last weekend was pretty mellow, which was enjoyable given that the next few weekends are going to be nuts. On Friday, it was the unclevlad/rennie_frog/wyldekyttin/crim_ferret Christmas gathering (wherein it was learned that Whole Food baked goods are Not To Be Trusted, and much fun was had by all). On Saturday I pretty much lazed around the house a bit, then got motivated around dinnertime to go down to Whole Foods and get some ingredients for cookies. The El trip down was pleasant – uncrowded, and a light snow was falling. Not too cold, either. It was a good winter-in-the-city evening. I stopped for dinner at Wishbone, which OK except they seem to have this impression that in North Carolina they put some kind of beans in with their mashed potatoes. Not bad, just…odd. Went back home and completely lost all motivation to cook, but that’s OK.

Sunday I did finally get around to making cookies. My original intention was to make shortbread with caramel and chocolate. I made the shortbread and the caramel sauce (which turned out too thin for my purposes, but still quite tasty!) and melted some excellent chocolate and put it all together. It was…too much. Definitely gilding the lily. Maybe if the shortbread were less sweet, or the caramel sauce cooked a little longer to give it a slightly bitter edge. Ah well, it was fun experiment, and now we have plenty of caramel sauce for ice cream! I also got motivated to do a bit of winter cooking, so I made up a nice batch of carbonnade (a Belgian beef and onion stew). boixboi, daveqat, and jimcyl joined us for dinner, and rustitobuck came over later. A pleasant evening of conversation, good food, and good wine ensued. Way cool.

Yesterday I gave Linnaeus an early Christmas present, a Netgear WAP/router. We had some issues with it. And with the cat.

I just got word from Rasslor – a Playstation 2 has been secured in Georgia! Woohoo! Thank you all so much for your help, I really appreciate it. Damn, I have some cool-ass friends 🙂

Well, no dice on the Playstation 2 so far. If folks happen to be out and come across one, by all means please let me know. Thanks!

Holy crap! I’ve created a distributed Christmas shopping network.

…cool!

(Obviously, only one person on my friends list can’t see this 🙂

You know, it would probably have been better if I had decided I wanted to get Takaza a Playstation 2 for Christmas a little earlier than last week. The consumer frenzy is on and I can’t believe how quickly these things are getting snapped up. At lunch today I ran over to Beast Buy in Gurnee. They got a shipment of 48 PS2’s last night and they assured me that they had quite a few in stock. I got there at 11:50 AM and the clerks were as shocked as I was to find that they had just sold the last one. Well, that was a waste of time. I’ve checked Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Game Stop, EBGames, Target, Wal Mart, and probably a couple of other places I’m forgetting – no dice.

If anyone in the Chicago or RTP areas comes across a PS2 in stock (new, slimline design), call me immediately on my cell phone – chances are that I will ask that you buy it on the spot and I’ll reimburse you. Thanks!

How is it that the first night this week I’ll be eating at home will be on Saturday? Yeesh.

Monday I just wasn’t feeling motivated, so I walked a few blocks up to Boston Market. Yeah, it’s not the greatest, but I love their meatloaf. Their new potatoes au gratin are sinful, as well.

On Tuesday it was datahawk‘s birthday, so moryssa, posicat, and linnaeus treated her to Outback Steakhouse. Arr num num num! (to quote a certain pn0y) Takaza and I and Linnaeus went in to buy Data a nice gift – it’s up to her to keep Posi away from it! 🙂

Last night I had a lovely dinner at Noon-O-Kabab with chouette and Ed. Over some very tasty kababs we chatted about their trip to Philadelphia last week, con geekiness, and other fun things. A delightful evening with some folks of whom I really should see more.

So tonight it’s LAFF Coffee in Chicago night. I might see if I can dig something out fo the freezer for dinner before coffee, though. That would be sensible, anyway. Tomorrow night is a small Christmas get-together with friends – I’m looking forward to that, even if there’s no way that I’ll be able to bring anything homemade to the party.

