tigertoy

I had several places I wanted to be to celebrate the new year, but I decided I would go to spend time with old friends rather than new, so I went to Milwaukee.

The trip up had some minor bits of stress.  I got going almost on time, but not fully mentally functional, as I would discover as I drove past Rantoul on I-57, only realizing at that moment that I was on the wrong road -- I was supposed to have stayed on I-74 to get to I-39, because I was going to VOTK.  Shortly after that, I realized that when I'd put my snacks in the cooler I'd forgotten to put the sandwich I had made (that I didn't eat on Thursday when I didn't go to EFRC because I felt too crappy with my sinus infection and cold), so I was mentally hitting myself with a hammer.  I had just installed my shiny new IPASS tollway transponder, and I drove through the automatic lane at the toll plaza at the Wisconsin border -- and the transponder didn't visibly do anything.  Wait, the papers they sent with it said it's supposed to have blinking lights.  Shit, I said, I guess it didn't work, now I have to deal with a missed toll when I get back.  But I managed to decide that since I couldn't do anything about it then, I wouldn't worry about it.  Made it to VOTK, an hour later than I meant to.  Although it was slightly above freezing, it was very windy and felt miserably cold.  I took a few pictures of Jasmine, and renewed my membership and got a calendar.  Then on to Milwaukee, where I got to filkart and ithiriel's house, and got hit by the tired bus; I got into the living room and collapsed in a chair.  After a bit of vegging and some cheese and crackers I was able to move; we grabbed a bite to eat at Culver's and then drove to Lytheria.  I found myself feeling more like a spectator than usual.  Filk didn't happen until after the toast at midnight, and it was only me, filkart, wyld_dandelyon, and beige_alert; we ran out of steam by about 2.  The filk was nice but less than I expected.  Got home and fell into bed.

Today, after I got up at noon, we determined that Champion Chicken, the restaurant that is a cornerstone of my friendship with Art, was closed for the holiday, so we went to Athens, where they had a prime rib buffet, a little pricey at $15 for a fairly short buffet, but the food was decent and we all had too much.  Then Art and I went for a short trip to the museum, so I could see butterflies in January.  ithiriel stayed home and made us biryani, which seemed unnecessarily generous.  And then I came home, because I needed to get home before the tired found me again.

Here at home, the furnace is still limping along, but it's still keeping the house warm.  The furnace guy told me he'd call me on Friday to set up an appointment, but he didn't, so I have to try to call him and hopefully fit that in real soon.  I did manage to get logged in on the IPASS site (after more swearing than should have been needed), and my account had been charged for the toll on Saturday.  So I guess the thing works after all.

The quick version of my New Year's trip:

I wasn't as ready to go Sunday morning as I should have been, and I got stressed out about taking longer than I meant to about getting packed.  But even though I ended up leaving something like 45 minutes later than I meant to, I was able to grab a sandwich and get to VOTK when I meant to.  I got my calendar and the folks there were really happy with the several years' worth of aluminum cans that I dropped off -- out of proportion to how much 40 lbs or so of cans could be worth.  I then headed up to Milwaukee and got to filkart's, where we piled into his car and we went to Barisha's for an event that was scheduled to be a group singalong with the local public radio's folk music show.  We didn't end up doing much singing, instead hanging out and chatting.

Monday morning Art and I went off to the Milwaukee Public Museum, leaving ithiriel to do work she had to do.  From there, we walked to Thai Palace, our favorite Thai place over the years, where ithiriel met us.  Unfortunately, Thai Palace seems to started watering down their menu.  My "hot" Nam Sod was quite hot, but the curry that followed, while tasty, didn't deserve to be called more than medium, and itheriel ordered her food "Thai style" and survived.  From there, we headed to New Year's Eve at Lytheria.  The party was fun; I had a good chat with beige_alert, played one game of cutthroat and actually managed to look like I knew what I was doing with a pool cue, and ate more than I should have.  The first round of filking was good, with more people than would fit in the filk space, and I did several songs without falling on my face.  Then we toasted the New Year, and most of the filkers got sucked into the stupid vortex watching the commercials tape a second time.  The second round of the filk was just me and Michael, and I was getting tired.  We started leaving around 2, and were actually on our way by about 2:30.  We'd decided that ithiriel would ride home with me while filkart drove Jim home in her car.  ( and then things got very interesting )