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!

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!

And so we enter the last few weeks before Midwest FurFest. Saturday was spent doing a good bit of preparation for Midwest FurFest 2008, the fruits of which I hope will be evident at this year's Closing Ceremonies. After takaza and I met mirkowuff for lunch, Dan headed home to work on Publications stuff (yes, still). Mirko and I worked on The Super Secret Project, then drove into Chicago. We had some time to kill so we tried a couple of nicer restaurants around Lincoln Square, but either their menus were unexciting or they were completely booked for the evening. Man, I hate trying to eat out on Saturday nights. We wound up settling for a small taqueria at Lincoln and Montrose that was actually amazingly good, and cost about a fifth of what dinner at any of the other places would have run. Great horchata, too! Afterwards, we headed over to an impromptu party that woodychitwn was hosting. I'm sure descriptions of who was there and that accompanying embarrassing pictures will show up in his journal soon, but suffice to say that I had a good time and it was fun to meet his other friends. Alas, Mirko and I had to head home on the early side (i.e. before midnight), so we missed the various eating-of-cake-off-body-parts, etc. Ah well.

Sunday brought he final planning meeting for Midwest FurFest 2007. It was pretty much the shortest meeting we've had all year (36 minutes!) because really, if you don't have your act together this late in the game, you're pretty much screwed anyway. Fortunately, every appears to be on their game and we're in for an excellent convention, I think. For my part, pretty much everything that needs to ordered is in, with the exception of badge blanks and at the door registration forms, which will hopefully be sent to dexcat tonight. Our numbers are looking good, with not only our total attendance following past normal growth patterns, but our sponsorship numbers are matching last year's as well. The latter is a nice confirmation that we're doing something right.

After the meeting broke up, roho, genet, and linnaeus joined us back at our place, and we were shortly joined by steviemaxwell and magicpaw. Pizza was ordered, tasty cheese and crackers (and wine) was enjoyed, and we had a good time watching the season premiere of The Amazing Race 12. I was quite pleased with the outcome of the first leg, and I see several teams in there that I will really be cheering for this time around.

The rest of this week will be helping Dan with the last bits of Publications, including a really nice innovation he came up with last week: a small pamphlet for staffers that has all of the information they'll need, from telephone extensions to emergency procedures to quick schedules, and a lot more. With luck, that will be wrapped up tonight or tomorrow and we'll get a night or two to relax. On Friday we're going to Windycon in Rosemont, where we will be working on Operations staff and in our spare time maybe helping out the Dorsai. It should be a fun weekend, and it's a nice change of pace since neither of us is actually in charge or anything :-)

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!

After work on Friday, we got a call from colliedoc: he was on his way up from his new job (yay!) until his car died and he was stuck in North Chicago, near Abbott Park. We drove down and picked him up, then proceeded over to Wine Knows where we browsed a bit and tasted some of the wines they had available. Straif picked out a Riesling, and I got a bottle of the 2005 Woop Woop Shiraz. We were then joined by roho, genet, feren, and lady_curmudgeon and we went over to Lovely Thai for dinner. They happily served our wine with no corkage fee (!) and the seven of us had an excellent dinner with appetizers that came to $90. What a great deal! the wines were quite tasty as well, I might add. After dinner takaza and I took our leave from the rest of the group and went home to head to bed.

On Saturday, after a follow-up visit with my podiatrist (everything is healing nice, thank you!), Dan and I drove down to Naperville to help the folks at Ohana House move. We got in three trips between Oldhana and Newhana (heh) before it got too late to deal with things. their new place is quite fabulous, though I think the real winner is emrldgrrl, who got a snazzy studio apartment out of the deal :-) For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant near Newhana that featured amusing patrons and a hostess/waitress who didn't speak much English but was certainly very fast! Dinner was quite tasty as well.

Sunday brought the Midwest FurFest staff meeting, which was rather productive. As we were eating lunch after the meeting we got a call from datahawk that there was a problem with the landlords of Oldhana and they might need to get everything out before the night was over. We hustled down to Naperville again to lend a hand, but the crisis was averted just before we arrived and they have another week to move stuff. As long as we were there, though, we packed a load of stuff and hauled it up to Newhana. From there we drove home (with a stop at Oberweiss Dairy, 'cause we had a hankering for tasty ice cream) then went off to bed.

Not too much going on this week except for maybe a trip down to Elk Grove Village on Wednesday for some factory testing of new equipment for my employer. And hey, we don't seem to have much in the way of plans next weekend. I'm sure that will change between now and then, though...

