Apparently, it's been a while since I last posted. Sorry about that. I've been pretty much completely off of LJ in the meantime. So, I've no idea about what's been transpiring with everyone since my last post. [*hangs head in shame*]

Life has been happening, and it's been quite the roller-coaster since my last post. Mostly, things have been good, (occasionally very good), just busy. The past ten days, though, were less fun.

First, the not-so-fun stuff of late:

• Someone, somehow, acquired a checkbook for an old bank account of mine and has been forging checks (mostly in Lawrence, KS). Fortunately, it was an old (now closed), inactive account with very little money in it. The bank has been very cooperative regarding the situation, though. And I've gotten to meet and talk with some cute cops while making police reports regarding the forgeries.


• Came down with a stomach bug last week that I strongly suspect was food poisoning, with the culprit the fast-food restaurant just down the street. It'll be a while, probably, before I eat there again.

The mostly-neutral stuff:

• Turned 35 on the 18th. No big to-do. Spent most of the weekend working (mostly due to helping implement a bunch of computer ugprades at the office with our office manager/IT guy).


• Work continues to keep me more than busy, and is keeping the bills paid.

And now, the good news:

• I was voted in as an associate member of the Chicago Hellfire Club this month. I'd be understating things if I said that I was merely "excited" by this. soxnboxrs' turn will be next year, after he attends Inferno. [Speaking of Inferno, there are still entries in the hopper about my Inferno experience. I'll get back to posting them soon.


• I've had a bit of a side project the past month that's been sucking away nearly all of my non-copious free time the past several weeks. It's a website I've been coding and hoping to start local alpha-testing on in the next couple of weeks. Along the way, I've picked up a new programming language (PHP). The site's not going to be the next google, but I think it's got some potential to make a mark, at least in some quarters. More on that after I get a chance to unveil it and get some feedback from real users.

And the best news of the batch...
soxnboxrs starts a new job on Friday. The position is not tied to a specific worksite. This means that he'll be moving back to Kansas City! He's stuck in Chicago for the time being, because his lease doesn't run out until the end of May and doesn't have any clause that would allow him to feasibly get out of the lease any earlier. While the wait is going to suck, another few months isn't going to kill us. Besides, we'll probably need that long just to get the logistics and budgeting in order (since we'll *both* be moving). [I, for one may need to make an emergency call to the Clean Sweep folks...]

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entries 1, 2, 3 and Inferno Entries 1, 2, 3]

Monday morning, I was awakened by something on the back of my right hand. I was lying on my stomach, with my right arm hiked up somewhat over my head. At first, I thought it might have been a critter of some sort. [*eek*] Then it happened again. Then I realized that it was wet… Becoming more awake by the minute, I felt the wall at the head of the bed. It was dripping wet. I turned the light on, and saw that the water was coming from somewhere in the ceiling above. I grabbed some towels and did what I could to catch the worst of the water. It was still a mess, though.

( I wasn't the only one dealing with water problems... )

Sometime that afternoon, I wandered over to the “music room,” to see what was going on. While there, I ran into gearjock, where we exchanged pleasantries, though his attention was understandably more focused on a scene he was wrapping up. However, it was good to finally get a chance to meet him face-to-face.

( What do clothespins and prime numbers have in common? )

( A friend gets branded )

Later that afternoon, I reconnected with G, and we chatted for a bit. My headspace was still all askew, and even though I was flagging top, I was just finding it next to impossible to find my top headspace. Fortunately, I'm not wired to play exclusively as a top (though I very rarely get the occasion to bottom for BDSM play here in KC). Actually, I suspected that spending some time in bottom headspace might actually be good for me. The problem was finding someone I trusted enough to bottom to who wasn’t already otherwise engaged.

Since G and I had connected over the course of the day, I approached him to see if he’d be willing to oblige. He indicated that he already had a tentative offer from someone else to play that evening, but that this other offer had not firmed up yet. We made arrangements to rendezvous after dinner, by which time he would know if his prior prospect was going to move forward or whether he would be free to play.

Fortunately, his other prospect fell through…

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entries 1, 2, 3 and Inferno Entries 1, 2]

I wandered into a nearby tent, and the very first scene I came upon was something that had been percolating in the back of my head for a while… ( NSFW - Discussions of male anatomy and pointy objects behind the link )

Before long, though, I was approached by a woofy guy (we’ll call him “G”). We had previously encountered each other before at the CHC clubhouse, but had not played before. He’d caught my eye on that occasion, and apparently I’d caught his, too.

