Now that was a busy, but fun weekend.

ramalion was crashing at our place on Saturday night and he had mentioned that he had never tasted my cooking. Those of you who know me know that this is a dangerous challenge! We invited roho, genet, and linnaeus to join us for dinner and I got to planning, digging into my online recipe stash to find some new and interesting recipes.

Prior to dinner, though, takaza and I met up with Roho and Genet at Wine Knows for their Fall Beer Tasting. It was a blast! So many good beers, but the real standout was the Browning's Brewery Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout, which is aged in bourbon barrels. Absolutely amazing! (And sadly out of stock. But Genet is going to check in with them later this week!) We picked up a couple of bottles of wine and some good beers, and ventured to the store, then home to start dinner.

Rama was there when we arrived, and Linnaeus arrived not long after. I dove into the dinner preparations. The menu included Eggs with Cream, Spinach, and Ham, Spinach and Bacon Salad with a Roasted Shallot and Dijon Vinaigrette, and Potato Gnocchi with Meat Sauce. I learned a couple of useful things:
1. Don't start cooking an involved dinner at 6 PM. Fortunately, the beer and wine (and chips and salsa) helped maintain everyone's good spirits when the food was served at 10 PM.
2. Gnocchi is neat and fancy, but it's a pain in the ass. Next time, keep it simpler.
3. The Eggs with Cream , Spinach, and Ham is nothing short of astonishing. Saute the spinach with garlic and shallots, then coarsely chop and place in a ramekin. Simmer diced ham with heavy cream, then spoon the ham into the ramekin. Break an egg into each ramekin, then spoon the cream over the egg. Bake until the white is set but the yolk is still runny, and serve with buttered toast. Heavenly!

Sunday brought the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. The meeting went a bit longer than I usually like, but we got a lot done and made sure that no action items from the past year has fallen between the cracks. After the meeting, we adjourned to Mi Mexico, a new Mexican restaurant just north of the hotel (in the old Weber Grill location, for those who know the area). Wow! What a great find! Our meals were really fantastic, and they handled a large crowd of people extremely well. Plus, if someone is looking to eat cheaply, you've got a winner here, with $5.00 entrees available.

The rest of the evening was spent at home relaxing, working on some small MFF projects, and watching The Amazing Race (yay for the comic book geeks!).

This week is crunch time for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. We've got 120 restaurants listed and my goal is to have a useful review for every single one of them. Once that's done I need to go to work on some other projects. No panicking yet, though - everything seems to be coming along nicely.

Busy times before, and busy times ahead! It was a very full weekend, but we had a lot of fun.

On Friday, takaza and I met up with roho and genet for dinner at Las Vegas Diner in Antioch, then retired back to their place to watch The Big Lebowski (with white Russians in hand, naturally). It was my first time seeing it, and it was every bit of what I have come to expect from the Coen brothers. I enjoyed it, even if it seemed like half of the movie's scenes could have been cut and left the main plotline intact. We also made a quick run to Wal Mart and picked up some nice lamps for our new bedroom set. I really should post some pictures of it now that we have everything in place.

We were slow to get started on Saturday, eventually leaving the house a little before 5 PM to drive around and look at rental house possibilities. We're not unhappy with where we are now, but we know that we could do better if we must rent (and we agreed that we're at least a year away from buying). We looked at some nice places in Wauconda, then on our way back stumbled across this jaw-dropper of a rental house. 4,000 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths with an in-ground pool on 6.5 acres in a very rural setting. Holy cats! Even stranger is the fact that it's an $850,000 house that they're willing to rent for $2,500 per month. I swear, if Dan and I could find a couple of suitable roommates, we'd jump on that sucker in a heartbeat.

On Sunday, Dan stayed home to deal with some workstuff while I hitched a ride with Roho and Genet down to colliedoc and hypersnazz's place for Straif's belated birthday party. A good time was had by all, and I was very happy that the homemade caponata that I made was well received. Straif cooked up some tasty chicken katsu and teriyaki burgers, and Genet's bourbon chocolate torte was simply sinful. We headed out on the early side so I got to spend some time with Dan before turning in.

Monday it was back to the grind at work. I spent the evening catching up on Midwest FurFest projects, answering e-mails and putting the finishing touches on some projects. Things are really coming together well, and I've got high hopes for this year.