Great googly moogly what a weekend. Let's start with the easy part: On Sunday, we didn't do much of anything. Yep, we just sat around the house, watched some TV and relaxed. Why? Well, therein lies the tale...

( Friday: Venturing into Chicago )

( Scoping out new function space? )

( Saturday: The Air and Water Show! )

( Attack of the delicious food! A dinner to remember )

So now you understand why we didn't do much on Sunday, eh? :-) As for the rest of the week, we have a gaming night coming up on Thursday, and cleaning to be done in preparation for that. Ah, domesticity!

Now that was an entertaining weekend! First off, the week was instantly made better on Friday afternoon when takaza returned from the wilds of Indiana. Of course, not an hour after he got home we had to leave again, but it was for a good cause: dinner with friends at Bombay City Indian Restaurant. We had a lot of fun seeing familiar faces and meeting some cool new folks too (who I hope we'll have a chance to see more of!). The food was, as always, fantabulous, though I have learned my lesson: while tandoori stuff is tasty, the sauced dishes are where it's at. Fresh naan dipped in the chicken tikka masala sauce...heaven! Unfortunately, we've been there three times and each time the service has been sub-par. This time we waited about 30 minutes for our check once we were done. It might be time to investigate other Indian places in the area, sadly. For dessert, we went to Marble Slab Creamery with steviemaxwell, roho, genet, and linnaeus, which was a perfect capper for the evening.

On Saturday, after a very quick follow-up visit with the doctor about my toe (it's healing nicely, thank you), I returned home and Dan woke up not long after. I knew that I needed to go to LAFF Softball to drop off the badge holders for Mephit Furmeet to ramalion, but it was up in the air if Dan would be joining me. Between a couple of calls to Stevie, making some lists, and having some cool ideas for grilling, it suddenly transpired that he had talked himself into going and we were going to be grilling for the picnic after the softball game. We stopped by Sam's Club and picked up a huge amount of food (as well as a nifty new portable table) and then headed over to the softball game. aeto was kind enough to make a quick store run for us for a few things we couldn't get at Sam's Club and to lend us the use of his cooler - thanks, Aeto! We watched some of the game and chatted with the various folks who were there (too many to name!). At about 4 PM we took all of the supplies over to the cooking area and fired up the (one, very small) grill and set to work prepping the food. Dan and I had agreed that we were going to make "Jucy Lucy" burgers (sic), and we set to work making the patties. perro and darkwolph let us store some of the perishables in their refrigerator, which was a huge help! I learned that the grill didn't put out as much heat as I had hoped as I limped along with the first batch of bratwurst, but once we got a handle on it (and added another chimney full of charcoal!) we got things working properly. We wound up feeding 25 people or so, and even managed to break even in costs! Dan and I are kicking around ideas for the end-of-the-season picnic, possibly including steaks. We'll see if we can make that work, though.

After grilling, we were both drained, so we drove home and crashed. We were both silly and didn't put on sunscreen (not too bad - we were mostly in the shade) or bug spray (bad - I've got multiple unpleasant welts!), so we've got some tokens of the day to remind us to properly prepare next time!

Dan's sister came over Sunday afternoon and they worked on her computer for several hours while I puttered around the house doing laundry and cleaning. That unfortunately meant that Dan had to stay home to work on work-related stuff while I headed out to have dinner with Roho, Genet, chebuytkin and CAJones at Dave and Busters. The company was excellent, with much smoffage and comparisons of conventions (I like the idea of road-tripping to Minneapolis next July 4 for Convergence!). The food was surprisingly good as well, as was my strawberry margarita. The games afterwards...not so much. If you like shooting or driving games, D&B's is the place to go. Unfortunately, shooting games have zero interest for me and my passion for driving games is limited at best. I left with credit still on my card, but the night was getting late. I got home just as Dan was wrapping up for the evening, so it all worked out.

It's a new week now, and it looks like it'll be a busy one at work. We don't have much planned during the week, though at the end of the week is the Chicago Air and Water Show. Also, keep an eye out here because plans are in the works for another game night at our place next week!

So besides the weekend's technological trials and tribulations, what else happened?

