Two great things go great together!

Yesterday, after a long day spent running back and forth across campus working on various projects, I got out from work just a little late and headed north to Milwaukee. I met up with tozier_wah and little_wolf near their place, then we carpooled in to downtown Milwaukee, taking the scenic route up I-794 along the lakefront. We had a few wrong turns along the way - did you know the Marquette Interchange is partially open now? Neither did I! We inadvertently drove through it twice. Finally we arrived at our destination, Milwaukee Public Market.

We were the for Mooo & Brew, a beer and cheese tasting to benefit the Hunger Task Force. Predictably, the place was a mob scene, but we had a lot of fun. We were joined at the last minute by jet_der_hund, and we had a great time critiquing the various cheese (yum!) and beers (mostly yum, though there were a few clunkers). My favorite was (of course) the Unibroue lineup, which featured a wheat beer (Blanche de Chambly), then the same beer flavored with apples (Éphémère Apple) and cranberries (Éphémère Cranberry). Best of all was the Don de Dieu triple wheat ale, which just knocked my socks off (easy to do, at 9% alcohol!).

After we had enjoyed all the beers and decided that it was probably really a good time to get some dinner, we wandered around the Market a bit and I introduced everyone to The Spice House and we hit a couple of other places. We visited the small wine shop there, which was doing great business selling the beers which were being tasted upstairs. I hadn't intended to buy anything, but when they mentioned a free Unibroue glass with every Unibroue beer, I had to pick up a bottle of the Don de Dieu! The guys working the shop were very friendly and we had a lot of fun joking around with them. We asked for recommendations on places fro dinner and they steered us away from our original choice and recommended a couple of others instead.

So off we went into the rapidly-gentrifying Third Ward, admiring the art shops and oh-so-trendy bars. We stopped by Hinterlands Gastropub, but were scared off by the entrees that started at $30. We wound up taking the wine shop guys' advice and settled on Water Buffalo. Dinner was delightful, with great conversation and very tasty food. I had a blast and I think everyone else did as well. And I learned all about IML! :-) Afterwards, we walked down to the Foundry location of Alterra, but alas they closed a half hour before we go there. So we walked back to our cars and said our good-nights.

What a great evening! My only regret is that I didn't get home until 11, so I'm dragging a bit today. It was worth it, though! I look forward to getting up to Milwaukee more and exploring with friends.

What a great weekend! Uptime and downtime - the best of all worlds.

On Friday I was feeling antsy and wanted to get out, so takaza and I met up with roho and genet for dinner at the always-fabulous Scott Dogs. My jumbo shrimp were indeed quite jumbo, and extremely delicious! It's always such a pleasure to go there because Scotty and his aunt (whose name, shamefully, continues to escape me) always recognize us, make sure to ask how our food was, and really go out of their way to make sure the meal is a special one.

Saturday morning found us hard at work clearing out Dan's office. He had emptied out the storage closet down there a month or so back and we kept meaning to get everything re-stowed, so now was the time to take care of it. Unfortunately my back was giving me some pain so after about 45 minutes I had to turn it over to him. In the meantime went upstairs and finished making a couple of loaves of a fantastic multigrain bread. The went into the oven just as people started showing up for Game Day. Our guests included aeto, Roho, Genet, posicat, nymphara and her boyfriend Nick, colliedoc, hypersnazz, woodychitwn, truegrave9, and Bob.

We played several games, including a nice round of poker, Cosmic Wimpout, Blokus (I blame rigelkitty - on the strength of his good comments about this game we picked it up. It's a lot of fun!), Quelf (an aggressively zany and wacky board game - think Cranium, only trying way too hard), and Catchphrase (another good game we learned of from Rigel and xydexx). Pizza was ordered, beverages were consumed, and a good time was had by all. Thanks to everyone for coming! We'll definitely have to do one of these again soon (and not schedule it again softball :-)

On Sunday, we did...nothing. Well, we did laundry, but mostly we just did nothing. And it was good.

