Month: November 2024

WhiskyFest Chicago 2024

I have mentioned my appreciation for whisk(e)y before, in particular when discussing Advent Calendars last year. At the tail end of my five weeks of travel, I attended Whisky Advocate’s WhiskyFest in downtown Chicago, coincidentally at the same hotel that hosted Chicon a couple years ago, during which some friends and I held a whiskey tasting party. Each attendee at WhiskyFest was provided with a tasting glass, a pen, a bag, and a program book with the map and list of whiskies each booth was featuring.

A map of the Grand Ballroom at WhiskyFest, organized (mostly) by distillery.

On the map, you’ll notice three dozen booths; if you exclude the Whisky Advocate, tequila, and Bacardí (best known for their rum) booths, that’s still around 30 different distilleries to try, with at least 3 choices at most booths. A conservative estimate would be 90 different whiskies to try, and that’s not even counting the leftovers from the VIP hour that preceded general admission.

Wow, now that I’ve written out those numbers, I feel like an underachiever, having only tried 19 whiskies that night. To be clear, most of the servings are a sip or two, designed to provide a taste rather than intoxication. You’ll note that the map also shows several buffet tables, though it’s missing the food tables on the right side, as well as the plethora of chocolate desserts in the lobby. Attendees were encouraged to eat between tastings and provided with bottled water to stay hydrated.

My primary focus was the smaller distilleries, figuring they’re the ones I’m least likely to randomly encounter at a restaurant. And yes, I had checked my whiskey list before the event, making sure that every whiskey I tried was new to me (at least since I started tracking them). The two that stood out the most, in quite different ways, were the Mash & Mallow S’mores Whiskey – a fabulous liqueur – and the Praedictum 15 year Kentucky Straight Bourbon – a leftover from the VIP hour that retails around $600 a bottle.

Overall, it was a nice lead-in to this year’s Flaviar Whiskey Advent Calendar, which I’ll once again post to TikTok as I open them. Since I bought Costco’s Whiskies Tour of the World set as well, I’ll probably continue posting well into January to give each whiskey its chance to shine.

Five hotel rooms, a photo post

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been traveling a lot. All of the rooms have been nice and the beds comfortable (unlike one bed I slept on during a summer trip), but I do appreciate sleeping in my own bed, competing with my cats for space.

  • An array of plushies on a king-size bed in Madison.
    An array of plushies on a king-size bed in Madison.
  • A spacious room in downtown San Diego, featuring a large work desk, a king-size bed, and a small table with a chair by the window.
    A spacious room in downtown San Diego, featuring a large work desk, a king-size bed, and a small table with a chair by the window.
  • Not much room to spare in this downtown Chicago hotel room with a full-size bed.
    Not much room to spare in this downtown Chicago hotel room with a full-size bed.
  • A double at the hotel in Oakbrook with a plush on each bed.
    A double at the hotel in Oakbrook with a plush on each bed.
  • This corner room in Philadelphia had beautiful wall art on the wall behind the king-size bed.
    This corner room in Philadelphia had beautiful wall art on the wall behind the king-size bed.

Traveling again…

This week rounded off my hectic 5 hotels in 5 weeks travel schedule with a work trip to Philadelphia. Here’s the quick list of where I’ve been:

View of tall buildings from my hotel room in Philadelphia
Philadelphia from my hotel room
  • Madison, Wisconsin – for Gamehole Con
  • San Diego, California – a work trip
  • Chicago, Illinois – this was an overnight downtown for work
  • Oak Brook, Illinois – for WindyCon (we built a Box Fort)
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – a work trip

Not surprisingly, I am exhausted.

Thoughts on the 2024 US Presidential election and waiting for the results

It’s election morning here in the United States (though the post won’t go live for a couple days), and many people are understandably anxious about the possibility of a convicted felon winning again. (If you’re somehow unsure where I stand politically, read my previous post here.)

Heart-shaped sticker that reads "I Will Vote - 11.5.24 - Remember January 6"

I found myself explaining our election process to co-workers in Latin America yesterday. Not the messy, outdated Electoral College part, which would probably have made for a longer meeting. Rather I was detailing the different voting options and how that delays the official results. Ignoring the states that have switched entirely to mail-in voting, many states offer absentee ballots by mail – including here in Illinois – in addition to early voting. One of the reasons for that, as I explained, is because election day is not a federal holiday. Most of the people I was talking with live in countries where everything closes for election day, which encourages people to vote. But if you look at our federal holidays, many of them have become glorified shopping days, which means retail workers don’t have the day off. (For example, look back at how shopping crept into Thanksgiving Day celebrations before the pandemic.)

Before the pandemic, I typically voted early because the timing was better for my work and life schedules. Those ballots were typically electronic voting, offered at a smaller number of locations than election day, and can be tabulated with the other votes. To be clear, I’ve been voting early long enough that I have never been to my current voting site, having moved to this house shortly before the 2016 election.

Mail-in ballots are, of necessity, paper, and that’s where many of the delays in counting happen. The rules for requesting a paper ballot vary by state – some require that you be incapable of voting in person for medical or other reasons, while others (like Illinois) simply require that you request it. In fact, Illinois allows voters to sign up for recurring paper ballots, instead of having to request one each election. The request has to match your voter registration, of course, and the ballot includes an envelope that you sign – that signature gets compared to your voter registration. This simulates the process of walking into the voting location, showing your ID, and signing to request your ballot.

Each of those mailed in ballots has to be processed – that is, the information on the envelope confirmed – before the votes can be tabulated. When that processing can start varies by state, as does when the mail-in vote counting can start. In fact, it varies so much, Ballotpedia has an entire page on the subject. The important thing to note is that many states don’t allow absentee ballot counting to start until the polls close on election day, and several states allow ballots to count if they were postmarked by election day and received within the next couple weeks. This made a huge difference in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic when more of us voted by mail and states had to work through those ballots after election day.