On Saturday we decided that since roho, genet, and colliedoc were coming over, a tasty grilled dinner would be in order. We laid out where we needed to go, but the circle slowly got wider. See, we needed some really good corn on the cob, and while Garden Fresh Market's isn't bad, I think the best corn around is from Stade's Farm Market, so a detour to McHenry was added. And heck, as long as we were going that way, if we want really good steaks, we were going to need to go to our favorite butcher at Antioch Packing House. The farm stand was delightful, as expected, and we picked up some fresh peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, and some delicious apple-cinnamon bread along with the corn. And Antioch Packing House always has good ground beef and bacon, so we had to get some of those while we got the 1.5" thick New York strip steaks. Stopping by Garden Fresh, I got some asparagus and some other goodies. Once the Tivo was up and running, I fired up the grill and I grilled the asparagus with a garlic-rosemary-lemon vinaigrette that was divine. The steaks cooked up perfectly, and the rest of the meal (as well as the company) was excellent!

On Sunday we unfortunately had to bow out from magicpaw's birthday shindig (we'll make it up to you, we promise!). While we were out picking up the networking gadgets we needed, I wanted a quick and cheap lunch. Hey, there's a White Castle! I haven't been to one of those in over a decade. And after having eaten there, I can safely say it'll be at least another decade, because that was just plain nasty. Once we got everything up and running, the rest of the afternoon was spent lazing around relaxing, and scheduling our Tivo to fill up with weird, random programming.

And now it's Monday. It should be a quiet week, though it looks like Dan will be working late on Thursday and Friday. Hmm, maybe I'll actually get around to start that Harry Potter book this week (sorry Roho! :-)

Right, so how did we spend the weekend?

On Friday, we went to bed early. Wasn't that exciting?

On Saturday, we bummed around the house in the morning, then headed down to Schaumburg to stay at the Amerisuites Schaumburg. You see, back at Midwest FurFest 2006, r_bear won a certificate good for one night at the Amerisuites at the charity auction, which he then presented to takaza. We were finally able to take advantage of his wonderful gesture this weekend, and had a nice, relaxing time there. We met up with linnaeus, datahawk, aureth, and mirkowuff at Big Bowl for dinner. The food was just delicious, and the two pitchers of sangria were pretty darned good too! It was a very enjoyable meal and I'm glad we could all get together. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and took advantage of the lovely swimming pool and hot tub before stumbling up to bed.

We took advantage of the tasty free breakfast at the Amerisuites before checking out on Sunday, heading right across the parking lot to the Hyatt for the Midwest FurFest board and staff meetings. Everyone has already seen the results of the board meeting. The staff meeting passed uneventfully, and there was some good discussion afterwards as well. The group got a late lunch/early dinner at Potbelly before heading out separate ways. Dan and I were exhausted and pretty limp Sunday evening, and we wound up heading off to bed a little before 9. This lingering cough is kicking my butt, and the cough syrup, while extremely effective, makes me quite fuzzy in the head, so early bedtimes are good to prevent any lingering morning fuzziness.

And here we are with a new week! We have a game night coming up later in the week, and on Wednesday I have an appointment with my doctor to discuss the results of my latest blood test (standard stuff), and what to do about the fact that I probably have enough cholesterol in my blood stream to make some butter. Not too much planned for this coming weekend (for all that I tried to talk Dan into driving to Pittsburgh on a whim), though I believe there is also a birthday get-together or two in the works. Big fun!

Still fighting this summer cold. The good news is, all indications are that no infection is present so it's just your garden-variety Upper Respiratory Ick; hopefully it'll pass within the next day or so.

Saturday was a crazy day. We met up with datahawk then met justincheetah at the MFF storage locker and unearthed the cable protectors and power distribution panel he needed for Anthrocon. A very pleasant lunch at Chipotle followed (mmm, burritos). We don't get to see enough of that kitty, something we'll need to work on after Anthrocon. From there we headed into Chicago to drop off a few things with linnaeus which he will be graciously ferrying to Anthrocon for us. Then we fought our way through downtown traffic to Merrillville, Indiana where we saw Weird Al Yankovic in concert. It was a fun show (and eventually I'll download the pictures off my cell phone, including a close-up of Al crooning to Data :-), though I admit that it hit my pet peeve of concerts, where the show sounds exactly like the songs on the albums. Sure, something is added in the performance (and Al is nothing if not expressive!). That was a minor complaint, though; overall the concert was a blast. The drive home was long, and we didn't get to bed until 2 AM.