Coming up this week, I'm trying to interest tozier_wah and little_wolf in a beer and cheese tasting at Milwaukee Public Market on Thursday evening - anyone else interested?

Oh, and I finally got a LinkedIn profile. I'm not sure how useful it is or anything, but hey - feel free to add me to your network!

What a great weekend! The skies were sunny, the temperatures were above 60 degrees (F), which made it cause to at least open a few windows and air out the house a bit to celebrate the impending spring (geeky meteorological note: This was the first weekend in Chicago in six months where the highs on both Saturday and Sunday have been over 60 degrees, according to Tom Skilling).

As I mentioned on Friday, takaza and justincheetah attended the Cubs game while I slaved over a hot computer at work (there's some neat tales to be told from that, but I'll let Dan tell that story). After work, I drove down and met them and calapurr, then from there we met up with perro and darkwolph, then headed over to kodi_pup's swanky new digs, where we were joined by invncble.

After some hemming and hawing (and being assisted by Cheetah's forethought to bring his EVDO-equipped laptop with OpenTable bookmarked), we decided to head down to Emmett's Ale House. Tasty beer was had, and my burger with portabellas, sautéed onions, and Boursin was divine. The company was excellent as well! Afterwards we retired back to Cheetah and Cala's to watch Ratatouille, but Dan and I had to bow out early due to the long drive home. What a great evening, though!

On Saturday we celebrated the weather by getting out and indulging in some retail therapy. Highlights included some wardrobe expansion at Berman's, some tasty ice cream, picking up some lovely rosemary-mint bath products, finally spending my Williams Sonoma gift card (thanks colliedoc!), and making our second round of purchases for a certain party next weekend. Oh, and getting sleazed on by the used car Sleep Number bed salesman. I'm afraid it will take more than just sweet-talking to get us to buy at $2,500 - $3,000 bed.

We were tired after all that running around, so we opted to go home and crash in lieu of further socializing. Thanks to tozier_wah and Perro for the invite, though!

The weather on Sunday was every bit as lovely as Saturday's. Following a nice and relaxing morning and a quick grocery run, roho, genet, and linnaeus came over for some very enjoyable grilling. Nothing complicated, just burgers and brats and grilled veggies, but it was all delicious. The evening flew by and we had a lot of fun. It's so nice to know that the grilling season will soon be on us. My to-do list for smoking includes ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, and chicken or turkey. I can't wait!

This week is going to be pretty low-key. Since we're heading out to Ann Arbor on Friday, we're going to stay in, keep costs down, and get ready for the weekend. I've got a couple of statistics classes on Wednesday and Thursday, so this is effectively a two-day work week for me, which is quite lovely. I've got a rather extended to-do list of stuff for MFF tonight, though, so there's plenty to keep me occupied at work and at home!

Well, I'm not cheering as much as takaza, who took off this afternoon to go see the Cubs play. If it were 80 degrees on a nice late-spring day, maybe - 47 degrees and 15 mph winds coming in off the lake, not so much. Still, I hope he's having a good time as I write this. The good news is that since I worked last Saturday my boss was nice enough to give me next Friday off, which means an earlier start to Furry Connection North for us. We'll probably take off just after morning rush hour, and get to Ann Arbor at around 2:30 PM or so. We're looking forward to it!

