The countdown continues....
Well, with less than two weeks now until I go to Iceland I realized that I am long overdue for posting again, especially since I've only posted a handful of times since getting back from Arizona. It's not like nothing has been going either; Marc came down a couple weeks ago, and last weekend I went up to Chicago.
First off, as far as recovering from surgery goes, everything is going well on that front -- healing is going very nicely and I'm back at work again (unfortunately). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be just fine while I'm away -- I admit that having some sort of horrible medical problem thousands of miles from home gives me the willies, but I realize how irrational that really is.
So what've I been up to for the last couple months? I have to admit, a lot less than I'd hoped. I did manage to do a fair bit of writing, but between taking care of things post-surgery and just generally feeling a bit of a malaise I probably squandered an opportunity to push through a lot of things I really should have. I have continued to watch a lot of movies, and I'll try to post some short reviews in a bit. Marc also got me to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I had never seen (it was good, obviously).
Last weekend, I went up to Chicago and Marc and I had dinner at Giordano's with Sam and Gracie on Friday. Saturday, unfortunately, Marc had to do some work so we went downtown and I spent a few hours at a coffee shop doing some writing while he was working on his rollout. I was surprised how much I got done really -- I think leaving myself disconnected from the internet actually got me to focus on my writing -- a trick I'll try to put to good use in the future. I even managed to get back and work on some projects I had left a while back; I'm thinking that maybe this weekend I'll try heading out to in the morning and doing the same thing and see if I can't get more done.
After that, we went to have dinner at the Twin Anchors, which is, I gather, a bit of a Chicago institution. It certainly had the crowd to match -- we had to wait about an hour and a half for a table, so we spent most of that time wandering around the neighborhood it's in, which is really pretty neat. In addition to a beautiful cathedral -- the first real cathedral I think I've ever seen, as opposed to just a church (Edit: Evidently they call it a church, I'm not sure what actually makes a cathedral a cathedral) -- it had a lot of the kind of old architecture that I'd really like to live in someday, and the kind of neighborhood close to the heart of a city I'd like as well.
The restaurant was very good, though it is small and cramped. Marc's ribs were probably the most tender I've ever had, and were very good (he let me have a few), though I can't speak for the sauce (I prefer my meat without sauces usually). My steak wasn't mindblowingly spectacular, but it was pretty good, and the ambience at the place is pretty hard to beat. It was evidently a big hangout for Frank Sinatra back in the day, and a ton of other celebrity photos and news clippings and other assorted accoutrements cover the walls. A scene in The Dark Knight was also filmed here, although in the movie it is nearly empty, which is hard to believe considering how crowded it was when we were there!
After that, Marc surprised me and took me to the last Second City show of the night, which was my first time to Second City and really I think the first real live show of anything I've seen in a very long time. The show we saw was Campaign Supernova, and it was pretty good -- there were a few kind of meh sketches, but the good ones were really good, and I had a lot of fun. The only bad part about it was that we went to the late show, which has some extra improv and sketches being tested out for the next show stuck in it, so we didn't get out of the theatre until almost 0200, which was a little later than I had expected! Well worth seeing though and I would definitely like to go there again and see another show sometime.
This week, heading back to work has been a little tough -- it hasn't helped that I seem to have either come down with bad allergies or a cold, though. This morning I woke up and felt like I'd been run over by a truck, so I actually called in sick -- something I'm pretty loathe to do when I'm trying to get back in the swing of things as best I can before I fly off on another two weeks of vacation!
Speaking of which, I'm getting really excited about going to FanFest the closer it gets, despite all the recent craziness in the Icelandic financial sector that the CCP CEO felt necessary to calm fears about in a dev blog. Despite the fact that the last time I spent any time around Eve devs I came down with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, I really am looking forward to hopefully talking to more of them, and with any luck making a better impression this time. I am also promising to take lots more pictures, both there and in Boston on the way back, and I'll be posting those here so everyone can see what it was like.
Look for at least one or two more posts this weekend, and then I'll probably try and get something up next weekend before I depart. And, while I can't say I'll be liveblogging from FanFest exactly, I will try to post regular updates while I'm there!