Sunday morning I woke up at 6 AM, of course, and couldn't get back to sleep. Bless his heart, takaza put up with my barely-functioning, grumpy self. A midday nap helped a good bit, but the migration of the sinus stuffiness to my chest with some mild coughing didn't help much. We did accomplish a good bit of the laundry and packing the we needed to do, though in the course we figured out that Dan needs a new dress shirt and I need a new pair of khaki pants. We closed out the evening with some Flip This House and Dirty Jobs, then stumbled off to bed.

And here we are today. I'm feeling a good bit better. My sinuses still hate me, but at least the headache I woke up has receded. I've got the cough-syrup-with-codeine in my bag if I need it, but hopefully I won't. I'm off to Gurnee Mills after work to pick up the pants I need, then we'll put the finishing touches on the packing tonight. I'll be taking off from work tomorrow at 2:30 PM, then parking at the Grayslake train station and catching the train down to O'Hare, where I'll meet up with Dan. Our flight out is at 7:05 PM. I've hit the long downhill slide before the con where I just want it to start - months of planning has gone into this, so now it's time to see how well those plans work.

I know I've been quiet here this week, but I have excuses! You see, much of our week has been consumed with preparations for Anthrocon; even when we weren't actively working on convention planning, we were thinking about it and that kind of wears on you. Add to that the fact that I'm fighting off a mild summer cold. Yuck.

In general update terms, though, things have been going well. If I didn't mention it earlier, I haven't been hired on full-time at my employer yet since they were still working out which positions were open and which they were going to fill with whom. I have been assured, multiple times, that it is a matter of "when" and not "if" I get hired, though. My contract was extended to the end of July, and that's OK by me. While that means my three days off for Anthrocon will be unpaid, the good news is that I still come out ahead in net salary. I had a good talk with my boss this week and he is satisfied with my performance and seems willing to put a bit more on my plate, which makes me happy.

Work for takaza continues to be stressful; I worry about him and I know that all of this stress takes its toll on his health. Things got a little more difficult this week (I won't go into it here, but my heart does go out to those involved), but he's been assured that it won't affect his vacation time. He is justifiably skeptical and unfortunately probably will have to log in from Pittsburgh to do some work for some part of the time that we're there.

We did find time to relax a bit last night. We had a pleasant dinner with roho and genet at a frozen custard place in Antioch (good sandwiches, not so good frozen custard), then we caught the late showing of Ratatouille at the Antioch Theater. GO SEE THIS MOVIE! It was so much fun! Great character design, a nifty score, and a really great expression of the love of food and cooking. I adored it, and wouldn't mind seeing it again. As an aside, I also love the Antioch Theater - $4 admission, popcorn for a couple of bucks (and free refills on popcorn and sodas, provided by roving ushers), a trivia quiz by a real live employee before the show. When we went to see Waitress a few weeks ago we went to the Regal theater in Round Lake; tickets, plus popcorn and soda came to over $30 (and that's at matinee prices!). That's just plain offensive.

Ahem. Movie theater ranting aside, it looks like the next few days are going to be pretty nuts for us. I can't even guarantee that I'll be posting between now and Anthrocon, so here's a quick rundown:

Today, once datahawk gets up here, we'll all head down to Arlington Heights to meet justincheetah at the MFF storage locker to get a power distribution panel for him (I hope it's not buried too far under everything!). Then it's over to linnaeus's place in the city to drop off some stuff that he is kindly carrying to Anthrocon for us. After that, it's down to Merrillville, Indiana where we have tickets to see "Weird Al" Yankovic in concert!

Tomorrow will be con packing and (more) planning, and staging everything as best we can. Oh, and relaxing somewhat, since that'll be our last chance before the con. Monday will be work as usual.

Tuesday, we fly out from O'Hare at 7:05 PM, arriving in Pittsburgh at 9:32 PM (supposedly). Give that it's an evening flight in the summer out of O'Hare, I figure if we get to PIT before 11:30 PM we'll be doing good. We'll spend the night at the La Quinta Pittsburgh Airport, then on Wednesday morning catch the 28X bus downtown to the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center. We hope to be at the Westin by 11 AM or 12 noon.

And after that? Madness and chaos. With any luck I'll be able to document some of that...at some point.

Let's get up to speed, shall we?

After work on Friday takaza and I stopped by Gurnee Mills to pick up a few things. We were just looking for a new belt for me but wandered into the game store only to find that they were having a buy-one-get-half-off-another sale on games. We walked out with two games that look like they're going to be a lot of fun at our next party: Malarkey and Wits and Wagers. When we finished shopping we drove up to Antioch to our favorite liquor store to stock up on a few things for Anthrocon (a couple of new Scotches and a bottle of Grey Goose, 'cause I likes me some good sipping vodka). We met up with genet (roho was under the weather) and had a pleasant dinner at Las Vegas Restaurant.