Looking ahead this week, we're getting together with linnaeus, Roho and Genet tomorrow to finally watch The Amazing Race season premiere. Rumor has it we might be hosting a lion this weekend, then on Sunday is an in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting at the Westin. I may not have time to sleep, but at least I'll be kept busy...

I've been kicking this around and while I have some ideas I don't have the know-how to make it happen. This is a project for this year's Midwest FurFest.

Imagine if you will: Your basic coat check at a hotel. Doors which fold open on either side of the opening, a counter about 3.5 feet off the ground. The top of the opening is about 7 or 7.5 feet off the ground. We need a light which can be either freestanding or perhaps clamp to the door (with suitable protection to keep from scratching the door). It needs to project out from behind the counter about 12-18 inches, high enough that no one walking by will hit their head on it. The light should flash, but it can't be obnoxious, like a spinning strobe light. The light would be turned on and off from inside the coat check, so no fancy controls are needed.

I'm thinking something similar to a broadcasting studio "ON AIR" light, only one that says "VOLUNTEERS NEEDED". Alternately (but not nearly as spiffy) a flashing light with a sign next to it that says, "Volunteers needed when flashing".

Oh yeah, and I need one more thing: Someone to build it. Any takers? :-) You would be reimbursed for all materials used.

Good heavens, what a weekend! I had been feeling a bit under the weather and had hoped to at least have one day to relax, but that was not to be. On the bright side, we had so much fun, it's OK!

( Friday: Shopping! )

( Saturday: Partying In Style at the Drive-In Theater )

( Sunday: Takin' Care of (MFF) Business, and a Surprise Found Locally )

Unfortunately, the cough that was lingering through the weekend is still here. I slept poorly last night, and I'm really paying for it today. The good news is that I have a previously-scheduled checkup with my doctor first thing tomorrow morning, so I can ask about it and see if I can't get something to treat the symptoms. Looking ahead to next weekend, I see precious little on our social calendar, and I suspect that it's going to stay that way. We're overdue for a quiet weekend at home. Maybe I'll watch some football games, and Dan and I can snuggle on the sofa and watch a movie. Yeah, I'd like that :-)

Yep, it's true! Read more about it here.

Great googly moogly, it's been a crazy seven days!

After work on Friday roho and genet came down and we grilled up some burgers and brats and celebrated the end of the week with a very tasty drink that included mango juice, pineapple rum, and Cointreau.

On Saturday I drove down to LAFF Softball while takaza worked on Anthrocon finance stuff. I had a great time hanging out with friends and generally socializing. After the game ramalion and I came back home to de-grungify, then Dan, Rama, and I met up with justincheetah and calapurr for dinner at Cooper's Hawk Restaurant and Winery, which is located right in front of the Westin Chicago North Shore (MFF's hotel).

We had a very tasty meal at Cooper's Hawk; not quite the level of Tramonto's Steak and Seafood, but better than Claimjumper. The price point is about the same as Claimjumper, too. I had the bacon-wrapped scallops, which came with a yummy mac and cheese and a fabulous mango salsa. I also found the wine to be surprisingly good - Cheetah and I ordered the "Red Wine Flight" ($12.95), 2 oz. pours of four of their popular red wines. Three were good, but their cabernet sauvignon, while OK, had some VERY non-cabernet flavors going on. When our waitress asked what we thought of the wines, I was candid in my appraisal. She surprised me with a sample of the cabernet sauvignon reserve, which I found to be excellent. She then brought Cheetah, Cala, and I samples of the oak-aged cabernet sauvignon (also gratis), but the reserve was by far the best of the night. The only downside of the place is that at peak times (like, say, on a Saturday night at 8:30 PM), it is extremely loud and crowded. Overall, though, it was a great meal and I look forward to going back. It will be a great addition to the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide, too.

On Sunday, we relaxed for most of the day and worked on Anthrocon stuff. In the evening we had the online Midwest FurFest staff meeting, where we covered a lot of useful topics. It's coming up on Labor Day weekend, the point where people start to realize, "Oh crap! We have a convention to put on in less than three months!" and things really move into high gear.

