If you ever wondered, well, now you know. (Not a work-friendly link, but funnay as hell)
Link courtesy of BoingBoing

Heh. I saw this and thought of you, woof. Sad thing is, it’s so darned true…

Hi folks, I’m back. Did you miss me?

So it’s been almost a month since I last updated my LiveJournal. What has gone on since then? Well, here’s the short version:

• Still unemployed, still looking
• Still trying to sell the house
• Getting ready for Midwest Furfest
• Working through a mild bout of depression

Here’s the long version

Been a busy day – being all domestic ‘n’ stuff. I have a phone interview with a company in Louisville, KY tomorrow afternoon. I’m not sure how I feel about it, either the position or the location, but I’d be a fool to turn anything down right now. If nothing else I have to show the recruiter that I’m making a good-faith effort or I’ll have to go find another recruiter, and this one isn’t too bad. Mind you, I AM talking to other recruiters, but this is the first one that’s actually got me something tangible.

A couple of links for amusement:

• So, you want to take a virtual tour of our house? Well now you can! Kinda cool software to do it, too, though it does weird things with perspective sometimes.
• After trying an interesting potato-wheat bread earlier this week, today I’m making a sesame semolina bread. We’ll see how this one comes out.
• This picture just amuses the hell out of me (it helps if you know what warchalking is, though). (Link courtesy of BoingBoing)
• And finally, and amusing though not particularly work-friendly link: Why Stick People Are Extinct (link found at J’s Notes)

Hmm, just about time to start in on dinner. Sautéed chicken breasts with orzo and a nice gravy.

OK, it took a while but I finally had some free time on my hands (imagine that 🙂 and got these all uploaded. Therefore, may I present to you pictures from the LAFF Pizza Party on 9/7/02 (12 pictures) and from our party during NC Pride (over 250 pictures), located at our picture gallery site. Remember, you can comment on any picture, too. We’ll get around to adding captions Real Soon Now. Enjoy!

What if someone wanted to dig up all the dirt on furries and found out that…there is none? This is what you’d get. (Note: contains words that aren’t work-friendly)

Finally a chance to relax.

These last few days have been hectic – Mom was in town helping me get the house into shape, since we’ve put it on the market to sell. Lots of moving stuff around, errands to be run, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The house looks absolutely fabulous right now, but at a cost – the garage looks like a disaster area. All the boxes and stuff that were cluttering up the closets have been moved to there, and now we have to pack it all up, seal the boxes, throw out what’s not needed and carry the rest over to a friend’s house for storage. That’s today’s job. Yesterday we took a break and went to the wedding of our dear friends Thomas and Sherry. It was a nice, low-key affair, and Dan and I were even able to sit in the Baptist church without being struck by lightning 🙂

The only drawback to the house being in showable condition is that we have to be ready for a phone cal from the realtor at any time (during the day, anyway) saying that someone is going to come by to look at the house within an hour. We need to keep things clean so that we can just take care of a few things (make beds, put dishes in the dishwasher, etc.) then leave and everything will look perfect. Or close to perfect, anyway. I call it “living lightly” and it really kinda sucks after a while. Anyway, we had two potential buyers come through on Friday, though none yesterday, which is disappointing. We have an open house scheduled for next weekend, and another for the weekend after that. I’m hoping those will move things along.

Of course, I’m of two minds – we need to sell the house so we can get the burden of the mortgage off our backs, but if we sell the house before I find another job, then what? We’re working on that part. We have a friend who is willing to put us up, although he’s unemployed as well and reaching the end of his unemployment benefits. And there’s the matter of all of our stuff – I can think of very few things I’d rather do less than pack and haul out all of our stuff, although we can do it if need be. Certainly not something I’m looking forward to.

It’s a great motivator to get me on the phone with recruiters and employers on Monday morning, though…

Well, since Jen asked…

Absolutely Amazing French Toast
(Recipe from The Best Recipe, by Cooks Illustrated)
In the book, they recommend using challah for this, but I really liked Pepperidge Farm French Toast Swirl, either Buttermilk Cinnamon or Cinnamon and Brown Sugar – both are good. It’s thickly sliced, and perfect for this recipe. Use tongs to handle dipping the bread in the batter and a spatula to flip them in the pan. Also, if you have a cast-iron skillet it’s perfect for this recipe since it retains heat so well. It’s not required, though.

Makes 4-5 slices of French Toast (this recipe scales wonderfully, though)

1 Large Egg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for frying
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I use half this amount of Penzey’s Double Strength Vanilla Extract)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4-5 slices of bread, 3/4″ thick

1. Heat 10- to 12-inch skillet over medium heat for five minutes. In a bowl, beat egg lightly; whisk in butter, then milk and vanilla, and finally sugar, flour, and salt, continuing to whisk until smooth (I cheat and use my KitchenAid mixer). Pour the mixture into a pie plate or shallow pan. Soak the bread without oversaturating, about 30 seconds per side. Pick up bread and allow excess batter to drip off. Repeat with remaining slices. (I find it easiest to only dip as much as I need for one skillet’s worth – don’t dip all your bread at once)
2. Swirl 1 tablespoon of butter in hot skillet. Transfer the prepared bread to the skillet; cook until golden brown, about 1 minute 45 seconds on first side and 1 minute on the second. Serve immediately. Continue, adding one tablespoon of butter to the skillet for each new batch.