Saturday was craziness, but in a fun way. For the second year in a row we ran the bingo games for Dan's company picnic. It's a good thing that Dan thought to bring our bingo set (purchased for use last year, but not used) because we found that the provided bingo set was missing four bingo balls. That would have sucked. We ran two sessions, each 90 minutes long, and gave away a little over $2,000 in gift cards to Target, Wal Mart, and various restaurants. People seemed to enjoy it. Dan had bought a huge chunk for tickets for the charity raffle (to benefit Gilda's Club) and for the second year in a row he won an iPod, this time a 4 Gb iPod Nano. Which would be nice except that we both have 30 Gb Video iPods. Ah well, we had fun, at least, and the day's surreal moment was provided by the CEO of Dan's company inquiring if we're brothers. I guess it's true that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to look alike :-)

After the picnic we headed into the city, where we met up with datahawk and emrldgrrl to see the GLBT Pride edition of Too Much Light makes the Baby Go Blind ("30 queer plays in 60 straight minutes"). As always, the show was amazing - funny, poignant, and thought-provoking. I admit, it's the silly stuff that I remember most, including "Two Minute Strip Rock Paper Scissors" and "All The Boys in the Frat House Say Ho(mosexual)!" Because it was a benefit show, even though they ran out of time on play #25 everyone agreed that we should see the last five plays, so we did! After the show, we drove down to linnaeus's place and got dinner from our favorite taquiera. It was great ending to a great day.

And on Sunday? We rested. Well, we did a little work on Anthrocon stuff, but mostly we just rested. And it was good.

Hmm, I'm getting slack about updating again. That's not so good.

Last week we had to get both of our Honda Elements serviced, mine to have the upholstery repaired before the warranty expired and takaza's for its 60,000 mile service. Rosen Honda in Gurnee proved a mixed bag in terms of getting this accomplished. Just setting up the service was difficult, as it took no less than four calls just to get through to the service department, including getting hung up on twice. I dropped my car off on Wednesday night, and got a call on Thursday that they had completely disassembled the driver's seat and opened the box with the new seat cover only to find that it was the wrong color. We therefore had to leave the care there Thursday night as well. I picked it up on Friday afternoon after work, dropping off Dan's car in the process with the request that the service be completed by noon on Saturday.

I stopped to get gas before heading down to pick up Dan and it's a good thing I did, because while filling up I saw that in the process of putting the car through the car wash just before giving it back to me, they had torn off the rear windshield wiper and it was hanging by a wire. I high-tailed it back to the dealership and arrived just as the parts department closed. The service guy was very apologetic and fixed things up enough that the car wouldn't be damaged until I could bring it back the next day to get the wiper assembly replaced.

From there I headed south to meet Dan at the Buffalo Grove Metra station (gods, I hate Lake-Cook Road on Friday afternoons). We killed some time playing minigolf at my favorite place in the area, Par King, then met up with daveqat and synicism for dinner at Osteria di Tramonto. Dinner was fabulous, as always; I had the cavatelli with roasted escarole and chicken; Dan had chicken Parmesan, Dave went with the hanger steak, and Jim had rack of lamb. All were excellent, and my chocolate torte after dinner was superb.

On Saturday, Dan and I went to pick up his car. $520 later - ouch! - the car is in excellent shape, though I'm told the front brake pads need replacing soon. Somehow I'm certain that I can get it done cheaper than the $289 they're offering; heck, from what I understand, if I had the service manual and a couple more tools I could do it myself. It's something to consider after Anthrocon, perhaps; in the meantime, since he's putting all of maybe four miles a day on the car going to and from the train station, it's not hugely urgent.

We stopped by Lovin' Over Cakery for some tasty dessert stuff, then headed over to Dan's mom's place for an afternoon of games and lots and lots of food. She had roasted a 20+ pound turkey (!) and had made all of the trappings. This just for me, Dan, Dan's brother and sister, and her. We had a great time playing Scene It! Squabble (truly annoying, with offensive gender stereotypes for all!), Apples to Apples, and Balderdash. I enjoyed Balderdash the most, though I'm thinking that we need to pick up a copy of Malarky, which encourages a little more elaborate tale-spinning. We capped off the evening with a family portrait, which Dan posted in his journal.