Then came the work week. I had not one, but two projects moving into high gear this week. Both projects have involved a lot of time out on the production floor, and by the end of each day I've been exhausted. Today was a little different, since I spent most of the day in a mandated technical writing class, one of two. It was...yeah. As I observed to one cow-orker, "This is not the most productive use of my time that I can think of." Tomorrow it's back to the grind to wrap up one project and figure out some snags with the other. I'm looking forward to drowning my sorrows in Mongolian BBQ and good company tomorrow night, though!

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.

So the craziness of the past week and a half is done, and I'm looking forward to a busy, but not insane week ahead. Now that I have time to breathe, ( let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. )

Before the craziness of this week's preparations for the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, we had a very nice weekend. On Friday we met up with linnaeus, roho, and genet for dinner in Antioch. We had originally planned to try out a BBQ joint I had read about, except we found that it was not only closed, the space was vacant and available for rent. Well. Instead, we walked down to the little Italian place a few doors down, Petrucci's. As we were standing outside debating, one of the employees came out to cajole us into coming in. After she went inside, Linnaeus took a deep whiff and said, "Smell that? That's Calvin Kline's Desperation." We shrugged and went inside.

After being seated, the waitress asked what we wanted to drink. I asked what beers they had on tap, and she...didn't know. The manager came over and told us the beers they had: Michelob, Heineken, and Moretti (sure, they had a Peroni neon sign out front but they didn't actually, you know, carry it). Evidently the three-beer beer list was too much to remember. Drinks arrived, and many giggles were had as we admired the Dunkin Donuts straws we were given. That was when I started pushing for just getting appetizers (a selection of fine frozen, fried cheese sticks, onion rings, etc.) and getting dinner elsewhere. I got outvoted, but we ordered the simplest possible thing we could: one sausage pizza, and one pepperoni pizza. To their credit, the pizza sauce wasn't bad, and the toppings were OK. The crust, though, was terrible. It reminded me for all the world of cheap frozen pizza. Needless to say, we won't be going back.

Saturday saw me at work in the morning while Dan slept in. He was awake and showered when I got home, and we headed out to run some errands. We happened upon a local coffee house now in its third incarnation since we've been in the area, and had a very tasty lunch there (they carry Intelligentsia Coffee! Yay!). Then it was up to Antioch Packing House to gather information on buying a side or quarter of a cow to fill up our freezer. We also picked up some excellent bacon and a couple of fantastic steaks. Once we got home we were joined by tozier_wah for the evening, and introduced him into how we have a small dinner for company: grilled NY strip steaks, baked potatoes with Monterey Jack and Parmesan, and grilled asparagus with rosemary and goat cheese, all accompanied with an excellent Australian shiraz blend. The evening ended with me nodding off on the sofa while Dan and Toz played Mario Kart Wii.

Sunday was the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. It was lightly-attended, as expected, but we got some good stuff done. perro has done a great job of fitting all the major events into the allotted space; now he can start thinking about the smaller panels. Afterwards we went over to Cafe Mistiko, a curious "European sports bar" that I really wanted to like more than I did. They made killer smoothies, and the saganaki was quite tasty. My crepe, "The Zembekiko" (Loukaniko [Greek sausage], tomatoes, peppers, and feta cheese) was only so-so, though. I'd be willing to go back and try something else on the menu, though. And lest you think of crepes as dainty little things, these suckers were huge, taking up three-quarters of the plate. I did also pick up a copy of the menu for the Japanese sushi joint next door and it looks like that may be next on the list of places in the area to try.

This week, we're cleaning and shopping in preparation for the coming weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing some of our out-of-town friends, and hopefully repeating the fantastic time we had last year. Never a dull moment!

A relatively busy weekend and a very busy week.

On Saturday we went to a St. Patrick's Day party; I had wanted to make something in advance but just couldn't muster the motivation, and as it turned out there was more than enough food. The corned beef and cabbage was excellent, and the shepherd's pie was really yummy too. Unfortunately, the evening was clearly taking a turn towards very heavy drinking, something that isn't really a lot of fun to be around when you're not doing the same (usually three drinks over an evening is good enough for me), so we bowed out early. Not that it's any judgment on the people involved, just...not our scene, y'know? (and even less so takaza's, since he rarely drinks at all)

Sunday was the second in-person Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the year at the Westin Chicago North Shore. I was pretty happy with my preparation going into the meeting, and looking at the meeting notes so kindly provided by linnaeus, I see that we managed to keep the meeting to exactly an hour. This makes me happy. Over eight years, I think I've learned that 60 minutes is just about right for our meetings; any more than that and people get restive and the meetings become more of a trial for everyone involved. I think we had a good balance of stuff addressed during the meeting and stuff addressed in smaller groups afterwards. Several staff members who hadn't seen the hotel got a tour of the place, and everyone seemed suitably impressed.