So as I mentioned earlier, on Wednesday Dan and I decided to go out for dinner and try Lindy's Landing in Wauconda. Not only did their specials look good, but they have NTN! They were in the middle of a poker tournament on NTN when we got there, but the staff was nice enough to turn one of their many TV's to the NTN Trivia channel for us. The food was OK - the fried wonton-wrapped mozzarella sticks were a pleasantly crunchy diversion from the usual, and the garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli that came with my meatloaf were tasty. Alas, the meatloaf itself was rather tasteless and covered up by a spicy barbecue sauce (?!) that masked whatever flavor there might have been. Dan's pizza was to his liking, at least. I was impressed that when I ordered a 23 ounce Fat Tire Ale, I was told that they were out of tall glasses so the waitress just gave me two pint glasses - all for three bucks! We'll
definitely be going back.
The only other item of note from this week was the surprising revelation that I can actually find a frozen entree that isn't completely nasty! Garden Fresh Market carries a line of frozen Indian from SWAD Foods. I picked up the mutter paneer a few weeks back and finally got around to making it. I made up some white rice and served it with the mutter paneer and...wow! Excellent flavor, and a surprising spiciness that I'm not used to from a frozen entree. I'll definitely be picking up a few more of these entrees to keep in the freezer.

Plans for this evening are kind of hazy. Depending on how the afternoon goes for him, I may go into the city and meet Dan or I may just hang out at home. As for the weekend, the plans we had for Saturday night fell through, so we're kind of at loose ends. We'll see what develops!

Yep, it's cold. Just like they said it would. It was 0° F out this morning and will be soaring up to 15° F by this afternoon...all with a 10-20 mph wind. Toasty!

So back to the weekend. takaza and I met up with linnaeus, datahawk, roho, and genet for lunch at my favorite suburban beer outpost, The Firkin in Libertyville. I had a fine time, sampling some truly excellent beers: Lagunitas Brewing's Lumpy Gravy American Strong Ale (celebrating the 40th anniversary of Frank Zappa's seminal album of the same name), Lagunitas Brewing's Brown Shugga Barley Wine, and Unibroue's Trois Pistoles Strong Dark Ale.
Given that the first was 7% alcohol and the other two 10% and 9% respectively...yeah, I really enjoyed those beers! The chicken and shrimp etoufee was only OK, but with beers like that, who cares? The downside is that for a little more we could have gone to Tramonto's Steak and Seafood and gotten a much better meal, so The Firkin isn't someplace we go all that often.
After lunch we all headed up to Roho and Genet's place in Antioch and admired their bowling-alley-in-progress (well, not really - they're installing hardwood floors, and feren commented on the similarity to a bowling alley...) and then relaxed with multiple episodes of Ninja Warrior and some fun conversation.

Sunday? Yeah. Lots of laundry. All day long. OK, and lots of Psychonauts, too, since I'm re-playing my way through the game. I also broke down the ten-pound pork loin we bought the weekend before into meal-size packages of pork chops, and then ground up the trimmings into sausage and froze that as well.

That'll hold for now. More to write but I have to tend to a few things...

In retrospect, we didn't really do all that much last weekend. On Friday we stayed in and were couch potatoes for the evening.

Saturday, we hit the road. takaza wanted to check out a couple of townhouses under development, and I think we finally found a floor plan that is just perfect for us. The Wilmington floor plan in NeuHaven in Antioch would be fantastic - the "Optional Extended Kitchen" means that the kitchen, dining room, and great room are all one continuous space, and that fits our style of living and entertaining very well. The downstairs family room approximates Dan's idea of a basement enough to keep him happy; we'd just need to install a bar and an entertainment center and we'd be good to go! The salesman was annoying and couldn't wrap his head around "January, 2009" and kept trying to sell us on a unit for summer, 2008, but they're still building and should have some models that match what we're looking for when we are ready to buy. And hey, we'd be about a half mile from aureth's parents' place :-)

While we were out, we also stopped by Antioch Packing House and put in the order for steaks for the LAFF Softball picnic (20+ pounds of steak. And it's not too late to put in your RSVP!). Then it was down to Wine Knows where they were doing their Oktoberfest beer tasting. Holy cow, that was a lot of beers! After trying a couple of interesting beers from Summit Brewing and Brewery Ommegang, I moved on to the next table, where they had the entire line of Unibroue beers available. I have to admit I got about halfway through before I had to surrender - most of those were 7% - 9% alcohol, and they weren't being stingy with their pours! All of them were pretty tasty, though. The one real horror of the tasting was the Rodenbach Sour Ale, which may be true to its style, but was truly horrible to my taste. The runner-up was the Wells Banana Bread Ale; being a homebrewer, I'm afraid I associate the smell and taste of esters in my beer to be a sign that something has gone quite wrong with the fermentation.