This is incredibly tasty – if done right, you get a nice, crisp crust on the outside and the inside is almost custard-like.

First off, thanks to all of my friends, near and far, for your words and calls of support. You’ve kept me grounded and remembering that jobs are transient things – it’s friends and relationships that are important.

We were fortunate to be joined last weekend by some dear friends from my SCA days, Jen and Tracie, and their friends Bob and Laura. They were upbeat and cheerful, and provided exactly the right amount of distraction I needed for the weekend. I was teetering on the precipice of some nasty depression, and they pulled me out right when I needed it.

Saturday night was also the bachelor party for Thomas. On Friday we’d called and said due to our suddenly tight finds we’d have to pass, but Donald called Saturday morning and informed us that we were attending, and not to worry about funds. We had a fabulous dinner at Enoteca Vin (roast duck for me, a really fabulous beef tenderloin au poivre for Takaza). After that, it was over to Havana Deluxe for fine Scotch and cigars. After a stop for dessert, we took our leave from the group and came back home to hang out with Jen and company.

Sunday was a nice morning of making French toast for our guests, then going to work on the house. The realtor came by and put the sign up in front – the house is now officially on the market. Dan and I spent a good part of Sunday, Monday, and today cleaning and de-cluttering the place. We still need to move a lot of the boxes that we stuffed into the bedroom closets to give the appearance of wide, spacious closets (which they are, actually, but when they’re filled with crap it doesn’t look that way). I had a mad scramble to put the finishing touches on the house this morning before the realtor’s weekly agency tour of new listings came through – I almost made it too. The first agents came through right as I was finishing up, so I pulled the car out of the garage and threw all the boxes that were stacked in the dining room into the garage. Everyone was happy. I got a few nice comments about the house, which made me feel better. In comics terms, I consider it to be in Very Good, but not Near Mint condition (I haven’t taken a toothbrush to the baseboards, for instance) (Yes, that’s the kind of stuff you do when you sell a house – that’s not just me being a bizarre neat freak again :-).

Somewhere in all of this I’ve applied online for a few jobs and talked to recruiters, but there’s still a whole lot left to do. I’ve got some good websites to explore and need to keep a daily watch on Monster, Hotjobs, and Flipdog. Oh, and I applied for unemployment today. Nice that you can do that online now.

So, tomorrow. My mom is coming up from South Carolina. She’ll help me put the finishing touches on the house cleaning, and she’s bringing their pressure washer – the exterior of the house really needs it! Mom will be around until Friday, and her help will be much, much appreciated. In the meantime: more calls to recruiters, more jobs to apply for. Busybusybusy…

And somewhere, in the midst of all that, I need to find the time to snuggle with Takaza. He’s so amazing – he’s been my rock through all this, keeping my mood from bottoming out, quietly doing the Stuff That Needed To Be Done, and prodding me along when I needed it. I am more lucky than I know to have him, and I love him so much.

And amongst other good news of the day, I was laid off today.

No, I’m not kidding.

Bless his heart, Dan came home immediately and was there when I needed him – those first few hours were rough. Dan made some of the important phone calls (canceling some memberships, getting in a handyman to see what would need to be done to make the house presentable, lining up a realtor to visit tomorrow). He’s asleep on the sofa now, worn out. My poor wolf has walking pneumonia again (when it rains it pours) and so his energy levels are pretty crappy right now.

I’ve been on the phone with a recruiter off and on all afternoon, and mentally mapping out where we’re going. I get four weeks of severance, so that’s good, and Dan still has his job. I’ll be applying for unemployment on Monday, and I need to talk to the mortgage company and see what kind of terms we can work out. Our primary goals:
1. Get me a new job…somewhere. Preferably in the Great Lakes region, but I’m not in a position to be choosy.
2. Sell the house. This is not a short process in the best of times, and when you combine a crappy market with a bad time of the year to sell a house, well, the sooner we start the process the better.
3. Talk to creditors. That starts next week – I’m not really in any shape to deal with that right now.

On the bright side, I’ve already gotten a call from a recruiter with some prospects: one in Louisville, KY, and one in Chestertown, MD (!). If nothing else, it’s comforting to know there’s possibilities out there. We’ll do all we can to get back to the Chicago area, but right now geographical location has to take second place to economic realities, and the market in Chicago for chemical engineers is in the toilet right now. We’ll see what happens.

There are a lot of questions right now, including what about MFF? All I can say is, we’ll be there and we’ll cover our responsibilities. How we’ll do that remains to be seen, but give us some time to work on it.