After the meeting and attendant after-meetings, we adjourned to Claim Jumper, which is located right next door to the hotel. Granted, we had a group of 16 people, but still - 2.5 hours from seating to paying and leaving seems a bit excessive. I will also say (and I preface this by saying that I'm very picky about my restaurants), I don't have much interest in going to Claim Jumper again (sorry little_wolf!). I've eaten once at the Lombard location and twice at the Wheeling location and I have yet to really be happy with the food there. The prices are a bit high, but that's because you are literally getting two portions (or more!) on your plate; if you don't take the other half home you're really losing out. Sadly, my fish and chips were more batter than fish, and the in-house beers were merely "meh". Oh well - I have two months to try to find the next option for our after-meeting meal.

This week has been a little nuts at work for me. On Friday my boss dropped a quick project in my lap that had me running all over on Monday getting signatures and talking with other departments. Then yesterday, I spent the day across campus implementing a laboratory instrument that I've been trying to get validated for fifteen months now. Maybe now I can finally get it and all of the associated paperwork off my plate! Today will be spent back over there making sure all the lab techs are comfortable using the instrument, then I've got meetings for much of the afternoon. Fun.

Last night brought an enjoyable surprise, though. We got a call from Linnaeus asking if we wanted to join him for dinner. He had to meet up with roho and genet to return Briana, their floofy, brainless Samoyed, after R&G had spent the weekend skiing in Maine. We met up at BW3 in Vernon Hills and had an extremely tasty dinner (I tried the mango habanero sauce, which was really tasty but very burn-y too!). We also had a lot of fun playing NTN Buzztime, where I proved I still have my old College Bowl chops :-) Sadly, Roho was detained by his evil employer and unable to join us; this just means that we will need to get everyone together again and drink beer and play NTN. Oh darn!

So this morning I'm off to the third day of the four-day "Intro to Statistics" course that I started last week (it wraps up tomorrow). I have to admit, having the break in the usual routine is nice, and today should be more enjoyable than last week since I won't be running a fever or coughing up a lung. As usually happens with these things, I do still have a slight residual cough, and probably will for another week or so. This led me to get up at 2:15 AM to take some cough syrup, and I couldn't get back to sleep until 3:30 AM. Ugh.

So I did finally pull the trigger on buying a new laptop. I went with the Dell Inspiron 1520 (2 GHz Dual Core 2 processors, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive) and picked up a very nifty discount through takaza's employer. Plus, it's a color I suspect pinkleader will drool over:

Of course, I'd have felt better if I hadn't read two scary pieces about Dell in Consumerist right after ordering, but I figure that's pretty much life in the consumer laptop market these days. And I look at it this way: if anything goes badly wrong, I always have someone I can call. Hey kellicjtiger, would you be OK with exchanging laptop service for dinner at a fancy restaurant? :-)

So following today's exciting class, it'll be over to the Westin to have dinner with MFF's salesman there. Hopefully we'll nail down a few important items, and maybe get some pictures of some of the suites that we'll be offering soon, as well. But now, I'm off to class.

Work work work, busy busy busy. It's a crazy week for me, but it's time to take a break a write a bit about the past weekend.

On Saturday, takaza and I took the train into Chicago and met up with fordshepherd and his "Bestest Friend" Julie (tsk, kai_darkwolf - you're just going to have to try harder improve your friend status). We met up at Union Station and then jumped in a cab to visit the West Loop location of Wishbone Restaurant. We had a light lunch and a thoroughly enjoyable conversation about random things.

Afterwards we walked a block west and admired Oprah's Harpo Studios, then across the street and into the Oprah Store, mainly for Julie's benefit. Ford tried extremely hard to get us thrown out of the store for not showing the utmost reverence for the Great and Powerful "O"; it was vastly amusing to watch the oh-so gay male salespeople giving us the stink-eye as it became more and more clear that we really didn't belong there.