( A brief interlude in the shadows )

I meandered around the site a bit more after that, but don’t recall lingering over any other scenes for any substantial length of time that night. I was starting to run out of steam, as it had been a long and emotionally exhausting day. Seeing no reason to really push myself that night at the risk of impairing my energy levels for the next day, I decided to turn in for the evening.

[Forward to Inferno Entry 4]

via sacredjade

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Win amp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

( The music... )

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entries 1, 2, 3 and Inferno Entry 1]

Because of not realizing I was now in the Eastern time zone, I missed the Friday night orientation session. Oops. But I’d been to enough parties at the CHC clubhouse, I was pretty sure of what playspace rules and protocol to expect. The remaining other KC-area attendee (a third had been there for Session A but had departed earlier that afternoon, as he wasn’t staying for Session B) took me around to get the lay of the land.

Let me set the scene, for those who have never been to Inferno. [In case you haven't read it already, this entry by reddywhp is also a good intro.] The event takes place at a semi-rural gay resort. A number of large (think big outdoor wedding sized) tents are positioned around the grounds, each with a particular theme. One tent was dedicated mostly to the event’s headquarters, though a fair portion of that tent was set aside for the event’s sole vendor, Mephisto Leathers.

And then there were the play tents… ( Not really NSFW, but cut anyhow due to terminology )

Imagine Disneyland for kinky guys, and you wouldn’t be far off.

After dinner and the opening ceremonies (which involved a short skit that was so wrong… a takeoff on all of those K-TEL music compilation ads from the 80’s – something like “K-TEL’s BDSM Hits”), the dungeons opened for play.

[Forward to Inferno Entry 3]

Been another long week. My trial at the end of the week went well. We won. Nice to have a clear success every now and then. Most of our cases settle out of court. Others go to trial, with the knowledge that our role is merely to try to minimize the potential damages award against the client. So, it's nice to take something to trial and actually win on occasion.

This week, one of my former boss' stepsons passed away. Yesterday was the visitation, and I spent a fair chunk of my Friday night there. I'm never sure about protocol at such things, but the mood wasn't too somber, and I managed to touch base with some former co-workers that I hadn't seen in some time.

More Inferno recaps coming up. I was too wiped after I got back to town on Thursday to do much other than hit the sack, and it was another long day yesterday, so sorry for the lag.

The plan for tonight is to head down to Bootleggers for a bear/cub contest. Should be fun to get out for a bit...

Back from another work trip to St. Louis. Was tagging along with the boss for this trip, which we hadn't done for quite some time. It was a reasonably productive and fun trip, though we can't afford to double up very often (because most of the time we can't both bill our time, or at least not at the full rate).

I didn't have internet access at the hotel last night. Well, I wasn't willing to pay $10 for internet access. It's frankly odd that the more upscale the hotel, these days, the more likely they will charge for high-speed net access. What's up with that? Give me a mid-tier hotel with free access, thanks. Since I didn't post another Inferno-related entry last night, I'm posting two tonight, to catch up.

I'm probably going to be headed back out of town tomorrow afternoon for a short trial Thursday morning. So, I doubt there will be any entries tomorrow. We'll just have to wait until Thursday for the next installment. [*chuckle*]

In other ruminations, I'm wondering how far the Foley page scandal will go. The story has some legs, and it's starting to look like the House leadership went out of their way to be willfully ignorant of what was going on. Not that any of them are willing to accept accountability for that at this stage.

Frankly, I don't care if the guy was gay or not. Anyone who abuses his position of authority like that with a child deserves the boot. Given his former role on the House Committee for Lost & Exploited Children and his new claim to be a survivor of sexual assault by a clergy member, his conduct is even more odious. And given some of the comments Foley made during the Clinton sex scandal, Foley qualifies as a hypocrite of the highest order. It remains to be seen how far that hypocrisy extends to his former colleagues.

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entries 1, 2, 3]

While my mood had improved somewhat, I was still in a pretty bad funk for a fair amount of Inferno, due to soxnboxrs’ absence. Headspace-wise things definitely hadn’t gotten started off on the right foot.