Man, what a weekend. I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account except to say that things pretty much went as planned (OK, the hike didn’t happen on Sunday – quelle surprise) and everyone had a good time and I’m exhausted. What more can you ask out of a weekend?

Both Takaza and I had a lot of fun cooking, and we’ve worked out a very comfortable arrangement with our friends – they clean up if we cook. Everyone’s happy with this arrangement, and it kept us from being a crispy critters by the end of the weekend.

To everyone who attended: Thank you all for making this a truly enjoyable weekend.

To Aerofox and Loriana – We told you you’d have Livejournals by the end of the weekend 🙂 It was great to see y’all after far too long.

To Brophey and Rasslor – Great to see y’all as always. Hope you’re feeling better, Mike!

To Zenwolph – Hell of a commute, eh? We have got to get together more often!

To justincheetah – It was really a pleasure to get to know you better. I’m also very glad that there’s someone else in the Chicago area who enjoys fine potables as much as I do 🙂

And finally, to Datahawk, Linnaeus, and Rustitobuck – How can I put words on how good y’all make me feel? You’re family, as much as any blood relative. We’re coming home, I assure you. It may take some time, but I promise we’ll be there.

And now it’s back to work, though I just got an intriguing phone call pursuant to the website I was looking at last night…

And next weekend? We’ve got some dear friends from the SCA crashing at our place, and we’re also attending Thomas’ bachelor party. More about all that later, though.

Well, things are looking much better, even though it’s a dark, gray day outside, courtesy of Tropical Storm Isadore.

First off, I’m feeling better, even though I’m not at quite 100%. In talking with the doctor yesterday, the best we can hypothesize is that I took a glancing blow from the stomach flu, and while it didn’t hit me full-on, I got some of the nasty lingering after-effects. Fortunately, the effects seem to be fading with time.

Starting tonight, the craziness of the weekend begins – yes it’s takaza and Duncan’s Pride Party 2002! Let’s see, rustitobuck is coming in first, around 5 PM. Not long after, Aerofox and Loriana should be driving in (just a short jaunt down from Ohio). linnaeus and datahawk will be coming in on a 10:45 PM flight, along with the peripatetic Cheetah. brophey and rasslor should be driving up from Atlanta either late tonight or tomorrow morning. All of this is made utterly fascinating by the fact that my parents are supposed to be driving from New York to South Carolina today and mentioned they might crash for the night at our place. They’ll get along famously with our friends, I’m sure, but it’ll certainly be an interesting clash of worlds for us…

So, what’s on tap for this weekend?

Yep, I’m still alive, though I don’t much feel that way.

Last weekend was a quiet one, which was good. We had planned on doing some cleaning, maybe some further planning for the party next weekend. Shortly after lunch, though, I started having some nasty abdominal pains. I attributed it to gas pains (something unusual for me, but not out of the question), dosed myself with some Pepto and we vegged out on the sofa, clearing the accumulated progammage from the TiVo (The verdicts: Firefly, John Doe – added to season pass. Push, Nevada – not added to season pass, may watch one more episode but probably not). I skipped dinner and went to bed feeling crappy.

On Saturday I felt somewhat better, only like someone had punched me in the gut a few times. We got some shopping done, and laid out tentative menus for the weekend (and we’re surprising folks with what they’ll be this time, so there. Nyeah 🙂 A little more laundry and some pizza for dinner and that was about it.

This week is tough for both takaza and me. He’s got the end-of-year accounting blitz going on, and I’m trying to get out some product for a customer on very short notice. We’re both busy and preoccupied, which really sucks, but that’s the way life goes sometimes. Dan’s allergies are acting up (due to leaf mold?) and the ache in my gut hasn’t subsided, so I’m off to the doctor tomorrow afternoon. Such fun.

Last night my gaming group made characters for our new Shadowrun campaign. I haven’t played Shadowrun in fifteen years, os I’m taking a while to re-learn the system. I promise not to ever gamer-geek in this space, but I did have quite a bit of fun creating my character: an 8’11” troll adept (think magically-enhanced martial artist) named Cletus. He’s quick and intelligent, things trolls aren’t supposed to be. He’ll be a fun character to play and wildly different from the ones I usually have played in the past.

Tonight it’s an evening of cleaning, doing laundry, and generally getting the place ready for company, since our first visitors start arriving Thursday night. Eek! So much to do!

Incidentally, I’m looking at the weather forecasts and see the very real possibility of not one but two different hurricanes/tropical storms whacking us this weekend. If that happens, NC Pride will be pretty much a washout but on the bright side, but on the bright side I can’t think of a group of folks who I’d rather be cooped up in the house with.

Oh, by the way – Serinthia, e-mail me about plans for this weekend.