Once we escaped there, we started what seemed like a short walk but wound up being about two and a half miles through The Loop. Following a quick stop by Intelligentsia Coffee (which we had to pass on, since the place was jam-packed), we walked up to Moonstruck Chocolate. We relaxed for a bit there with some conversation and hot chocolate, then proceeded up Michigan Avenue for our next stop, Vosges Chocolate (at Ford's insistence). This turned out to be a good call - I tried the Bianca Cocoa, an astonishing mix of vanilla, lemon myrtle, lavender, and white chocolate. It was truly delicious. I also picked up a "Rooster" truffle, made of Taleggio cheese, walnuts, vanilla, and bittersweet chocolate. Delicious!

Our next stop was Galt Toys, since Julie wanted to peruse stuffed animals. Alas, their selection was limited, but Ford did find a plush cheetah that he decided needed to come home with him. Finally, we went to the Disney Store and I learned that Rémy is apparently an extremely popular character - so popular they can't keep any merchandise with him on it in stock. Ah well. Dan did pre-order the 101 Dalmatians DVD, so at least it was a worthwhile trip.

It was time to go back to Ford and Julie's hotel, some flophouse called The Drake Hotel. Ford wanted to take a cab, but I pointed out that it was a short bus ride. I was informed that one does not simply "take the bus" to The Drake. This would qualify as "medium pimping", and was simply not to be considered. So we took a cab :-) Following a brief tour of Ford and Julie's room (luxuriously appointed, and an ingenuous use of a relatively small space) and their dropping off their purchases, it was back downstairs and into a cab for dinner.

We chose the restaurant for dinner, so of course we had to pick our favorite restaurant: Heaven on Seven. The meal was divine, as usual, and I went with the "Feed Me Jimmy Junior". This time around that included: crawfish cake in remoulade, small samplers of gumbo and turtle soup (the latter the highlight of the meal for Ford, I think), a Voodoo chicken enchilada, and strip steak over mashed potatoes. For dessert, I can never turn down their chocolate pecan pie. It was a stellar meal, and the company was excellent. We parted ways after dinner, as Dan and I headed back to Union Station and the long train ride home. It was a fantastic day out with good friends, and I had a really good time. Somewhere in the course of the day Ford extracted a promise from Dan and I that we would be visiting Columbus sometime soon, so I suppose we're bound to that. Oh darn!

We got a late start on Sunday (gosh, I wonder why?), but Dan and I had to part ways - he to help his mother get her DVR running properly and get her tax information to help her file them, and I to the Midwest FurFest storage locker. I met up with linnaeus there and we dug around a bit, looking for some Art Show equipment and checking out what Registration equipment Paul would have to work with. For lunch we went over to Pierogi Place (yum!) and had a nice like chat over lunch. That evening, there was the online MFF staff meeting, which went OK but not as well as I would have liked - I forgot to call on a few people, and I completely forgot to follow up on action items from the previous meeting. I'll need to take better notes before the meeting next time to remind myself of these things.

This week is, as I said, quite busy. Between some projects finally getting off the ground and lots of meetings, it's going to be hectic. But things are going well, and I'm enjoying what I'm doing. That counts for a lot, I guess!

It's been pretty quiet over the last few days, which might explain the lack of updates - not a lot of exciting stuff going on.

takaza and I had a pleasant weekend together at home. On Friday Dan was feeling like a bit of retail therapy and between gift cards and Reward Zone credits we had $75 of credit for Best Buy, so we headed down to the BB in Mundelein. We stopped by the Gamestop there to look at their used PS2 games and I picked up a couple of games I hadn't played before: God of War and Destroy All Humans! (I'm about five hours into God of War and it's a whole lot of fun. A little more gory than a lot of games I've played, but the puzzles are fun and the action keeps things interesting.) As for Best Buy...well, we never did find anything that looked interesting. On the bright side, the next item that comes up on sale, we've got a $75 discount waiting to be used.

On Saturday, we bummed around the house most of the day, except for a run to the grocery store. Sunday I made Dan the chicken and dumplings I promised him for Valentine's Day (a few days late), as well as the delicious semolina bread from Cookwise. Mostly we just sat around the house and enjoyed doing gloriously nothing.