One unfortunate thing this week: Linnaeus’ DSL through Earthlink went belly-up at 1:47 AM Tuesday morning and there’s been no sign of life since. Lin has spent quite a bit of time on the phone with Earthlink, and today apparently they finally changed their tune: it’s no longer “It will be up by 6 AM tomorrow.” Now it’s “We don’t know when it will be back up.” Oooookay. It’s significant that we were discussing cable modem rates this morning…

Anyway, if you’ve been looking for me on FurryMuck, AIM, or ICQ, that explains why I haven’t been around. With luck Earthlink will undo whatever cranial-rectal contortion they have gotten themselves into, and soon. If not, well hey – that does leave me more free time to watch TiVo and finally finish Katamari Damacy.

Rumor has it that it’s someone’s birthday…

HAPPY
BIRTHDAY
datahawk!

Woohoo!

Details are the same as last week, same place, same start time.

This will be the last one of these this year. Coming in January:

Something!

I’ll let you know what when I know!

Now, I have to admit that, as I said in my last post, I did have an absolutely fabulous time in Chambana. But…

If I seemed somewhat quiet on Saturday it’s because I knew that while I was having fun, it would have been so much better to have Takaza there. I was worried about him, since he was DJ’ing that night for his employer’s Charlotte branch’s Holiday Party. I know my wolf, and I knew that he would do a fabulous job, but he was worried, and that made me worried. And that made me miss him all the more.

The absolute best part of the night was when he called a little before midnight to tell me what a smashing success the Holiday Party had been. It made me very happy to hear his voice, and to hear that everything had worked out well. Plus, he got a nice bonus for his efforts, too!

It’s ten days until I fly down to North Carolina for Christmas. I’m counting the hours.

I love you, Dan, and I miss you so much.

It’s a slow day today, which is good considering the weekend was pretty busy.

First off, the court date on Friday went extremely well. I showed up about 45 minutes to the lovely Cook County 4th Circuit Court in Maywood. There’s were groups of courtrooms throughout the first floor of the building; looking at the schedule, I saw that the courtroom I was scheduled in was for Traffic Court for the Illinois State Police, 3rd District. The two courtrooms across the hall were scheduled for felony trials, which made me look at the other people waiting around for the courtrooms to open in a whole new light. The bailiff opened the courtroom door at 1 PM and I went and grabbed a seat and killed time for the next thirty minutes by people-watching and looking around at the courtroom. I noticed that only one state trooper was present and it wasn’t the officer who had written my ticket; that, coupled with the fact that I had a letter from my insurance company stating they had paid the damages on the other party’s vehicle, led me to think that I wouldn’t have any problems.

At 1:30, the judge came in and they did the “All Rise” thing. I was halfway looking forward to seeing some of the cases before the court, but I was called second. The judge called the name of the other party in the accident. When no one answered, he said, “Continuance denied. The case is dismissed. You’re free to go.” And that was it. I even looked at the bailiff, as if to ask “is that all there is?” and she made little shooing motions, sending me out the door. I walked out at 1:36 PM. Damn.
Then came an enjoyable weekend in Chambana

A quiet afternoon here at work. I’ve caught up with most of the stuff I intended to get done for today, so that gives me a few minutes to update.

The last few nights have been pretty uneventful – come home, geek a bit on the computer, maybe play some Katamari Damacy. Linnaeus bought a new Windows laptop so I’ve been helping him outfit that with the best free applications I know of.

On Tuesday we went over to the Thai place I mentioned earlier. Sadly, the food wasn’t quite as fabulous this time around, but at least the company was good. I guess now that I’ve determined that I actually like Thai food, I need to go to work finding some really good Thai food. I suspect there are an untold number of places to try through the Chicago area, so that goes onto my list of restaurants to find (right next to a good Vietnamese place, a decently-priced fondue restaurant, and a decent tapas bar).

I went ahead and reserved my room for the LAFF New Year’s Party. It would appear that I’ve volunteered to run, um, registration there. Quelle suprise! Fortunately, registration consists pretty much of just making sure that only people who have paid can get into the rooms that we have (and by extension, have access to the food). I also tried to reserve my room for Anthrocon, but the hotel keeps transferring me to national reservations, which has never heard of Anthrocon. I’ll try again tomorrow, I suppose. I’m thinking about pricing out a suite, but that will depend on how many people we’re going to have crashing in the room with us. There’s only 18 suites in the hotel, so I imagine they’ll go fast. If that doesn’t work out, I see that they have oversized rooms as well, and hopefully that would be comparable to a Junior Suite at the Adams Mark.