You know there’s a reason people like me shouldn’t have children. The Story About the Baby is an excellent example of this [Note: This link contains Bad Words]. My favorite passage so far:
But now I spend all of my time having internal conversations like:

Me: “I’m hungry. I sure could use a ham sandwich.”
Inner voice: “Boil the …. wait. Did you say ham?”
Me: “Mmmmm. Sandwich.”
Inner voice: “Mmmmm. Sandwich.”
Me: “Better clean this plate.”
Inner voice: “Put the baby in the dishwasher.”

This is gonna provide hours of entertainment…

Many, many thanks to Elynne for the link

Today is International Enough Day. I’m wearing black.

Thanks to DaveQat for the link

Wowsers. What a weekend.

So, Duncan, what did you do last weekend?

If you haven’t already seen “Lurid Digs” (not a work-friendly link!) you really should. It provides hilarious commentary on amateur male pr0n from an interior design point of view. Hee!

Y’know, the (extremely belated) primary season is on us in North Carolina. I’m still trying to figure out who I’m going to vote for (free hint: it’ll be one of the people with the “(D)” next to their name), but I’m fairly certain it’s not going to be this guy. On the bright side, maybe he can get a job copy editing for Doc Bronner.

Now, it’s a pity we don’t live in Tara Sue’s district – I like her style!

2 September, 2002, 3:25 PM, on NC 49 somewhere east of Charlotte, North Carolina

If you read my last entry, it was probably pretty obvious that I needed a vacation. Labor Day weekend came just at the right time.

So, Duncan, what did you do during the long weekend?

I drove in to work this morning with Linkin Park playing very loud. It fits my mood today quite well…

Shut up! Shut up when I’m talking to you!

Midwest Furfest is pleased to announce the availability of online registration for its upcoming convention (which occurs November 22-24, 2002 near Chicago, Illinois, but you already knew that). You can now enter all of your information in and pay in a couple of easy steps. Yes, you can have that warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that your registration is secure and complete, with no messy checks to write, no nasty-tasting envelopes to lick, no painful paper cuts to endure!

All you have to do is stop by http://www.furfest.org/registration/onlinereg and follow the instructions there. We look forward to seeing you in November!

And now, the answers to a few questions that might arise:

Just to follow up on yesterday’s post on radio shock-jocks, I wanted to point this out:
Sex Stunt Costs Opie and Anthony
Folks who know me know that I’m far from a prude, but the transcript from a prior citation by the FCC shows that these guys have been way, way over the line in the past, so this latest stunt was no surprise.

On a side note, Google News Search is might damn cool.

It’s not news that radio is in a sad state these days. With certain evil empires controlling the airwaves, the quality of content has gone down steadily. What brings this to mind? Just a couple of reminders of why I listen to CD’s or my MP3 player on the way to work every morning (or at least something less obnoxious if Takaza‘s in the car).
Exhibit One
Exhibit Two
And thank heavens for intelligent programs in the evenings…

I just found this weblog devoted to keeping up with the latest in gadgets: Gizmodo. Interesting bits on the new Palm OS phones comes from Samsung.

How to avoid writing the report I’m supposed to be working on? I know! I’ll write a LiveJournal entry!

Not too much to talk about, though. We’re going over to Donald and Janelle’s tonight. Well, just Janelle’s, really, since Donald is roughing in at a conference in Orlando, FL. Tough life, you know. We’re going to bring some of the Evil Caramel Sauce we picked up at Williams-Sonoma this weekend. Naughty, but oh-so-good!

Random stuff to do…we need to try Alton Brown’s tasty recipe for French fries (there’s a recipe there for fried dish as well, but we’ll pass on that. Or maybe I’ll try it with chicken). We need to figure out what we’re going to do up in Chicago while we’re up there next month, besides go to the Midwest Furfest staff meeting. I need to start making a list of all the stuff I need to order for Registration (sponsor goodies, staff name badges, etc.). And I need to send a list of names to the staff list for verification that these people are indeed staff and need staff badges. I need to check the online registration system when it becomes available and make mention of it in the Registration FAQ (and figure out what questions might arise because of it). Gee whiz, this gets complicated sometimes. On the bright side, this isn’t too bad for a ~500 person con. Once you get past 750 or 1,000, I’m sure the level of complexity increases accordingly (and unpleasantly, I’d guess). Still, it’s a fun challenge and worthwhile, I think.

So, back from the road and back into the dreary toil of everyday work. Woe betide me.

Last week was a welcome relief. After two weeks of business, pressure, and annoyances, being up in Indianapolis was a nice break, even if it was still doing company business. This week, I have an hour-long presentation to give tomorrow on the fascinating topic of material handling within the department (at least it’s scheduled for an hour – I’m not going to sweat if it clocks in at less than that). After that there’s some paper work I need to finish up, then more all-day batches of electronics adhesive. Only eleven more to go!

The weekend recap!

So, I was looking through old e-mail and I came across this from September, 1997. geniealisa had sent me a list of pointers of how a woman can please her man. I sent it back, with my own notations added. I laughed myself silly over it as I was re-reading it, so I’ll share it with you here…

The following is from a 1950’s Home Economics textbook intended for High School girls, teaching how to prepare for married life.