After arriving onsite, I called soxnboxrs to let him know that I had arrived safely (and that his car had made it unscathed, too). Cell phone reception was spotty at best, so it wasn’t a long call, but at least it gave me a chance to see how he was doing. Over the rest of the event, I checked in with him daily, to give him capsule recaps of how things were going, to pass messages from guys he knew, and to let him know that I was thinking of him. It didn’t make up for not having him there, too, but it was still good to hear his voice.

After getting through the security checkpoint (I almost expected the guy manning the gate to demand “Deine papiere, bitte!”), I checked in with the registration tent and relayed the news that soxnboxrs wasn’t able to attend due to his job canceling his time off. There was a nearly immediate inquiry as to whether I would be willing to share my room with someone else, as apparently space was a little overbooked. I said that I might consider, if absolutely necessary. However, I admitted that I really wasn’t in the best emotional shape to make a decision along those lines just then (nor would it have been fair to subject some stranger to my present mental state in close quarters).

I collected my room key and carted the first load of luggage down to the basement of the old motel building to the room. That section of the motel apparently does duty as a small bathhouse normally. At one end of the hallway, what was normally a lounge-type area had been filled with bunkbeds for the so-called “barracks” accommodations. At the other end of the hall was the entry to the “music room,” which serves as the garage where much of the Inferno gear is stored through the rest of the year, but is repurposed for other uses during Inferno (more about that later). In between, the hallway is lined with small rooms, some doubles, some singles, minimally appointed, with a communal bathroom about halfway down the hall.

My keytag said “DD,” but the rooms I saw only had a single letter or digit on the doors, which was a little confusing. So, I wandered back and forth a bit up and down the hall a couple of times looking for the right room. Finally, figuring that the first “D” perhaps meant “downstairs,” and the second letter denoted the room number, I tried the door marked “D,” only to find that the room was already occupied by a British gentleman (whose name I don’t recall). Apparently, he had gotten confused, as well, and landed in the wrong room. His key tag was D7 or D8, or something like that, so he thought his room was “D.” The door was apparently unlocked, so he just started to make himself at home. With some guidance from the folks at the registration tent, we managed to sort things out and get each of us to the correct room. No drama, just a bit of amusing new-arrival confusion.

I wasn’t sure what the first evening was going to hold for me. Really, what I wanted most was someone to just hang out with. I’m not the most outgoing person by nature, and feeling down was making me more withdrawn. Having someone to tag along with that first evening would have helped. I knew a number of people at the event, but most of them were pretty busy, either helping out with the event or hooking up with other attendees to play. And I didn’t want to impose. So, I decided that I’d just hang out by myself, take things in, and see where things led. This strategy was to prove mildly successful.

[Forward to Inferno Entry 2]

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entry 1, Pre-Inferno Entry 2]

Arising late the next morning was not fun, at all. Between the hangover and being utterly heart-sick about the situation, I was definitely out of sorts. Resigned, zombie-like, and morose would be a fair description.

soxnboxrs and I had discussed how I was going to get to Michigan for Inferno the night before. He would lend me the use of his car, while he would pick up a rental car to get to and from work until my return. Inside, though, I was seriously debating not going to Inferno, at all. My heart just wasn’t in going. soxnboxrs insisted, though. As he put it, we couldn’t allow the situation to completely ruin the event for both of us. So, heart-sick, I climbed into his car by myself and set off on the road.

[Only to realize twenty miles down the highway that soxnboxrs’ work badge was still hanging from his rearview mirror. I had to turn around and head back, as he needed it for work. At least that gave us something to laugh a little bit about, which helped lighten the mood somewhat.]

The trip to the Inferno site took almost three hours, putting me there at about a quarter to six, local time (I didn’t realize until the next day that I’d crossed over into the Eastern time zone. Oops). The drive was grey and gloomy, but with no substantial rain until I crossed over into Michigan. It was not entirely uneventful, as there were numerous construction zones en route, including one that provoked a several-mile traffic jam. There was also an incident where one youngster tried merging into my lane of travel. Fortunately, there was nobody in the lane on my other side, as I had to swerve and hit the brakes to prevent him from sideswiping me.

As I made the drive, my mood settled a bit. I was still depressed, but at least somewhat resolved to give things a chance.

[Forward to Inferno Entry 1]

[Back to Pre-Inferno Entry 1]

We didn’t make it to Charlie’s that night. After having the bombshell dropped on me, I just wasn’t in a dancing mood anymore. Nor was there a trip to Touche, either. [Note to self, schedule another trip to Blue Havana next time I’m up that way....]