First off, as far as recovering from surgery goes, everything is going well on that front -- healing is going very nicely and I'm back at work again (unfortunately). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be just fine while I'm away -- I admit that having some sort of horrible medical problem thousands of miles from home gives me the willies, but I realize how irrational that really is.
So what've I been up to for the last couple months? I have to admit, a lot less than I'd hoped. I did manage to do a fair bit of writing, but between taking care of things post-surgery and just generally feeling a bit of a malaise I probably squandered an opportunity to push through a lot of things I really should have. I have continued to watch a lot of movies, and I'll try to post some short reviews in a bit. Marc also got me to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I had never seen (it was good, obviously).
Last weekend, I went up to Chicago and Marc and I had dinner at Giordano's with Sam and Gracie on Friday. Saturday, unfortunately, Marc had to do some work so we went downtown and I spent a few hours at a coffee shop doing some writing while he was working on his rollout. I was surprised how much I got done really -- I think leaving myself disconnected from the internet actually got me to focus on my writing -- a trick I'll try to put to good use in the future. I even managed to get back and work on some projects I had left a while back; I'm thinking that maybe this weekend I'll try heading out to in the morning and doing the same thing and see if I can't get more done.
After that, we went to have dinner at the Twin Anchors, which is, I gather, a bit of a Chicago institution. It certainly had the crowd to match -- we had to wait about an hour and a half for a table, so we spent most of that time wandering around the neighborhood it's in, which is really pretty neat. In addition to a beautiful cathedral -- the first real cathedral I think I've ever seen, as opposed to just a church (Edit: Evidently they call it a church, I'm not sure what actually makes a cathedral a cathedral) -- it had a lot of the kind of old architecture that I'd really like to live in someday, and the kind of neighborhood close to the heart of a city I'd like as well.
The restaurant was very good, though it is small and cramped. Marc's ribs were probably the most tender I've ever had, and were very good (he let me have a few), though I can't speak for the sauce (I prefer my meat without sauces usually). My steak wasn't mindblowingly spectacular, but it was pretty good, and the ambience at the place is pretty hard to beat. It was evidently a big hangout for Frank Sinatra back in the day, and a ton of other celebrity photos and news clippings and other assorted accoutrements cover the walls. A scene in The Dark Knight was also filmed here, although in the movie it is nearly empty, which is hard to believe considering how crowded it was when we were there!
After that, Marc surprised me and took me to the last Second City show of the night, which was my first time to Second City and really I think the first real live show of anything I've seen in a very long time. The show we saw was Campaign Supernova, and it was pretty good -- there were a few kind of meh sketches, but the good ones were really good, and I had a lot of fun. The only bad part about it was that we went to the late show, which has some extra improv and sketches being tested out for the next show stuck in it, so we didn't get out of the theatre until almost 0200, which was a little later than I had expected! Well worth seeing though and I would definitely like to go there again and see another show sometime.
This week, heading back to work has been a little tough -- it hasn't helped that I seem to have either come down with bad allergies or a cold, though. This morning I woke up and felt like I'd been run over by a truck, so I actually called in sick -- something I'm pretty loathe to do when I'm trying to get back in the swing of things as best I can before I fly off on another two weeks of vacation!
Speaking of which, I'm getting really excited about going to FanFest the closer it gets, despite all the recent craziness in the Icelandic financial sector that the CCP CEO felt necessary to calm fears about in a dev blog. Despite the fact that the last time I spent any time around Eve devs I came down with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, I really am looking forward to hopefully talking to more of them, and with any luck making a better impression this time. I am also promising to take lots more pictures, both there and in Boston on the way back, and I'll be posting those here so everyone can see what it was like.
Look for at least one or two more posts this weekend, and then I'll probably try and get something up next weekend before I depart. And, while I can't say I'll be liveblogging from FanFest exactly, I will try to post regular updates while I'm there!
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A cathedral's a church which is also the seat of a bishopric. i.e. it has a bishop or archbishop in it, not just a priest.
Ah, that's what I guessed. Thanks for that handy info. :)