Well, y’know, Indianapolis isn’t such a bad place. It’s very Midwestern (in a big-city kind of way), but not nearly as built-up as, say, Chicago.

The work that we came up here to do went off without a hitch. In fact it went so well, we really finished everything we had to do by Tuesday afternoon. Too bad we have to fly back Thursday and couldn’t change our tickets. Ah well, more time to relax away from the office…

Tuesday night, I had a lovely dinner with Tsuki. Tsuki is the fellow you may have seen at Midwest Furfest or Anthrocon in the white serval suit (mmmm, stretch velvet…) He took me to a tasty local steak place, and the filet and the conversation were both quite enjoyable. Afterwards, I got the nickel tour of Indianapolis, passing the Veterans Memorial (it’s freakin’ huge I tell ya!), the Scottish Rite Temple, and Millionaires’ Row along Meridian Avenue. Some neat stuff, and it actually showed that Indianapolis has quite a bit of character to it (unlike, say, Charlotte or Atlanta).

Today was pretty uneventful. I spent the morning working on the presentation I have next week. This went swimmingly, although I’ll need to stop by work this weekend to take pictures to go with the presentation. And probably grab some graphics off the net to augment things. The afternoon was spent noodling around, reading some of my old e-mails from about five years ago, and generally being bored. We slipped out at 4 PM and headed over to the Indiana State Fair.

It’s a state fair. Pretty much what I expected – as much going on as at the North Carolina State Fair, only spread out over a larger area. The home crafts displays were interesting, and the horses were beautiful (and HUGE! Six feet tall at the shoulder wasn’t uncommon). I spent a lot of time walking around thinking, “Wow, I’ll bet Dan would like this.” I miss my woof. Anyway, as we left, the big headline act for the evening was going on (Kenny Chesney, a country singer of some renown, I’m told). It was a pleasant way to spend the evening, much better than camped out in the hotel room, anyway.

Tomorrow we have a morning meeting to wrap things up, then it’s off to the airport to wing our ways homeward. I’m looking forward to it!

8/12/02 – 10:42 AM, somewhere over Virginia

Taking a page from Mirko, it seems like the only time I can find to update my LiveJournal is when I’m in the air.

It’s been over a week since my last entry, and you can see hints of the cause of that gap in my last entry. Basically, last week was pretty hellish – trying to make a couple of drums of product for a customer, and then trying to ship it out. The latter turned out to be a bigger challenge than the former – you gotta love paperwork. It was one of those deals of “for want of a nail, the war was lost”: I had some problems entering some raw materials into our warehouse. Without the materials in the warehouse, I couldn’t tell out inventory tracking system that I had consumed those raw materials to make product. Since there wasn’t any product, I couldn’t tell the shipping system that we had something to ship. And thus I couldn’t ship anything. It took a concerted effort, several hours of banging my head against the wall, and multiple phone calls, but I finally got it resolved. When I left work on Friday all the t’s were dotted and the i’s were crossed – or something like that. Anyway, the rest of the week was unpleasant, and I was an extremely unpleasant person to be around, let alone read about. Looking at it that way, I did you a favor by not writing in my LJ. You’re welcome 🙂

On Saturday we had a big excursion planned. I woke up at 5:30 AM and Takaza got up at 6. We puttered a bit and then met up with Janelle, Beth, and Sherry. The five of us drove three hours down to Charlotte, NC, where we met up with some friends of mine from my SCA days, Chris and Tracie, as well as Brophey and Rasslor, who had driven up from Atlanta. The nine of us went to Carowinds, a nice theme park located just south of Charlotte on the NC/SC border. It was a great day – hanging out with friends, riding roller coasters, and hanging out at the water park there. The only down side of the day was after Dan rode the Hurler (extremely rough wooden roller coaster) he noticed that his wedding ring was missing. He was distraught, and I comforted him as best I could. We checked with Lost and Found before we left the park and left instructions on how to contact us if they found the ring.

After we left the park we headed over to BD’s Mongolian BBQ, which was just fantastic and really hit the spot after a long day in the sun. We enjoyed ourselves so much, we left later than we should. We finally got home around midnight following a long and tiring drive home. It was exhausting, but it was worth it.

Sunday found me up around 8 AM (’cause I’m silly that way). I had a relaxing morning of reading the paper, drinking coffee, phoning my parents, and chatting with Rustitobuck and Linnaeus about MFF stuff, as well as sending off my registration report in time for Sunday’s meeting. By the way, in case anyone hasn’t registered yet, be advised that online registration for Midwest Furfest is coming within weeks!

Dan finally woke up at about 1:30 PM (I’m so jealous of his ability to sleep late like that!) and we bummed around a little bit, snuggling a bit and chatting about the weekend and the week to come. We went to take a shower and as Dan was taking off his glasses to put them on the counter, he reached down and picked up something shiny. It was his wedding ring that he had forgotten to put back on his finger after he took a shower Saturday morning! We both burst out laughing in relief. As much as I’m glad we don’t have to replace the ring, I have to admit I was looking forward to being able to pledge my love to him all over again. I love you so much, Dan.