On Sunday, Dan and I worked on various Anthrocon and Midwest FurFest tasks, taking a break to hit the grocery store. Dan made a tasty turkey and rice dish with kielbasa using the huge amount of leftover turkey his mom gave us before we left the night before. We "attended" the MFF online staff meeting, then I edited the log and sent the notes out shortly afterwards. The rest of the evening, we watched a bit of TiVo and the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special, then headed off to bed.

So, this week: Poker Night on Wednesday, and I need to run various errands after work on Wednesday and Thursday. Next weekend is Dan's employer's company picnic, and we're going to be running the bingo games again this year. Should be...um, fun. Yeah, that's it. Fun. :-)

You know, as exhausted as I felt at work on Friday, I was astonished at how much energy I had when I got home. It turned out that the power had actually come back on at 8:30 AM, which meant that while the freezer was pretty much OK, some serious culling needed to be done in the refrigerator. Fortunately, it wasn't too bad - mostly party leftovers and anything with dairy in it (including, sadly, the Keke Key Lime Pie liqueur). Once takaza got home, we talked a bit about dinner and decided that we both wanted something more than a hot dog. We decided that Indian food sounded good, so we met up with roho and genet for dinner at Bombay City. The food was, as always, delicious and the company was excellent as well. It was fortunate that we weren't far from home, because once the food coma set in, I was very quickly ready to fall asleep.

Saturday found Dan and over at his mother's house with some family to play some games. I have to admit I had some trepidation going in, but I was readily accepted and we had a whole lot of fun. We played Scene It, Apples to Apples, and Taboo, and it was a blast. It was even better since we moved the table out to the deck and we got to enjoy a perfectly beautiful day outside. At about 7:30, it was time to head south to wyldekyttin's birthday party. Because it was such a beautiful evening, we wound up taking back roads through Crystal Lake down to Randall Road, all the way down to Aurora. It was a very pleasant drive along the western edge of the densest Chicago suburbs. When we got to the Holiday Inn Select Naperville (her party was held in conjunction with Duckon), we hung out for a little while, but as is always so typical, between being tired and having a long drive ahead of us, we had to leave before the party really got going well. It was a pleasure to see so many of our friends, albeit briefly. One nifty thing: On the way out through the parking lot we passed by the Tesla coil demonstration. I thought to grab our camera out of the car and grabbed a quick 30-second video of the powerful electrical arcs, which were set to music:


On Sunday, we met up with Roho and Genet to see Waitress. It was a lovely movie, and I really enjoyed it. Not too deep or profound, but enjoyable nonetheless. Keri Russell was fantastic in her role, Nathan Fillion was adorable as always, and the late director was also very good in her supporting role; it's a crying shame that she passed away before the move was released. After the movie we retired back to our place for a marathon of home improvement shows, including Hometime, The Real Estate Pros, and Flip This House (as well as some Good Eats and Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares). We ordered some pizza somewhere in there, and mainly just relaxed and hung out. Quite a nice, low-stress day. Right before bed, though, I was contacted with an interesting bit of news that left me a bit gobsmacked and made getting to sleep difficult. Nothing bad, just surprising.

And so we have this week. Looks like I may have to work some off hours this week (and maybe the next few weeks) to support a project here, which is fine. If anything, it's unusual that I haven't been asked to do this before, and it's not as if it's mandatory (the boss is cool like that). We'll work something out.

Sometimes a weekend is so low-key you hardly know it's there until Monday whacks you upside the head with a two-by-four.

We had a nice, relaxing "cat weekend", something that I promised takaza we'd try to have at least once a month. I'm a go-go-go social butterfly kind of guy, but he needs a weekend to recharge his batteries every so often (and I suppose it doesn't do me any harm either). Dan got to sleep in late both Saturday and Sunday, and we even stayed up far too late on Saturday night (yes, I can stay up later than midnight! So there!).

On Friday we relaxed a bit after work then thought about going out for dinner. We started to leave but looking at the radar and the approaching storm front elected to delay our departure by a half-hour. It's a good thing, too, because a fast-moving storm blew through with torrential rain and 40 mph+ wind gusts. The sky was amazing right after the front went through; Dan took a couple of pictures and e-mailed them off to the local CBS affiliate, who posted both of them to their website! For dinner, Dan wanted to try the Popeye's Restaurant, just because it was something he hadn't had before. One underwhelming meal later, we knew why he hadn't had it before. We won't be returning. After dinner, we decided to stop by the Round Lake Streets of Summer Festival. The rainstorm had taken its toll, and the actual festival attendees were outnumbered by the festival staff and security. It was really pretty sad. We walked through the festival grounds and listened to the increasingly-awful band playing (more volume does not mean better music!) and decided to leave.