Speaking of Anthrocon, I touched base with Kage last night to check on the status of Artists Alley. It looks like we’re going to be reasonably well-off, though there are some things going on during the weekend that are going to make life interesting. More on that when I have more information.

By the way – I am looking for volunteers for Artists Alley and Con Store at Anthrocon. This would entail either running a cash register (and a free membership, if you’re willing to work enough hours), or helping out just an hour or so at the end of each day (no freebies there, but I might buy you a beverage of your choice afterwards!). Work scheduling would be rigidly structured (moreso than at MFF Registration), which means you’ll know where to be when and when you’ll be done, as well. Let me know either here or by e-mail if you’d be interested.

Tonight I’m headed back to Café Boost for another LAFF Coffee in the City. It’s always a nice, relaxing night and I’m looking forward to it. Then tomorrow I work half a day, then drive down to Maywood and traffic court. I need to remember to bring the letter from my insurance company that, although it admits no culpability, says that they paid for the damage to the other person’s car. That should help the judge dismiss the ticket, I hope. From there, I’ll pick up Linnaeus and we’ll head southwards, yay! Oh – I need to remember to pack my beer kegs and accoutrements into the car, tomorrow morning, too. Once more we’ll try to put a dent into the Great Stocks of Beer that I amassed before Midwest FurFest.

Now to find something to keep me occupied for the next 19 minutes…

“Stupid, stupid rat creatures!”

It’s been a while since I wrote about what’s going on in my life, so it’s time to rectify that.

It’s the handy-dandy LJ-Cut. It slices! It dices! It keeps you from spamming your friends’ Friends Pages!

Executive Summary
In this report attendance, demographic and traffic data gathered at Midwest FurFest Registration over the past five years, the complete existence of the convention, is presented. Attendance data shows that we are continuing to maintain a healthy rate of growth (approximately 20%). Our sponsorship rate is improving as well, though not what it has been in past years. The rate of preregistered attendees is on the downward trend, something that we need to improve on if we hope to be able to provide reliable forecasts of attendees before the convention.

For the demographics data, the biggest trend was that was observed was a widening of the distribution of attendees over the United States and Canada, though attendance from outside of North America remains negligible. Traffic data shows that we continue to have an excellent throughput of attendees at peak times. It would also appear that more attendees are arriving earlier.

Click here for the full report

Twenty-eight years today something happened that has made me the happiest man on earth.

Twenty-eight years ago today, the most loving, most caring, most wondeful man was born, and he’s made me the luckiest guy I know.

Twenty-eight years ago today, takaza was born.

Happy birthday, my love! I hope you have a great day!

This is the final report on Registration at Midwest FurFest 2004, its fifth year of existence and my fourth year running Registration. Although I’m posting an executive summary of this to the staff mailing list, this is the comprehensive version. I’m going to be pretty detailed here, for two reasons: 1.) As a method of notes to myself for future years, and 2.) In the hopes that this might be useful information to other furry, and fannish in general, conventions. Any comments, suggestions, or constructive criticism is welcome!

Pre-Convention
Registration Materials Vendors

Working on the MFF Registration Report, but in the meantime, since Mom asked:
Tom’s Amazon Wish List
Dan’s Amazon Wish List

Obligatory disclaimer: No, this is not a general plea for people to send us stuff, and should not not be interpreted as such.

So, now we pick up with Saturday morning. How do these things get so long?

Oh yeah, we just did. Midwest FurFest has come and gone, and now life is returning (slightly) to some semblence of normal.

This was a difficult year for me – between dealing with a new job, a killer commute, separation from my sweetheart, and the usual pre-con stress, I was pretty much a mess mentally by the time Thursday came around. Takaza was there to steady me, as always, and that helped a lot.

There is absolutely no way I can do a minute-by-minute or even hour-by-hour recap of the con, so I’m just going to hit the high points that I can recall:
Clickety-click for the details

So you’re coming to Midwest FurFest for the first time? Hey, that’s great! Here’s some insider tips from someone who has spent far too much time in and around the Woodfield Hyatt over the past few years:
Gee, this got a bit long. Click to see the full list

Just when I thought the stress was abating, well, silly me. We’ll muddle through somehow, though not without my blood pressure going through the roof in the meantime.

