Lost weak end

Another weekend mainly spent working after too little productivity during the week. Blech. Light at end of tunnel on this big project, at least. This year we had three months to do what we crammed into seven weeks last year. Yet it always makes for a big rush at the end. More than a decade ago a partner at the consulting firm I used to work at wryly observed that "all projects expand to fill the entire allotted time frame" or some such. Dude was right, even if he was into copping cheap highs off of nicotine gum.

So sadly, the admittance pass I had printed out back on 31 January for a lecture and tour out at Fermilab on Sunday afternoon went unused. But since I had coordinated the post-tour dinner and drinking plans I had to drag my sorry ass out to Warrenville, IL, to hit the Two Brothers Tap House. I've liked their beers and the story of how the two brothers were so taken by all the delish beers they tried while traipsing about Europe that they decided to open their own brewery, and wanted to see where it all came from.

Get in the car, fire up the iPod and...iTunes has struck again! I wanted the majesty of Perfect from Now On to wash over me whilst I zipped along Rt. 56, but for some reason iTunes had reordered the tracks. (It does this to me on occasion; I'm sure it's probably a feature rather than a bug, perhaps part of a "Listen Different" campaign that I missed out on.) While I wouldn't care in most instances, PFNO is one of those rare albums that was actually thoughtfully put together and works as a big old rockasaurus maximus that cannot be excerpted or reordered. Damn damn damn, somehow ended up listening to the Cars instead. And realized that Karen O. really wants to be Ric O. Her vocal hiccups, explained. Cars sounded mighty good in my car; "Touch and Go" is such a brilliant mixture of new wave paranoia and rockabilly-infused riffs and rhythms and one of my favorite guitar solos ever.

Even with a Google map and GPS, I managed to pass right by the Tap House. How, you ask? Because I was looking for a standalone building that resembled some sort of pub/restaurant, not a giant white industrial building whose sole signage was found on the small fleet of delivery trucks. Figured things out, parked, entered and sat down at the bar with a tasty Ebel's Weiss and waited on le crew.

Willem and Em were first of the gang to arrive, and we grabbed a table outside while I had my first-ever taste of the Domaine DuPage French Country Ale. Unusual setup for a beer garden type thang, as we were surrounded on all sides by building and parking lot pavement. But there, in the distance, were trees, so the long focus it was.

But I was distracted by thoughts of the deck and the duck, both back home. Part of me wanted to be sipping beers on my deck, which we had "refreshed" this weekend. Gone is the odd wall that once cut it off from the rest of the yard. Despite the bit of privacy it provided from the neighbors to the rear I never liked it, since it almost made for a room unto itself in the great outdoors, which felt wrong here in the age of open floor plans. It also bugged me that it blocked all views into the yard after dark, when the skunks and raccoons and foxes come out to play.

Foxes? In a very mature, built-up suburban neighborhood? Ah yes indeed; there was one in the driveway Saturday night. A most depressing sight it was, actually, as it was there to steal the duck's eggs.

Duck eggs? Yes, the previous weekend I found that a duck was nesting next to our driveway, just beneath one of the lower-level windows. Why the duck chose the only regularly trafficked side of our house for her nest I'll never know, but she was all but invisible among the piles of composting leaves and smattering of tulips. I figured the rat bastard raccoons who constantly try to snack on my tasty trash and compost would take her out at first opportunity, but every morning for a solid week I was pleasantly surprised to look out there and still see her sitting on her nest. She even made it through a very loud Saturday, when a carpenter spent a full day sawing and hammering and otherwise building a new railing and bench to replace the hated deck wall.

But Saturday night just before 11 pm I heard a most distressed duck beating her wings, and rushed to look out the door to see what had her in such a fowl mood. I was stopped from opening the screen door by the sight of a fox a mere 10 feet away. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it in its eyes and kept shaking the screen door in hopes of scaring it away, but the damn fox just disappeared behind the hedge row, then emerged a minute later sauntering down the driveway and across the street to dine on an egg.

Mother Duck was on the front lawn quacking up a storm; I managed to anthropomorphize her noises into screams, of course, and I couldn't bloody well blame her for being so upset. Two more times the fox and I engaged in the same game of noise, light and eluding, with me wishing for a firearm for the first time in my life. And then I gave up, knowing that there was no way to protect a wild bird for the three remaining weeks of brooding, let alone guarding her and the hatchlings afterwards. 

It's silly that I got so wrapped up in it and freaked to see real live nature happening before my very eyes, but there it is. (As a post-script, Mother Duck did not become the fox's dinner, at least that night. She was hanging out on our front lawn the next evening.)

So I think I got about half of the duck tale across to Willem and Em before the rest of our party, Big Frank, his friend Fred and said friend's 10-year-old son, arrived all tingly from the scientific goodness of the supercollider. Frank was clean-shaven for the first time in a decade or more and looked about as cherubic as a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Irishman of nearly 40 years can look. Also, though he's much fitter than his father was at the same age, he was still showing signs of impending big face.

The talk was all over the place, as will happen with interesting new folk in the midst. The lad kept asking amusing questions -- whose idea was it to have me be the guy who tries to explain what a free radical is? And why did I have to be the only non-techie among the grownups? I opted for a Prairie Path Golden Ale, and ultimately rounded things out with another Weiss, which prompted the young 'un to ask why my beer was all cloudy. Ah, the wonders of yeast!

The food was decent, even though they screwed up two of our orders. Darn tasty pulled pork sammich, actually. 

Too soon the gathering was over, as all others present had to return to the far-off city while I only had to trek a dozen miles along the country road that had brought me there. And back to the salt mines to toil some more, which is what I should be doing now.