It was probably a good thing I’d had a few beers at that point, as it tends to mellow me a bit. Some people are “angry drunks.” Not me. I sometimes stray into becoming a bit maudlin. If somehow, one pisses me off while drunk, though, my behavior tends to be cold and ruthless instead of passionate or violent.

Not that I was upset at soxnboxrs. Frustrated at the situation, furious at soxnboxrs’ local and corporate supervisors

Instead of going dancing, we just stayed at Cellblock and talked. About what had happened, about how I was going to get to Michigan for the event, about how we were otherwise going to deal with the situation, about how we were going to find time again before the end of the year (since the time I was taking off for this trip was leaving me with only a half-day of PTO time for the remainder of the calendar year), and a myriad of other things whose details are lost to me, now.

And I proceeded to get rather drunk. This may not have been the best thing (given the severity of my hangover the next morning), but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I’m not quite sure what time we left Cellblock. It was well before the night crowd began to drift in, I think. Though I was really not paying much attention to anything beyond the two of us. I was definitely done with dealing with people for the night, though.

Emotionally, I was pretty much caught in a feedback loop between being frustrated at the unfairness of the situation and upset that my frustration wasn’t making the situation any easier on soxnboxrs. I’m not entirely sure why I the situation hit me so hard. While I was going to be going without soxnboxrs, I was at least still going to the event. I think part of it was truly because I had invested a lot, mentally, in being able to share this experience together. But what really knocked the ground out from underneath me was facing the fact of how few and short our times are together due to our geographical separation and how this situation had effectively robbed us of three days of precious time with each other -- three days that we weren't going to be able to get back.

We made it back to soxnboxrs’ place safely. By this point, though, I have to be honest that I was a wreck, emotionally. Once I finally wound down and fell asleep, I was still too agitated and stressed to really get any real rest. Morning would come far too soon...

[Forward to Pre-Inferno Entry 3]

The trip to Inferno started relatively well. My flight up to Chicago Friday evening was only running a few minutes late, despite air traffic delays occasioned by the presence of the chimp-in-chief leaving on Airforce 1 (after headlining a $1k/plate fundraising dinner for certain area republican politicos). Still, we didn’t clear the airport until around 9pm. I’d already had a really long day. So by the time we got to soxnboxrs’ place, I was pretty much ready to turn in.

We slept in a little bit Saturday morning. As usual, I rose a little earlier than soxnboxrs. Eventually, he crawled out of bed around mid-morning. He had to go into work that afternoon, but we still had a some time to lounge around a bit. soxnboxrs initiated some play, too. So, we managed to have some fun before he had to run into the office (though I’ve threatened him with taking advantage of him in his office one of these days. [*chuckle*]).

The Metra rail station is within walking distance of soxnboxrs’s workplace, so I rode with him to work, marched myself over to the rail station, and caught the train into the city. The plan was for us to meet up in boystown later that evening and go two-step dancing at Charlie’s.

I meandered around downtown until I found food that sounded palatable (fetuccini alfredo with chicken at Houlihan’s), then hopped the El up to the Belmont stop. First stop was Blue Havana, since I was out of cigars, and wanted a couple for Inferno. The guy running the back of the store, where the walk-in humidor and assorted cigar gear was quite the piece of eye-candy… thin-to-average build, nicely tattooed arms, and well groomed face-fur. While we were back in the humidor chatting about and picking out cigars, he asked me if I was going to be heading over to Touche (one of the three leather bars in town) later that evening. [*chuckle*] After some shameless flirtation, I confessed that I wasn’t sure if soxnboxrs would be able to make it up there tonight, but we’d see what we could do.

[…That didn’t stop me from calling soxnboxrs later and having him grab a leather vest and harness from my bag. While the original plan was to hit Charlie’s for two-stepping, it couldn’t hurt to have some options.]

By late afternoon, I had landed at Cellblock. (Mostly because I was in desperate need of a bathroom by that point and it was too far to hike to Steamworks.) I hung out with a few of the locals, chatting, for the next couple of hours or so until soxnboxrs was able to make it into the city and meet me there.

You know what they say about best-laid plans?

Well, the universe had apparently decided to throw us a curveball at us. And by “curveball,” I’m talking about one of those big rolling rocks from the first Indiana Jones movie.