On Saturday we had to take my car in to the dealership to have some upholstery checked for a possible warranty repair. That's a whole other rant, though. Afterwards we got a tasty late lunch/early dinner at Scott Dogs. We bummed around the house for a bit, then snuggled up on the sofa and watched Spellbound. I had meant to see this years ago, and I am pleased to report it is every bit as engaging and entertaining as I had heard. What a great movie! Afterwards, we stayed up far too late watching Flip This House.

Sunday we pretty much just bummed around the house before heading out to the week's grocery shopping. Dan made a big pot of a very tasty chicken/rice/chorizo stew which we had for dinner and we'll both be having for lunch for the next few days, then we watched some TiVo before going to bed.

Excitement city, eh? But it was a very enjoyable weekend nonetheless. Oh, and obviously we never did get out to see Waitress. Hopefully it'll still be around next weekend.

...and we pick up our program on Saturday night, already in progress.

Saturday night a good number of folks headed home, but Rusty, Simba, and Sirius (along with my mom) crashed at our place, and Linnaeus, Jaycee, Nyuni, and Erin crashed over at Roho and Genet's place. The lot of us met up for brunch at our old standby, Las Vegas Restaurant in Antioch. After a pleasant meal, I took Mom back down to O'Hare so she could catch her flight home, then returned to our place, where everyone else had gone after brunch.

The afternoon and evening were full of games and fun. We played Cranium (which, as usual, was about 30 minutes too long), then some TransAmerica, as well as some Lupus in Tabula. Throw in noshing on leftovers and an occasional break to watch "Ace of Cakes" and you've got a lovely day with friends. I went to bed at about 11:30 PM, leaving Rusty, Linnaeus, and Dan to play a few more games of TransAmerica; Dan came to bed around 2 AM.

Monday we had set aside to do absolutely nothing. Paul had gone home after the game wrapped up, so Rusty was our only guest, which was fine - he's family, so he qualifies as a low-maintenance houseguest :-) The day was spent pretty much just lazing around in the living room. Dan got up at about 1:30 PM, and we munched a bit on still more leftovers. I got curious and after asking a few questions, I downloaded the client and now, heaven help us, both Dan and I are on Second Life.

Here is Dunc McMillan. Theoretically, he's an anthropomorphic Siberian husky. I may need to work on a better avatar.	And here is Dunc sitting with his partner, Takaza Guffey. Isn't Takaza just the cutest thing?

I don't see getting too involved in Second Life much more than I am involved on FurryMuck, which is to say as a glorified IRC client. But hey, it's there and maybe I'll have fun with it. We closed out the wonderfully relaxing day with our new Monday habit, since Heroes has gone away for the summer: Doctor Who. We've had all of the second season sitting on our Tivo for quite some time, so we've started watching those, beginning with last night's "Christmas Invasion". Hmm. David Tennant is no Christopher Eccleston, but he's definitely growing on me...

So that's our Memorial Day weekend. Now we can start worrying about other fun stuff, like Anthrocon, and FRAC, and MFF, and all the usual stuff! :-)

What a fantastic weekend! And yes, sumatrae, this is another post all about food :-)

On Friday, we met up with roho, genet, linnaeus, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and a host of other folks from R&G's gaming group for dinner at Bombay City Indian Restaurant in Gurnee. takaza was pushing his boundaries a bit, but I was really happy that 1.) he was willing to try it, and 2.) he really liked it! The restaurant manager(?) approached our group of 14 and suggested we try ordering family style, and since there were a number of neophytes he suggested a set of entrees, including chicken tikka masala, rogan josh (lamb in a tomato and onion sauce), lamb badam pasanda (lamb cooked in cream and nuts), chicken biryani, and saag paneer and mutter paneer (cubes of cheese cooked with spinach and peas, respectively). The nan (bread) was yummy, and I loved my mango lassi. It was a fantastic meal, and both Dan and I look forward to visiting Bombay City again soon. To answer your question from Friday, posicat, I definitely recommend this place! Apparently it's only been there for about a year.