Now, I never post any of the memes that circulate (and usually ignore them, to be honest), but this one’s results amused the hell out of me. The Believe-O-Matic quiz, which selects what religion best fits your beliefs, had these results for me: Click to see

In case anyone is wondering where I went, I’m still here. I’m completely snowed under by preparations for Midwest FurFest, though. Don’t expect any updates for about the next week or so, as I am going to be just too darned busy. To those of you who will be at MFF, be sure to stop by Registration and say hi! If you know me well enough, ask me about the ten gallons of beer and maybe we can work something out 🙂 For those not attending, well, I hope you can make it sometime to what I think is one of the most entertaining furry conventions around, even if you’re not “into” furry fandom.

And now, back to work!

People seem to have this misconception about conventions (be they furry, or SF, or SCA, or any large fannish gathering), that they are these big, faceless monolithic entities whose movements are mysterious and unknowable. Here’s a secret for you: they are made up of volunteers, people just like you.

Convention policies do not rise from the mysterious depths, spoken by blind oracles; they are arrived at through (hopefully) intelligent and thoughtful consideration by responsible adults. Do you have a problem with a convention policy? Have you considered maybe discussing it with the person responsible? It’s a wacky, crazy idea, but one that you just might want to take into consideration.

The people who help run conventions donate their time and effort and sometimes money so that others can have a good time. What do they get out of it? In most cases, absolutely nothing. With luck, they get the satisfaction of a job well done, of seeing the enjoyment of those around them having a good time, of hearing and seeing good reports after the convention. And if there’s criticism to be had (and of course there will be – I’ve been doing Registration for Midwest FurFest for four years and I have no illusion that it’s perfect, or that it will ever be perfect), it is perfectly reasonable to expect that that criticism might be offered constructively.

Do you have a problem with how something is done? Instead of saying, “I hate the way they did X!” try, “I didn’t like the way they did X, but perhaps it might work better if they tried Y instead.” Be prepared that solution you offered may not be used – there are many different ways to do the same thing, and there may be other factors involved that you haven’t taken into consideration. If this occurs, it isn’t because someone hates you, I assure you. There can always be a discussion about possible solutions, and possibly compromises to be made.

This isn’t a plea for sympathy, or a cheap attempt to garner attaboys for working for furry conventions. It is meant as a reality check, and a reminder to people that at the core of these conventions are people who are making sacrifices so others can have a good time. Show a little respect, be reasonable, and everyone can have a good time.

Wow, a week since I last posted here. That’s probably not good.

It’s been an exciting week.

The Weekly Recap

Yeah yeah – three posts from me in a day. I’m not allowed to be chatty? (or bored…)

I got the estimate back from the body shop last night: $1,891, just a hair more than the $1,800 that State Farm has set as a limit below which they won’t raise our insurance rates. I have a good feeling about this shop, though, and I think I can talk them down somehow to get them to drop the price by $91 (or a few more dollars). I also realized as I walked out last night that now I was driving a car with only on headlight. I called my insurance agent this mornign and they immediately took the attitude of, “Oh, we can’t have that!” and immediately set about arranging a rental car for me today. I’ll be dropping my car at the body shop at 5 PM and Enterprise should be there with a car waiting for me. We might be paying a bit more than with other insurance providers, but it’s nice to know we get good service for the extra bucks.

Not a lot planned for tonight, which is nice. I’ll probably be hanging around at home and working on editing the Restaurant and Services Guide together. My goal is to get it knocked out by the end of the weekend and e-mailed off to aureth.

Tomorrow, assuming that we can overcome weekend inertia, I plan to drive with linnaeus down to Bev-Art in some scary Southside neighborhood and see if there really is a decent homebrewing shop in the Chicago area (I certainly haven’t seen one yet!). The afternoon is set aside for Restraunt Guide work, then rumor has it that I’ll be joining daveqat and jimcyl for a trip up to Milwaukee for a trip to The Safe House. Should be an entertaining, if kitschy, evening. Then Sunday it’s off to justincheetah‘s Halloween party. Hmm, I should think about cooking something for that, if I have the time. We’ll see how things go tomorrow.