Shortly after he arrived, soxnboxrs hit me with the news. That afternoon, his employer had canceled his vacation, due to issues imposed from the corporate level of the company. As a result, if he called in sick or was otherwise not at work, he would be given his walking papers.

So, he wasn’t going to be able to attend Inferno.

[Forward to Pre-Inferno Entry 2]

I’m finally finished writing about Inferno, I think. Ok, so I’m now a couple of weeks after the fact. It’s not like I haven’t been busy, since then. [*chuckle*]

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’ve split things up into more manageable chunks. I’ll probably post one or two per day. Though there may be a couple of days this week that I’ll be out of town, so there may be a couple of days between posts at times.

For those looking for a more nuts-and-bolts summary of Inferno and how it’s set up and operates, I highly recommend this entry by reddywhip.

Needless to say, there will be frank discussion of kink and things of a sexual nature in many of the entries. I’ll LJ-cut those sections, for those at work. For those not at work, read beyond lj-cuts at your own discretion.

Also, I should warn folks from the outset that the pre-Inferno entries aren’t happy or fun. They’re part of the story, though, the days leading up to Inferno were integral to how the event unfolded from my perspective.

With that, let’s get this show on the road…

I should be in bed. I have a flight to St. Louis at 7am in the morning. Why am I still awake?

Still alive and kicking here, though spending most of my time either at work or working at home. All work and no play, so to speak...

Inferno stuff is still on the way, promise. I actually want to get all of the entries written before posting them, as writing on one event has occasionally reminded me about something earlier in the event, so there's still revisions going on. Perhaps I'll be ready to start posting them later this week. There's still things from the event (and the circumstances leading up to the event) that I'm still processing and reflecting upon. Once I'm finally ready to start posting them, I'll probably do one entry per day. Seeing as I've already gotten at least 11 pages written, this should keep me in material for a while. [*chuckle*]

soxnboxrs has been running himself ragged. Besides work screwing him over, he's been spending pretty much all of his free time visiting a mutual friend of ours, Paul, in the hospital. Paul has had a serious case of meningitis earlier in the year, and a recurrence earlier this summer. Well, last week, Paul took a serious turn for the worse, as the infection entered the brain itself, becoming encephalitis. It was looking very grim last week, but his condition made a significant rebound over the last few days. It's far too soon to tell, though, whether this is a sign of better things to come. It's very much a day-by-day process at this stage. soxnboxrs has been a trooper through this, but I'm sure he'd appreciate it if you could keep him and our friend in your thoughts.

I've been obsessing lately over a little album by the name of Diabolical Streak by Jill Tracy. I ran across it while browsing CD Baby a couple of weeks ago. Loved the first track, "Evil Night Together" so much, I snagged the entire album off of iTunes a few minutes later.

Her core style is a delightful mix of goth-tinged ragtime piano with sexy, Gorey-esque cabaret vocals tinged with melodrama. Like someone managed to cross Tori Amos with Wednesday Addams. Too much fun.

( Lyrics Sample )

Dear gods you folks have been chatty while I've been away! Almost 680 entries in the past 10 days I've been offline.

The last ten days have been very long, busy, and exhausting. Between the pre-Inferno trip to Chicago, three days at Inferno itself, two long days at the office, and a weekend consumed by the Mr. DB Leather 2007 contest, I've been otherwise occupied and off-line.

Inferno-related entries are in the works and will hopefully be posted, soon. Overall, it was a good event, but circumstances that arose shortly before the event definitely altered my trajectory through the event. More about that later, though.

Work continues to be work, but this has become the month of cancellations. So far, I've had three major out-of-town bookings (trials or full days of depositions) cancel on short notice. Between taking time off for Inferno and all the cancellations, my billables this month are going to be miserable. Not happy about that, at all.

The days are quickly ticking away until I run off to Inferno. I'm still doing the crazy excited-anxious-excited-nervous chasing-my-proverbial-tail thing every time I think ahead to the event. Found out that I won't see one of the few locals that will be attending, because he's only attending Session A, and soxnboxrs and I are only attending Session B. One of the other locals will be attending both sessions, so at least that will be a familiar face. Plus, there's a number of non-locals we know that who will be there (reddywhp and gearjock come to mind, and a few other people who haven't adopted LJ-personae).