So Monday morning found Dan going off to work and me heading off to the airport. As I type this I’m on an itty-bitty plane (Embraer of some variety) flying from Raleigh to Cleveland. From there I head over to Indianapolis on a similar plane. Gee, I love flying Northwest (insert sarcastic tone here). There has *got* to be a better way to fly to Indianapolis. Ah well. I’ll be spending the next four days in Castleton, just northeast of Indianapolis, visiting our microelectronics division, Thermoset. Tomorrow night I’ll be having dinner with Tsuki, but I’m not sure what will be going on Wednesday night.

I’m really glad for the time away from the office – it couldn’t come at a better time. The only drawback is that the hour-long presentation I was supposed to give last week got postponed – to next Tuesday. So I need to find time during this trip to at least make an outline for that and at start making Powerpoint slides, I suppose. The good thing is that if I run shorter than an hour, I don’t think anyone will really care.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m sure I’ll more to write about later.

It’s been a weird day. I’ll explain why…

So first, why so quiet on matters of substance for the last week? This was a very hectic week for me. A project that had been on the back burner was suddenly moved to the very front burner. My boss is out all week (family medical stuff, not good) and so I was left trying to line up the resources I needed on my own and at the same time try and schedule all the work to be done so we could meet the customer’s ship date. All of this left me grump and antisocial after work, I’m afraid, and it was better that I not try and write about anything then. I don’t get in these moods often, but I know I’m not pleasant to be around when it happens.

Fortunately, everything fell into place on Friday and so the week ended on an up note. There was one bright spot to the week, too – Donald and Janelle had the Gang over for dinner on Wednesday. There was much socializing, a fair amount of geeking (not a big surprise, considering where a number of the members of the Gang work). Chicken was grilled, and some tasty wine was sampled. We finished off the evening with some truly amazing truffles from San Francisco’s Joseph Schmidt Confections – the Jamaican rum truffles were tasty, and the double latte one were to die for. At my suggestion, we paired the truffles with the divine Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal cognac. Oh my. It was a lovely end to the evening. We also picked up the beautiful quilt that Janelle and Beth made for us to commemorate our Commitment Ceremony. I love it – the light-colored squares have little paw prints in them and each one has a larger paw print embroidered on it. Mind you, our friends aren’t furry, but they understand what is important to us. And they’re just really damn cool people. Thanks guys!

So, on Saturday we were originally planning join some of the CarolinaFurs to volunteer at the Conservators Center, building cages and whatever work needed doing, then hanging out for a cookout. Unfortunately, we got a call on Friday saying we could pick up Takaza‘s CPAP machine on Saturday. Since he’s been waiting for that, we had to skip the CCI trip and pick up the CPAP instead. We ran a few errands as well, picking up a shirt for Takaza (taking advantage of the Sales Tax Holiday, whoop-te-do) and stopping by Borders. I’ve been wanting to pick up a book on proper nutrition and diet and I think I found a good one. At 600-some pages, though, it’ll take a while to absorb all that information.

Today started out strangely. I woke up, as I often do one weekends, at about 6:30 AM. Dan was awake next to me, which is extremely out of the ordinary. He hadn’t slept well during his first night of using the CPAP (as you can see from his LiveJournal) and couldn’t get back to sleep. We snuggled for a while, which was lovely, then got up. My usual Sunday routine is catch up with net stuff for an hour or so, make coffee, read the Sunday paper, call my parents, and then maybe Dan will be awake. Well, his being up already threw my whole routine into disarray and left me feeling oddly off-kilter (although I’m certainly not objecting to the company of my dear wolf!). I got in my usual routine, though, and I felt better. We relaxed a bit later in the morning, then headed down to Wally World to do our weekly grocery shopping. Since we’ve been back, we’ve both been kind of lazy, me catching up with folks on FurryMuck and Dan napping. It looks like it’s about time for dinner, though, so I’m going to go wake him up and see how he’s feeling.

As a side note, I’ve laughed myself silly over Dan’s new LiveJournal icon, which gives you an idea of what a CPAP mask looks like:

Houndstooth: Canine Networking – now this is a technology I like!

You know, some people dream of going on wonderful vacations – cruises, trips to Europe, that sort of thing. I wanted to do that too, until I found a certain site last night. This is what I want to do, oh yes. It’s a pity that the package we would like would be more than $2,500 for the two of us, though…

OK, this time around I’ve got another Celtic-influenced instrumental, but a radically different one from the first song I posted. And with this one, you get a story.