Argh! 5 PM can’t get here soon enough!

I mentioned a few days ago that we had picked out a really tasty menu for the Sponsors Brunch at Midwest FurFest, which begins at 11 AM on Saturday of the convention. For those of you who will be enjoying it (and to tempt those of you who are considering buying a sponsorship), I present you with:
The Sponsors Brunch Menu

We had a fun night last night. The LAFF City Coffee Outing went well, with a total attendance of 12: duncandahusky, Linnaeus, chouette, perro, boixboi, daveqat, jimcyl, little_wolf, justincheetah, kittylad, Jamie (a gaymer gamer friend of Dave and Jim’s), and Sam (a new LAFFer!).

Much coffee was consumed, lots of con geekery, some political discussion, and general fun times ensued, followed by a pleasant walk through the Andersonville neighborhood. This is definitely going to be a regular thing, though I may keep it to every other week instead of weekly just to keep myself sane. We’ll probably do dinner at a restaurant next time around, but I have a week or so to figure out which one.

Want to see more? Click here for pics from my crappy cameraphone!

So I’m trying to merge from Skokie Blvd. (aka US 41) on the northbound Edens Expressway this morning, as traffic is slowly creeping along. I looked to my left to find a gap in traffic, and the SUV in front of me stopped suddenly. WHUMP!

Well, that sucked

Work then home, work then home.

Been a pretty boring week so far. A couple of high points:
– I was able to get time off in November for MFF OK’d. So I’m off on November 18, 19, and 22. The first two for preparation and actually running the silly thing, the last for recovery. Man, if I had to come back to work the after con, I think I’d die (I know you tried that, Aureth – it couldn’t have been much fun!). The downside is that I don’t get paid for those days. Coupled with the fact that I don’t get paid for the Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving, those are going to be some mighty lean weeks.

– 181 postcards later, I’m finally caught up on pre-registration notification cards. Did you know it costs $0.70 to send a postcard to the UK? I do now. (jarrodhenry, your postcard was in among them)

– I had written off to the Wake County Board of Elections in North Carolina back at the beginning of October to request an absentee ballot. Last night I finally got a response…a Request for Absentee Ballot Form. That was due yesterday. Well, that was useful. To be fair, the envelope was postmarked October 16, so the fault lies with the Post Office, not the Board of Elections. I take small comfort in knowing that my vote would be a drop in the bucket in what is overwhelming a Republican state, but it would have been nice anyway.

– I’m still trying to find a better location for Registration on Thursday night of the con. We registered 281 people on Thursday night of last year, and judging from the increase in room nights this year, we’ll easily hit 500 people Thursday night this year. I think that while registering 500 people in four hours in the downstairs hallway would be possible it might not be particularly pleasant, so I’m working with our hotel liaison (the esteemed linnaeus) to investigate other locations in the hotel. One possibility would be to share the downstairs ballroom (which after Thursday night becomes the Gaming Room and Dealers Room) with the Thursday Night Ice Cream Social, but that might get a little tight. We’ll see what alternatives we can work up.

– Still have a bunch of stuff to order from various vendors. Thank heavens that mirkowuff is gratifyingly quick on the reimbursements, or my credit card would be a smoldering wreck right now!

– I’ll be turning off our old cell phones tonight (the 919 numbers). If you need our new telephone numbers and haven’t gotten them yet, send me an e-mail and I’ll bounce ’em to you.

And now to get a little work done in the minutes before lunch…

Well, not really. But you’re not high on my list of favorites.

Commuting woes, or why it took me four hours to get home last night

Jon Stewart is my god. (13:30 video in multiple formats)

Update: Link fixed – thanks Taha!

Last night was difficult. After a reasonably good day at work, I called takaza to chat as I fought my way through Chicago traffic. After talking about this and that, he mentioned that it would probably be the first of the year at the earliest before his company finishes rearranging their financial department, and thus that would be the soonest he might realistically transfer up to the Chicago area. This hit me pretty hard – I knew it might take a while, but to put an actual date on it made it a little more real.