After the tasting, I walked out with a four-pack of Brewery Ommegang's Hennepin Farmhouse Saison (extremely tasty!), as well as a bottle of the Woop Woop shiraz and a very tasty and inexpensive Spanish tempranillo/cabernet blend. I was feeling a bit tipsy, so Dan drove us to get some food. My first choice, The Full Slab, was closed due to equipment issues, so we settled for Bill's Pub North. Um, yeah. As my review says, we chose poorly. 'Nuff said. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and snuggling :-)

Sunday we did a bit of housecleaning, then dexcat came over and he and Dan talked MFF publications stuff. I was peripheral tot he conversation, but it sounds like Dex has a lot of great ideas and can really improve on our already pretty nifty con book, pocket program, and restaurant guide. I ran tot he grocery store, then made a tasty roast chicken. The rest of the evening was spent watching The Simpsons and a couple of other programs before heading to bed (not nearly early enough).

Oh, and tonight? Oh yeah, Heroes is back!

One more thing: As of today, I am no longer a contractor but a full time employee at $employer! W00t!

Well, this was the weekend of "Gonna do it...but didn't." But in the end, that's OK, I reckon.

The weather forecast for Saturday was dismal, but as the day approached the arrival of the sleet/snow/icy death was pushed further back, finally to late afternoon. We'd been intending to stay in all weekend, but an enticing invitation from roho and genet found me joining them for lunch in Libertyville (takaza had actually believed me when I said we'd be staying in all weekend, and very reasonably opted to sleep in instead). We met up at The Firkin. I really liked this place! Imagine someplace like The Hopleaf only without quite the insane number of beers and a bigger menu (and not insanely packed!). They have a good 25 beers on draft though (as well as Sprecher's root beer, cream soda, and ginger ale!), and appear to change them regularly. I was in a bock mood, so I started out with an Anchor Bock, which was delicious, then moved to the always-reliable Spaten Optimator. Since they were running Creole/Cajun specials for Mardi Gras, I opted for the smoked alligator sausage and blackened chicken fettuccine, which was...well, it was capable, and the sausage was good. I'd probably stick to their regular menu, which is supposed to be much better.

After lunch we walked around a bit until I was safe to drive to enjoy the shops of downtown Libertyville. We found a fun little kitchen shop that offers cooking classes, then got ice cream from a little shop that also hosted children's parties on Saturdays. Gah. Anyway, I took my leave of R&G and headed back home.

As for the rest of the weekend? Wow. Not much to say. Saturday night Dan made a fabulous lasagna-esque thing with chicken, tomato sauce, bacon, and lots of cheese. I played a whole lot of Okami (yeah, I'm an addict). And we watched the snow come down from Saturday afternoon through Sunday night; I think we finished off with about six inches of snow and sleet, all told. I also made a very tasty chocolate bread pudding on Sunday night, though the recipe could have been slightly sweeter.

So here we are this week. We have a housewarming party coming up and a good bit of stuff to get done before then. Tonight my main goal is to get the drapes in the master bedroom up, and put a few finishing touches on the guest bedroom as well. That's pretty much all the structural stuff - after that it's just cleaning and cooking.

Oh, and last night? Yeah, we watched Heroes. And were suitably blown away by all the wonderful plot tidbits that were leaked out. I very much agree with those who have said that that episode alone qualifies Jack Coleman ("Mr. Bennett") for an Emmy. For those counting along, that was episode 17 of 23 for the first season, so the finale is coming soon!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last night, linnaeus and I met siriuswolfstar at The Hopleaf. Here is a shot of their beer list. The picture quality suffers because I was using my cell phone camera in low light, but you get the idea. I want to live there.