This week has been pretty interesting. Dan will be transitioning from his old job to his new job until the end of the month (gotta love those internal transfers) so he was at the old location in Mount Prospect Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, then he'll be at the new location in Buffalo Grove this afternoon and for the rest of the week. As for me, I got a couple of important reports turned in and I'm at a momentary lull until everything gets signed off and we're working against the clock to finish a couple of projects. In the meantime I'm catching up on accumulated Midwest FurFest correspondence, and trying to resolve an annoying lingering issue with the house rental out in California (they're trying to charge us for damage that we're not responsible for).

Looking ahead to this weekend, we'll be going by the MFF storage locker on Saturday to try to track down some convention assets and answer a couple of questions. Since we'll be out and about, we'll probably make a couple of stops (I want to swing by Ikea) and maybe even be social. No plans yet, but we'll see what happens. Sunday evening is the online MFF staff meeting, and we also need to put together all the numbers for the Point of Sale hardware and software for Anthrocon's Artists Alley. Oh, and speaking of conventions, congratulations to tozier_wah for signing on to run the Information Desk at Midwest FurFest. We own your soul I'm sure you'll have a great time!

All work and no play blah blah blah. You know the drill.

Work has definitely picked up over the last few weeks, which is a good thing. There's several large manufacturing expansions going on that bode well for plenty of work to do through 2010 and beyond, too - always a Good Thing!

Last weekend was quite lovely. takaza and I drove up to Milwaukee and did some shopping at Milwaukee Public Market, Alterra Coffee, and The Spice House. I had thought about stopping by the new brewpub near the Public Market, but that will have to wait for another day. We had a great time refilling our spice cabinet, and picked up some wonderful burgers (including some bacon and provolone burgers) and sausages from Ceriello's. On the way home we did our weekly shopping at Woodman's in Kenosha; we got some great deals on pork loin and something labeled "fresh pork" with no further explanation (it turns out it was boneless meat from the ribs).

On Sunday, we did gloriously nothing. Well, we did watch a couple of football games and the finale to The Amazing Race 12 (which ended like I expected it would, though not necessarily how I'd hoped it would). We also took the 8 pounds of "fresh pork" and, after a bit of butchering (and Dan shortening his finger by a sixteenth of an inch - he's healing nicely, thank you :-) we ground it up and put it into one-pound packets and froze them. Now, when we want Italian sausage for pasta, we pull out of the packets, defrost it in a sink full of cold water (which takes all of 20 minutes) and mix it with Italian sausage seasoning. I still have a 9-pound pork loin to break down into pork chops and maybe a pork roast.

While most everyone is planning for other conventions (we'll make it out there someday...) I've been spending a lot of time working on Midwest FurFest stuff, mainly writing content for the website, the new version of which went live earlier this week. I have a package to send off to one of our Guests of Honor this afternoon, as well, and I'm working on a decision for our third Guest of Honor too; I'm still waiting to hear from a few folks on that {poke, poke}.

While I'm out running errands after work today, I'll need to stop by Garden Fresh Market - they have a sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.49 a pound. Yeah, I'll be picking up a whole bunch of those, because that's a fantastic price (hey linnaeus, I see that they have a store coming down your way, too - come to think of it, that's not far from daveqat and jimcyl's new place, either). It looks like this weekend will be a bit more social than the last, which is kind of nice. With luck, we'll be spending Saturday afternoon with good friends, good food, and good beer.

Oh, and because I missed it twelve days ago: happy birthday to this journal, which turned six years old on January 11th. Man, there's been a lot of ups and downs documented here, but I'm really glad that I've stuck with it.

I started the day feeling completely out of kilter. Long lists of stuff to get done for MFF and for work, weaving in and out of each other, all seemingly insurmountable. After spending the morning across the campus and having gotten a very tasty chicken avocado wrap for lunch, things are looking much better. There's still a ton of stuff that I have to get done, but it's no longer quite so scary.