The weather on Saturday was perfect. I had to fire up our new grill to season the inside of it. I figured that once we had it hot we might as well use it, so we invited Roho and Genet out to help us inaugurate the grill. They were kind enough to stop by Antioch Packing House and pick up some amazing 1.5" thick strip steaks. I picked up some yellow and red bell peppers, onions, and corn, all of which got grilled up with the steaks. I still need to work on my charcoal grilling technique (I'm sure the hair on the back of my hand will grow back eventually), but the nice thing is that the grill has enough surface area that if I keep the coals to one side, I can position the food at various distances from them to control the cooking. The steaks came out perfectly, and the entire dinner was delicious! Dan and Roho baked up some tasty puff pastry/peanut butter/chocolate thingies for dessert to cap off a great evening.

Sunday was the very-lightly-attended Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Before the meeting, though, we had to indulge in a bit of home shopping. You see, our pantry is nice, but I hated the way that our "liquor cabinet" looked - it was really just a collection of bottles that sat precariously on the wire rack. The bottles were prone to tip over, and it was difficult to see and access what we had. We also wanted to free up the space in the pantry, so we decided to go to Ikea to find a proper liquor cabinet. I'm pleased to say that we found the perfect thing. Dan did the assembly work and I helped secure it in place, and here's the finished product:

Here's the new cabinet. I wanted doors because I thought having all the bottles in plain view might suggest that we're complete lushes. I love all the shelf space on the bottom.

And here it is open, showing all the boozy goodness! And hey, it's not even completely full :-)

I like it because it is shallower than the cart we had there before and it provides a lot more storage space - I now can have all my cookbooks in the kitchen!

So now we're back to the work-week. We're in a frenzy of listmaking in preparations for our Memorial Day weekend gathering (post on that to follow). That should be a blast too!

And the week has thus wound down. Hooray! It's looking like we've got a lovely weekend coming up (well, Saturday, anyway - Sunday's supposed to be colder and stormy). I'm up in the air about going to LAFF Softball on Saturday; both cars need a thorough washing inside and out, and I still need to fire up the new grill and "season" the interior before we do any grilling or smoking. So, we'll see how things go.

Sunday will be the May Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Things are perking along there, and I feel better now that I've gotten the first of the confirmation postcards out. I need to sit down with neowolf2 and work out who's going to do what this year as well. Maybe we'll get some food afterwards, or not - we're playing it by ear.

I'm looking forward to dinner tonight. We're going to an Indian restaurant in Gurnee. It's been ages since I've been to a good restaurant, and roho and genet tell us that this is a really tasty place. I can't wait!

That's it for now. It's ice cream time!

Whoa, that was a crazy weekend. A whole lot of fun, though.

On Friday, takaza was stuck at work until late. When he got home, we elected to grab dinner at Charcoal Delight, finishing up just as we got a call from mirkowuff the he had arrived at our place. We stopped by to pick him up then went up to Garden Fresh to do a bit of shopping for the following morning. The rest of the evening was a whole bunch of laptop geekery and the very amusing season finale of Ace of Cakes (with a bizarre furry reference in the opening minutes).

Saturday morning we were joined by linnaeus. Following a quick but tasty breakfast of pancakes, we headed up to the Sports Center in Round Lake Beach for the Spring Stampede. That's a big enough deal that it's going to get its own entry following this one (with very silly pictures!), but suffice to say that we had a lot of fun. After that wrapped up we met up with roho and genet at Antioch Liquors (of course). After some shopping there, we stopped by Lovin' Oven Cakery (om nom nom) on the way home, and enjoyed hanging out for a bit and sampling some of the pastries we picked up there. After some chatting, we decided on Dog and Suds for dinner, since the weather was so nice out. The atmosphere was great, the place wasn't too crowded and the food...well, the food was only mediocre, unfortunately. It's a shame because it's a nifty drive-in, but I don't see us going back any time soon. After dinner we went back to our place and spent the rest of the evening trying out some of our purchases from Antioch Liquors, including Roho's kek Ke Ke Beach key lime liquor. It tastes just like key lime pie...including the graham cracker crust. To my taste, it was actually more graham than lime. It was deemed to be Not Right and pretty much undrinkable (well by most of us. I think Genet liked it in small quantities!). Sadly, because we're all old and boring we wrapped things up by 11:30 and Paul, Roho, and Genet headed home.

Sunday morning, Mirko, Roho, Genet, and Dan and I made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas for brunch, which was delicious and remarkably filling, as usual. Mirko had to head out afterwards, so Dan and I went home and napped a bit. That evening, Paul, Roho, Genet,