Whoa. Been kind of quiet around here.

Work has been busy, and between that and Midwest FurFest planning I haven't had too much to write about here.

Last week was linnaeus' birthday. We celebrated this by going out to one of our favorite restaurants in Chicago, Heaven on Seven. We carpooled down with roho and genet; Roho was kind enough to brave the horrid Friday traffic. the company made the time pass quickly, though, and we got there with time to spare. We were joined by simbalion, siriuswolfstar, and rustitobuck, and we had a very good meal. Not as awesome as usual (the halibut was only so-so, and the beef tips were served with an unfortunate Worcestershire-based sauce that was very like A-1 Steak Sauce), but the company and the very tasty drinks made up for it.

On Saturday I was up far too early to go in to work. We had some testing that needed to be done when the plant was not in production, and this was one of the few weekends we could do it. I got in at about 7:30 AM; by 9:30 AM the engineer we were working with had determined that the database he had prepared the upgrade files with was of a newer revision than the one on the production floor and that he had to completely revise his files. While he was doing that, I took off for home since there was nothing for me to do there. As I was leaving the parking lot I heard the dreadful "tick tick tick" sound of something lodged in one of my tires. A quick trip to the nearby tire store and a $30 repair later, I had the upholstery nail that had been lodged in my tire. Bleah. At 2 PM I got the call that they were ready to resume testing, and I went back in and worked until 6 PM or so.

Sunday morning was nice and lazy, which was pleasant and needed. At around 1 PM takaza and I drove down to steviemaxwell and magicpaw's place for a birthday party for Magicpaw and Linnaeus. Various folks were there and a fun afternoon of movies and games followed. We ducked out a little early to take care of our grocery shopping for the week, then came home and relaxed.

Back to the grind now. I've got a couple of projects going right now, one of which is in the process of wrapping up. The boss is out on vacation this week, so things aren't too stressful. On my to-do list for tonight is to cut up the ten pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts we bought on Sunday ($1.59/pound!) so we can freeze it in smaller portions perfect for a single meal.

This weekend we're hosting Dan's family for a birthday BBQ for his mom; looks like the weather will cooperate so I suspect we'll be grilling up some steaks. On Sunday there's a possibility of another BBQ, but we need to see what the plans are there.

Midwest FurFest plans are slowly coming together. If you have mentioned to me that you were interested in volunteering and I haven't yet directed you to someone, do please remind me because I have some departments in mind who could use a bit of a hand. We also have some loose plans percolating for Wuffmeet, especially on how to divide things up so Dan and I aren't quite so stressed out the whole event.

It's Monday and man am I dragging. A nasty bout of insomnia last night had be up between 12:30 and 1:45, and when I did get to sleep it was pretty shallow and I kept waking up. I'm looking forward to 4:30 when I can head home and collapse.

I haven't really done a substantial update in a week, so I guess I should look back over the last seven days.
( Tuesday at the Meat Faucet! )
( Friday at Tramonto's )
( Saturday at the DMV )
Sunday, we had a pleasant lunch with roho and Genet at Scott Dogs (first al fresco meal of the year, yay!), then ran a few errands. Once we got home, what began as a quick job of shoring up the storage shelf in our garage became a full-blown cleaning of the garage. I'm now happy to say that I can park in the garage without bumping any boxes! I need to hang our extension ladder to free up a bit of space along the side of the garage, but other than that the garage is pretty much good to go.

And then there's today. If all goes well, I hope to head home and collapse on the sofa and play some Okami and relax. Dinner is leftovers, which is nice and simple, and I suspect we'll be heading to bed early tonight, since Dan didn't sleep too well last night, either. And tomorrow...well, we'll see what plans develop!

Happy birthday, atara! I hope you get a great chance to celebrate.

Just some stuff that struck as amusing today...

Here's a couple of intriguing products:The Lazy Drinker is a cooler that holds 16 bottles plus ice and automatically meters out any of 5,000 preprogrammed drinks. A steal at only $750!

A bit more attainable is the AeroPress, a device which squeezes foxes...no, that's not right. Sorry, it's a one-cup coffee maker that's purported to make an excellent (as rated by coffee snobs!) cup of coffee in less than a minute. I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure if I'd go through the hassle to make one cup at a time. Good for traveling, though.

ursulav amused me immensely this morning with her post comparing the Bible to Jesus fanfic. I especially liked the speculation that some of the proto-gospels were crappily written
and full of Mary Sue disciples who all had green eyes and Jesus fell madly in love with them and...wait, was that the Last Temptation of Christ?