We had a very enjoyable weekend. Friday evening we had a lovely dinner with genet (unfortunately, roho's soul was still being consumed by his employer), then got to relax and unwind a bit. Following a lazy Saturday morning, takaza and I did a bit of cooking for daveqat's birthday party - Dan made cheezy mashed potatoes with bacon, and I made a warm potato-bacon salad (which was supposed to be a warm salad with bacon and Jerusalem artichoke, but alas, Garden Fresh had no Jerusalem artichokes in stock). For the bacon trifecta, I made pig candy, which was served with brie and sliced pears. Most people who tried it really liked it. The party on Saturday night was quite a lot of fun, and much booze was consumed.

On Sunday we met mirkowuff and perro for lunch at Osteria di Tramonto (yum!) then gave Perro a tour of the new MFF hotel. As he mentioned in his entry today, it's going to be tricky: we have more space to work with, but the way that the space is divided up makes things rather tricky. I think that Perro will do a great job. By the way, Perro has also been named my Vice-Chair for this year. While traditionally that has been a role for the next chairman, in this case I don't care about that. I'm more interested in making sure that we have someone who can reliably answer questions and act in the chairman's role when I am unavailable.

Next up was the first MFF staff meeting of the year. I didn't quite get it in under an hour, but I was close. We covered a lot of ground, and got a lot accomplished. Staff members, if you didn't see the minutes on the staff mailing list, they have also been posted to the staff area of the Midwest FurFest forums. Sunday evening I got a bit of unwelcome news that is going to take some time to figure out how to deal with. Part of the fun of being con chair, I guess.

Finally, I just finished registering for Furry Connection North. We're still working on the accommodations, but we should have that nailed down in the next few days. Woohoo!

Wow. I just realized I haven't really posted much of substance for a couple of weeks. We hosted a kickass New Years Eve party from December 29th through January 2nd; everyone seemed to have a great time and we really enjoyed ourselves as well. Amusingly, the hotel called takaza on the 3rd asking if we wanted to book for next year. I guess this means they like us a lot!

We limped through the rest of last week at a severe sleep deficit, and had a truly lovely weekend of doing pretty much nothing but vegging on the sofa and watching a whole lot of Tivo. On Sunday we did a spot of shopping, stocking up for the week's groceries as well as attempting to fill our shiny new freezer (hah! That'll take a while). It was really nice to have a couple of nice, quiet days of enjoying each other's company and ratcheting down the stress levels.

This week has been relatively unexciting as well, though last night I had a lovely dinner with moryssa, talking over Midwest FurFest-related things. I also took the opportunity to swing by Woodmans and pick up a few things I can't easily find at our local grocery store, specifically cinnamon chips, as well as caramel chips and peanut butter chips from a regional company, and some Callebaut semisweet chocolate chips, just because :-) I see some fun baking in our future!

We don't have a lot planned for the rest of the week. We hope to get to a birthday party on Saturday, and then Sunday is the first Midwest FurFest staff meeting of the new year. That should be a good meeting; I'm hoping that we can go ahead and assign what functions are going to be where in the new hotel as early as possible this year, and that'll be a good start for the process.

Time to wrap up before heading home!

And now it's come to this: After seven years, my final Midwest FurFest Registration Report.

Executive Summary: Proper Prior Planning Prevents P*ss-Poor Performance.

In hindsight, I can see that it is a good thing that this was my last year as Registration Director for Midwest FurFest. A whole lot of the planning that went into this year fell into the category of "let's do it like we did last year", which is great for maintaining the status quo but also stifles creativity and innovation. If you don't change, you don't improve. So while everything went well this year and there were no complaints, I'm still leaving somewhat dissatisfied, but glad things are being turned over into good hands.

( Pre-Convention Planning )

( At the Convention )

( Traffic Analysis )

( Demographic Analysis )

This concludes my Registration Reports for Midwest FurFest for the foreseeable future. Will I write something similar as chairman next year? Tune in and find out!

I want to close by thanking everyone who made my tour at Registration such an enjoyable and fulfilling experience:
Kodian - who stepped in the first year and got us off to a great start
Rustitobuck - who created not one but two completely new Registration systems that have made us the model of efficiency that we are today, and also for suffering through my panicked requests for technical support with dignity and grace
Rama - for providing a bulletproof online registration system
Puma - for making online registration possible and putting up with my quirky requests
DaveQat and Neowolf - both have served as my second in command over the years and both were helpful, reliable, and personable (well, mostly personable, in Dave's case :-)
Everyone who has served on Registration staff over the last seven years - Every single one of you is amazing and fabulous. Want to help out next year? ;-)
Robert King, Aureth, Takaza, and Linnaeus - all the past chairmen of Midwest FurFest. Each of them provided support and guidance when I needed it. I can only hope that I can live up to the fine legacy that you gentlemen have created.
And finally I (again) owe my thanks to my loving husband Takaza, who has gone above and beyond to support, advise, remonstrate, and put up with me. I love you, Dan!