Click here for the backstory, or just skip straight to the music

So, instead of treating you to a recap of the weekend’s events, I’m going to just point you to Takaza‘s entry – saves us both time 🙂

One item of interest to repeat from his journal, though: We compared the prices of about 90 items that we commonly buy across four different grocery stores: Harris Teeter, Kroger, Lowes’ Foods, and Wal-Mart Super Center. It was not a great surprise that Wal-Mart was cheaper on average than the other three, but the real surprise was by how much: 20% cheaper than Lowes’ Foods, and about 30% cheaper than Kroger and Harris Teeter. In some ways this sucks because I really hate shopping there – narrow aisles, stupid people in large numbers (moo!), and they don’t have a lot of the brands we like. But those are some pretty compelling numbers. The major drawback is that I will absolutely not shop there between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, no matter how much money we’re talking. Anyway, all that took about four hours but when I looked at some average grocery bills and annualized some of the price differentials, we’re looking at an annual savings of about $800-$1,000 by shopping at Wal-Mart instead of Lowes’ Foods. I’d say that was four hours well-spent.

Today we spent some nice time just snuggling (something we don’t do nearly enough sometimes). After that, it was a bit of housecleaning, then we did some shopping. When we got back I mowed the lawn (I know my wuff loves me – he brought me out a glass of ice water while I was mowing 🙂 and then we sat down to a nice dinner of cheeseburgers and Futurama. Yay!

On a side note, I joined the Grey Muzzle mailing list (for furry fans over 30 years old) last week, and I have to say that so far I’m not impressed. I was hoping for some interesting discussion about furry fandom from a more mature perspective. What I’ve gotten instead is 30-50 messages per day with what amounts to a rehash of alt.fan.furry, by a lot of the same players, no less. I haven’t posted there, except for a short introduction, for the same reason that I don’t post to AFF – these people aren’t looking for a reasoned discussion and a calm, even exchange of views. They’re looking to convince the world that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and by god, they’re going to beat that into everyone’s head. Yeah, right. I have better things to do with my time, thanks. I’ll hang on for a while longer in hopes things improve, but I’m not optimistic.

I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do today, and I don’t feel motivated to do any of them.

I need to start making up my presentation on material handling (“Don’t drink the toluene diisocyanate, kids!”) I’m supposed to give in two weeks. That dovetails neatly with the 20-page document I’m supposed to be revising that is the basis for the presentation. Meanwhile, I need to start taking my experimental results for the last month or so from my coating project and compose that into the project document so we can get the damn thing off my desk.

And I just want to take a nap. Bleah.

At least it’s Friday. If I were to be completely boring, I go home after work, go to bed early, and get a good night’s sleep. Fortunately, I’m not boring. Current plans now are to go out with a few of the Gang tonight for a nice Italian dinner, followed by heading over to a local dive to see one of my favorite bands: Carbon Leaf. They’re a Richmond, VA-based band with a great Celtic-influenced rock sound with a few touches of jam-band mellowness. Should be a late night since the first set doesn’t start ’til 11 but hey, I can sleep in tomorrow. And as for this weekend…nothing! Yay! No plans whatsoever. I like those kinds of weekends.

Howdy zenwolph!

I’m going to completely steal an idea from rigelkitty (and hope he doesn’t mind) and start a bit of an occasional series aimed at introducing people to some great music they may never have heard of. I’ll start out by saying that the music choices are from my personal collection, thus are subject to my particular whims and prejudices. My musical tastes lean heavily to Celtic- and folk-inflected music, and especially with music that tries to cross boundaries of various styles, such as Celtic rock.

With that in mind, here’s my first selection: Eileen Ivers’ “Crossing the Bridge”.

This is the title track from her 1999 album (on Sony Classical, of all labels) and it really has all the things I love – some traditional tunes, some great funky grooves, and some wicked fiddle playing. Eileen Ivers has been playing and recording for over fifteen years, including original lead fiddle for Riverdance, and was a founding member of Cherish the Ladies (and equally fabulous, but more traditional, band).

This MP3 will only be up on my server for a week or so – I’ll be rotating it off to make space for new selections. I only ask that you let me know if you download it and listen to it – did you like it, did you hate it, would you like to hear something else? Let me know, and that way I’ll know if I should keep putting up these selections.

(Update 7/29/02: Link to song removed to make space on the server. Sorry!)

If I were maybe a wolf or a dog/I wouldn’t have to speak/Wouldn’t have to talk/Just eat my dinner and go for a walk/And howl at the moon
And if I were laying there just like you/All curled up the way dogs do/I’d dream that dream that your dreamin’ too/And howl at the moon *

Slow getting started today. I’ll be over in the building across campus all day making yet another batch of material for the electronics project I’m working on (only fifteen more to go!). If I start by 9 AM, I should be done by 4 PM. Hopefully. Yeesh, there’s still all the testing on all these products to do, too. I can hardly wait (shyeahright).

