Three days, four events

Another busy weekend, another drought of postings.

Friday we once again attended the Equality Illinois gala in Old Town as guests of our gay patent lawyer friend. Rahm was not in attendance this year, denying monshu the pleasure of snubbing him, but fortunately that and the lake effect snow meant for sparser crowds, so we snagged a five-top on the floor without a shred of guilt. Mandatory food porn: The tiny cheese crostini were the hit of the night, though I preferred the beef egg rolls myself. The macarons were a gummy mess but still couldn't approach the godawfulness of the dipped-raw-cake-batter-on-a-stick.

Saturday me and the lawyer followed up on the suggestion of his to check out the Paradise Baths near Lincoln Square. Slightly shabby, but reasonably nice and very busy. It was a glimpse into an earlier era, one in which the bathhouse was a locus of public life in the same way as the coffeehouse or the bar, and one in which there no "gay saunas", there were just saunas and some of the men who went there did more than just scrub and socialise.

After a quick dinner, monshu and I crossed the street to the home of a friend who's taken a contract for two years in the Emirates. It was a good crowd and I ended up staying much later than I'd intended. I left drunker and better-educated than I arrived, and I don't really ask for much more than that from my social gatherings.

Sunday was a slug day, but I pulled myself together by evening to attend a viewing party at Scruffy's for the season premiere of The Walking Dead. It's not a show I've made a point of following and the one or two episodes I've caught part of seemed pretty flaccid, but it was good company and one of the guests was good enough to pick me up at my door and drop me off there again.

Tomorrow I have lunch with zompist to talk about his new book, which should ease my transition into another week in the Vault. A solution to our router issues is supposed to arrive on Tuesday; we'll see about that.