With this report I turn the reins of Midwest FurFest Registration over to Neowolf. I do so knowing that the department will be in good hands.

I will see all of you next year as Chairman of Midwest FurFest at the Westin Chicago North Shore!

There's not going to be a lot of order to this, but hey, bear with me.

• I said it before but I want to say it again: I had the support of the most amazing group of people at Registration this year. They worked hard, and every single one of them deserves high praise: neowolf2, rustitobuck, rolliebear, cobaltfox, little_wolf, daveqat, ramalion, chsck83, shy_matsi, mutantur, moiracoon, woodychitwn, bullethc, chanur2000, drew2u, fordshepherd, kellicjtiger, street22, and tozier_wah. Great job, folks!


• I will freely admit I had some concerns about sabotlours and carol_kitty running Con Suite, mainly due to the complexities of running something as logistically complicated as Con Suite from Albuquerque. I am delighted to say that not only were my concerns completely unjustified, but also that they totally rocked the place, bringing foods heretofore unseen in MFF's Con Suite (sushi! stir fry!). And I am very, very glad that they are returning to staff next year in the same role.


• It is with mixed emotions that I leave Registration behind and move into the Chairman role. I've been running Registration for seven years (the first MFF, damnbear did a great job at it) and it's time for a change. I'm a logistics guy, not a programmer, and it always bothered me that the Registration system was pretty much a black box to me (of necessity - I wasn't expecting anyone to teach me to program, after all!). I'm glad that Neowolf will be taking it over; he will hopefully bring new life and new ideas to the department. As for being chairman: Wow. Daunting doesn't begin to cover it. I have some ideas for the coming year, and I still need to talk to many of the convention staff to see what their plans are for 2008. We've got a terrific group of people on staff and my job will be to stay out of their way and let them do what they do best.


• I get to sleep in next year! Well, at least until 8 AM. Sometimes it sucks to be a morning person.


• Speaking of waking up early, props to crim_ferret and the other Security folks for having fresh coffee each morning. Thanks!


• There will be another Fine Potables Party at Anthrocon, and at Midwest FurFest 2008 ("Chairman's Reception"? :-) Those are far too entertaining to let fall by the wayside.


• So we had three elevators in a four-story hotel and we managed to kill one of them. The Westin has four elevators for 16 floors. Well - this will be fun to manage.

The Midwest FurFest Website has been updated, and has not only the video that we showed at Closing Ceremonies to introduce the Westin but also links to reserve your hotel room and register for MFF 2008! Yay!

So, now there's nothing to worry about until next year. Oh, except for Wuffmeet. And Anthrocon (and creating an entirely new point of sale system for that). Yeah, no worries whatsoever...

Well, it's been almost a week since Midwest FurFest, and I'm finally able to sum it all up: DAMN. And I mean that in a good way :-)

Let's see if I can condense this down to something readable. I do want to preface this by saying that if I don't mention your name it's because it was all a blur - please don't think any slight is intended.

( Wednesday )
( Thursday )
( Friday )
( Saturday )
( Sunday )
( Monday )
I'll have some personal observations about the con in my next post.

Takaza and I are home.

My cell phone is out of commission; it crashed and had to be mailed to Sprint for service. If I'm lucky I'll have it back my Wednesday; if not, I assume it'll be sometime next July or something.

I slipped off the truck as we were loading it and not only seriously whacked my knee but twisted my back and my ankle. Consequently I haven't been much use in moving the massive amounts of stuff that require both Dan and my cars to get home. Oh, and Dan's sciatica flared up again last night.

Whining aside, the con went well. No major problems, and a lot of very pleasant surprises. I'll have a Registration Report sometime in the next few weeks and perhaps a personal report when I can. Now, I'm going to go collapse.