Dan’s off for another sleep study tonight, so I’ll be all alone. I’ll probably jump onto FurryMuck and see what’s shakin’, and probably upload some more of the pictures we took on the way home from Anthrocon. Probably do a little cleaning around the house, too. Depending on the weather (i.e. none of the fun sporadic afternoon thunderstorms we’ve been seeing), I may skip the gym today too, in favor of mowing the lawn. We’ve gotten just enough rain to get the grass growing again, but I think the brown patches are pretty much gone for good. Looks like we’ll be paying for another reseeding this fall – ouch! According to the news reports, we’re now an official Federal Disaster Area – makes me feel all special. I heard last night that we’re running a rain deficit of twelve inches since last September. It’s going to take some long, rainy days to make up for that, and there’s none of those on the horizon.

In news of much less import, but still kind of a downer: Well, The West Wing is a fabulous show, but you knew they couldn’t hang onto that great cast forever. Variety is reporting that Rob Lowe (“Sam Seaborn”) will be bowing out of the show in the spring of next year due to a salary dispute. Maybe they’ll bring back Emily Proctor (“Ainsley Hayes”). Assuming, that is, that CSI: Miami doesn’t work out for her.

Well, off to wallow in powdered aluminum. Whee!

* – Find out more about this song here.

So, it only took almost a month after we bought our digital camera, but I finally got around to this:
Photos from Casa di Canine

We’ve posted pictures from last weekend’s trip down to my parents, Rob and Janet’s Fourth of July Party, and most importantly: Anthrocon!

Take a look, enjoy, and hey, you can even print the pictures at Shutterfly. The nifty software to drive all this is Gallery, a freeware program that does a wonderful just of handling PHP in such a way that someone who doesn’t know beans about PHP (i.e., me) can deal with it. More pictures coming over the next few days, I’m sure.

Happy birthday, rustitobuck!

So ever since Anthrocon we’ve been reviewing our finances and what we saw just didn’t add up. Something had to give, and unfortunately that something was Mephit Furmeet. I’ve been to every Mephit Furmeet since 1998, so I’m pretty bummed about this – it’s a fun con, and great place to relax with friends. Maybe next year, I guess.

On the bright side, the vacation we were going to take for MFM can now be used elsewhere, like for the party we’re throwing at the end of September to coincide with NC Pride. We’re still in the planning stages on it, but hopefully the Pride Party will be as much fun as the Memorial Day Party was. We’re also planning on flying up to Chicago for a Midwest Furfest staff meeting, probably in September. According to the Furfest website, that would be September 8 or September 22. Hm – we’ll need to figure out which of those might be the best for us.

Damn. Even without MFM, September is going to be a busy month for us…

Here is a completely startling statement: I don’t care for kids. I can deal with a wide variety of stresses in my life, but when I peruse that list I don’t see children on there. Fortunately, Takaza deals with them much better than I, which usually keeps my shortcomings as a nurturing adult hidden.

What causes this dramatic revelation is that we are visiting my parents’ house in Anderson, South Carolina this weekend. My sister and two nephews – Chris, age 7, and Tim, age 5 – are here as well. Now, let me preface this by saying that I love my family, and I even love my nephews. But that doesn’t mean that I always have to like them. Chris, in particular, is a bundle of energy, single-tracked in that way that only a seven-your-old can be. Tim is much quieter and charming, and comes up with the most amazing statements sometimes. Bless his heart, Dan has patience enough for both of us and can deal with them – me, my first response is to pretty much leave the area and not deal with them.

So, we got in yesterday just past 1 PM and had a late lunch of leftovers (but they were tasty leftovers, so that’s OK). After that it was few hours of lounging in the pool and savoring the respite from the fiercely hot weather that has plagued the area for the last few weeks. Of course, we figured it was just a few hours, no need for sunscreen. Well, on the bright side, Dan can now apply for theatrical roles as Lobster Man, and I can be his understudy 🙂 After some more lounging about some more, we went to work on dinner: grilled boneless leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, oven roasted onions, and a tasty salad with walnuts and gorgonzola cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette, all served with a delicious Australian shiraz/cab/merlot blend called “Sarah’s Blend”. You know, just sort of scraping together whatever’s lying around…

So this morning it’s been an exercise in keeping the kids quiet (aka an exercise in futility) while everyone was slowly waking up. Mom and I went to the store so they could pick up their Sunday New York Times, plus fixings for a nice brunch of bacon and eggs, and while we were out apparently Chris woke Dan up several times to ask if he could play games on his computer. Given that Dan isn’t a morning person (to say the least), he’s not particularly in a happy mood right now and I can’t blame him one bit. But Mom is cooking up the bacon and it smells delicious. I suspect everyone will be feeling better once we get some food in us.

Urgh. Woke up at 4:15 AM this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I just know I’ll be a barrel of laughs come 9 PM tonight.

Well, in about 40 minutes we’ll be jumping in the car and driving down to my parents, after a stop by a certain patisserie. Should be a pleasant visit, and we’ve got some stuff to work on during the trip – need to refine some e-mails, and work out the wording on the invitation e-mails we’re sending for the Pride Party in September. Of course, I know Takaza – he’ll be asleep during most of the trip while I’m driving. That’s OK, though. He put up with me waking him up at 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning 🙂

More anon…