I've been musing about scenes I'd like to do (or participate in) at Inferno. One of the things I'd like to instigate would be an electrical play daisy chain. Imagine person a wired up, with the controls being held by person b, who is also wired up by person c... and so on, until the last person (n? or whatever arbitrary letter we've gotten to) has handed over the controls to whatever electrodes he's sporting to person a, completing the circle (circuit?). Could be fun. Could be chaos. Could be both.

Failing that, soxnboxrs and I will just have to wire each other up with our remote-control units and play dueling electrodes. [*chuckle*]

soxnboxrs has also expressed some curiosity about trying mummification in the past. This would be a good chance for me to wrap him up. That's a scene where I really prefer to have at least 1 or 2 people to assist, and I'm sure I could find help at this event. It'll depend on how well it cools off in the evenings.

Hell, I might even be interested in getting mummified, myself. Haven't done that in a while. Or maybe some other type of bondage. As crazy-busy as life has been lately, some enforced "quiet time" might even be a little therapeutic...

And it's been forever (almost a year) since I was last flogged. The ratio at which I'm topping versus bottoming for flogging these days is running about 12:1. But that's largely because of how few flogging tops there are in this neck of the woods, I guess. So, perhaps I'll add that to my Inferno "wish list," too...

I spent a good chunk of this past weekend hands-on with my linux-based server system. It primarily handles three functions. First, it serves as my internal mailserver, collecting storing all of my incoming spamemail. Second, it handles some light file-sharing duties on occasion. Third, and most importantly, it performs file-serving duties for my collection of music, lovingly ripped from cd-rom, purchased at through various vendors, or otherwise acquired. In that capacity, it runs an application known as Slimserver. It drives a couple of thin-client units called "squeezeboxes" that allow me to access my music collection anywhere I've run network cable in my apartment. One's hooked up to the home theater rig, the other one is in the bedroom hooked to a set of powered speakers. If I want to listen to music in my home office, I either just browse to the music share on the network and play the music using winamp or fire up softsqueeze, a java app that emulates a squeezebox.

Well, over time, as I've gotten around to loading more and more music on the server, I was running out of drive space. Last week, that was hitting critical stages. To the point that the machine was firing emails at my admin account every hour or so complaining about the fact. So, I finally got around to buying a new 300gig hard drive to slot into the machine. Ran into a few hardware snags along the way, as the machine's motherboard is a little antiquated. So, it required some coaxing to recognize the size of the drive properly. Then, I had to fiddle some to get my linux install to properly partition and format the drive. (The developers of mke2fs really need to put in some error messages that are a little less inscrutable. I wasted a lot of time troubleshooting that should not have been necessary.) Then, the interminable wait while I copied the music files over to the new drive (merging files from two separate hard drives in the process).

Finally, I was ready to fire slimserver back up and point it at the new, consolidated, music directory. However, somehow, I managed to fubar my slimserver install. Uninstalled, nuked the remaining bits of slimserver and reinstalled. No joy. I could start it up, and it'd die a few minutes later. I didn't have time to try command-line debugging, so I decided to downgrade to the latest stable version (6.3.1 -- I had been running one of the nightly 6.5x betas). A little massaging, and things are working again, but a little more slowly.

The current beta branch (6.5x) is in its final stages before becoming the new stable release. Hopefully, when that comes around, I'll have time to figure out what the problem is. But at least I have music again...

There's lots of travel ahead of me for the next few weeks. Tomorrow, it's off to St. Louis for a couple of days for work. I was just there last Friday, too, for a whirlwind daytrip. Then, next week, I may be spending a couple of days in Wichita. And that Friday, it's off to Chicago for the trip to Inferno. Week after that, I may be bouncing between St. Louis and Tulsa. I'll be spending a good chunk of the last week of the month in Chicago for a work conference.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I'm wondering if hotel rooms are going to start feeling more like home than my apartment does. [*sigh*]

On the plus side, the boss let me know that I'm going to be getting a salary increase soon. He's not sure if it'll hit with this paycheck or the my mid-September paycheck. Looking forward to that, though. Especially considering how I have to float the travel expenses on my own dime until the firm gets around to cutting me a reimbursement check. That has taken five or six weeks, on occasion. My travel-related expenses for work have been averaging at about $1,000 per month lately. This month will probably be a killer... I'm probably going to be pushing $2,000, the way things are looking.