I was a bit of a mess after we finished talking, and I wondered about going to rustitobuck‘s for dinner and to discuss development of registration system software. I did end up going, and I’m glad I did. Rusty was an excellent friend and made me feel better about things, reminding me that we’ll be seeing each other frequently for the rest of the year and generally keeping me occupied until I worked my way out of the funk I was in. Thanks, Rusty, I needed that.

On the way home I talked with Dan again and we made some plans for next weekend, when he flies up to visit. I went to bed feeling pretty good.

Today has been a pretty good day as well. Took care of paperwork all morning, and we ordered out for some tasty barbecue. I got a call just after lunch saying something was waiting for me at the guardhouse. Odd. Heck, officially I don’t even exist to most people since I’m not in their databases yet. I went down to find a huge bouquet of a dozen roses waiting for me. Dan wanted to do something to cheer me up, and he certainly succeeded! He’s such a wonderful husband, and I’m so very lucky. All of my cow-orkers are jealous now, and that’s just fine with me! And the roses smell lovely, too. Thanks to datahawk and moryssa for their sneaky, behind the scenes work to get Dan in touch with the right people to get the flowers here.

So looking ahead: tonight I’ll be heading down to a party in Willowbrook, heaven help me. Given how traffic goes, I might make it there in two hours…or not. We’ll see. Tomorrow it’s off to Schaumburg to scout out new additions for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide, and then meet roho and genet (plus company, possibly) for lunch, then tomorrow night I’ll be meeting up with friends for hockey!

Well, back to work. Hope y’all have a great weekend!

Got a printer? Need some books (or CD’s or DVD’s)? Here’s a coupon for 20% off almost anything in the store at Borders (10% off DVD’s and electronics). It expires 10/18. Enjoy!

To follow daveqat‘s lead…

Are you going to Midwest FurFest? How would you like to help the convention out? We need help at Registration, especially on Thursday night! You can work as much or as little as you like. Just a few hours on Thursday night? That would be awesome, and we’d appreciate it! But remember, if you put in 10 hours or more, you get a free membership to Midwest FurFest 2005! We will also work to get you a work schedule before the convention, making sure that you have time to do the stuff you enjoy at the con as well. And Registration is a great place to meet people as they arrive at the convention and generally hang out throughout the convention.

Interested? Drop us a line at registration@furfest.org and we’ll set you right up!

Well, I suppose I owe y’all a decent recap of the weekend, now that I have some decent net access.

Let’s keep the Friends Page spammage down, shall we?

Back in Chicago, safe and sound. Uneventful flight, easy drive home.

I miss Takaza.

Been a busy week, for all that I’m still a relative nonentity at work (i.e. no computer access). No access means that I can’t access the databases that I need to do my job, which is frustrating. On the bright side, everyone seems to have this attitude that they’re not expecting any productivity from me for about the first month, but that doesn’t make me feel much better.

I’ve tried taking the train to work a few days this week and I’m finding I really enjoy it. It takes a little longer, and it means that I have to leave for work at 6:30 AM and don’t get back until 6:30 PM, but even though it costs an extra 30-45 minutes, I’m not stressed all to hell when I get home. That’s worth it. And surprisingly, with monthly passes, the cost is actually cheaper than driving. This is a Very Good Thing, with a month of construction about to start on the Edens Expressway…

Meanwhile, evenings have been devoted to taking care of Midwest FurFest stuff. I’d forgotten how spoiled I’ve been for the last two years, having pretty much as much time as I want to work on con-related stuff. These next few weeks are going to be stressful, and there’s a whole lot of work to be done between now and mid-November.

Unfortunately, none of that work will be done this weekend. I leave directly from work this evening and drive down to O’Hare to fly out to Raleigh. Dan and I will be moving this weekend, from the place in Apex to Durham, about 20 miles to the north or so. It’s going to be a crazy weekend, and we’ll have the able assistance of zenwolph, along with our fabulous friends in the Triangle area. Dan has been busting his ass to get the house packed up and I’m certain he’s done a fantastic job.

FYI, our old house phone number (919-367-xxxx) will be going away after Saturday. You can reach Dan or me on our cell phones. I’ll post those as well as our new address in a friends-only entry after this (Mom and Dad, I’ll call you with the info).

Y’all have a great weekend!