Via the ever-useful Lifehacker, we have Tab Mix Plus, a fabulous extension for Firefox which is an excellent tab manager, plus is saves your session if Firefox crashes, so you can pick up where you left off, and a couple of other nifty things. I just installed it last night and I like it!

And finally: Happy birthday, siriuswolfstar!

So we spent last weekend at Congenial. Just to be different, I'll spare y'all the blow-by-blow and just say that it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed swimming and hanging out with friends. When we got home on Sunday we sat around the house like zombies and then went to bed.

I had the unpleasant surprise yesterday of looking at my wedding ring and realizing that the white gold inner band had cracked and was spinning freely, about to come off. Ack! We purchased it five years ago from Ross-Simons in Raleigh, NC, and I was pleased to see that the only store they have in Illinois happens to be right on my way home from work. I stopped by yesterday afternoon and it has now been shipped off for repair. I should have it back in 10-14 days, at an as-yet-to-be-determined cost (they'll call me with an estimate before doing any work, though). The biggest drawback to this is the moment of panic I get on an all-too-frequent basis when I realize I'm not wearing my ring and start wondering where I left it. Bleah.

Not too much going on this week. It's month-end for takaza's company, so he'll be working long hours this week; last night he didn't get home until close to 8 PM, and I expect a few more days this week like that. If he doesn't have to work this weekend (ick!) I hope that we'll be doing some wandering about in the lovely weather to do some research for FRAC, or at the very least relaxing a bit and being antisocial. We're due for a bit of that, I think.

Oh, and finally: happy birthday, woodychitwn!

Happy birthday to the newest furry Chicago resident, simbalion! Gosh, I wonder how he'll celebrate...

Happy birthday to a dear friend who I don't get to see anywhere near enough, zenwolph. Hope it's a great one!

Happy birthday, genet!

For your birthday, Briana will lick your face then flop on your feet.

Oh wait, she does that every day. Ah well...

It's somebody's birthday today. Happy birthday, moryssa!

Here's wishing very happy birthdays to fritzie_pup and daveqat! May you both get the appropriate amount of abuse for your birthdays :-)

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

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

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

(Wow, am I dating myself with that subject line...)

So, con reports aside, what have we been up to? Well, the past weekend was quite entertaining, really. The fun started on Friday when takaza and I played hooky from work to meet mirkowuff and siegferret at Wrigley Field to watch the Chicago Cubs vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mirko and Siegfried experienced some delays getting to the park, unfortunately. We missed the top of the first inning, but once we got seated things were fine. And those were some really great seats! Section 215, Row 2 - about a third of the way up the third base line with a great view of the game. I will freely admit that I am not the world's best baseball fan - hell, after football season is over, I usually throw away the sports section unread. But I learned that actually being there at the game is far more interesting, and I really had a great time. Mirko and I swapped rounds of (expensive, nasty) beer and Sieg and Dan each got some hot dogs. The game was great, too - a real thriller, with the Cubs pulling it out in the bottom of the ninth. I would actually be willing to catch another game this year, albeit maybe from the cheap seats.

After the game we fought the teeming throngs to get out of the park and onto the El, taking about a half-hour to go a few hundred feet. We eventually made it onto a northbound Red Line train and rode up to daveqat and jimcyl's place. We hung out there, and were eventually joined by boixboi and perromutt. Perro stuck around to wait for darkwolph (who was apparently traveling in low orbit, since he got from Lafayette, IN to the north side of Chicago in 90 minutes, on a Friday afternoon) while the rest of us tromped off to Evanston to the Asado Brazilian Grill. We dove into the tasty food and copious quantities of meat, and Perro and Wolphy joined us not too long after. The meal was excellent, and the company grand. We parted ways afterwards and went home and to bed.

On Saturday Dan and I set forth once again to the wilds of downstate Illinois (i.e. south of I-80) towards the Champaign-Urbana metroplex. We arrived at Mirko's in time to do some birthday shopping, then it was over to Siegfried's place for a fun night of games with Mirko, Sieg, lycaos, and Wolftail. We played Malarky (very fun game, though I'm not sure about the scoring system) and Cranium (always fun) and had a great time.

Sunday morning, we met everyone but Lycaos (who was flying out that day) at The House of Lard, aka The Original Pancake House, for breakfast. Yum! Very tasty. I drove home, and on the way back we finished listening to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have...comments. But I think I'll wait a bit and think it over some more. Anyway, we arrived home just in time to meet up with rustitobuck and linnaeus and strike out for Linnaeus' birthday party. Paul has documented that well, so I'm going to be lazy and just point to his entry :-)

And today it was back to the grind, woohoo. Ah well. Now, to figure out what we're going to do for dinner tonight...