Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, July 29, 2002
Having a great time, wish you were here.
Friday, we drove across the state, spending seven hours to do a five hour trip, because of stops to feed HG and to walk Isabel around so she wouldn't go crazy being trapped in the car. My oldest brother Johnny, his wife Sylvia, and his two kids are staying at my parent's place while the remodel of their house is finishing up. My other Spokane brother Steve came out as well with his wife and two daughters. It is always a blast to have my family around. A friend of my father has a bad back and owns a boat. Due to his back, it is difficult to launch and recover the boat, so much so that two years ago he used it only twice, and last year not at all. He made a deal with my Dad to keep the boat at my parent's dock. We get to use it when he's not. He's happy as heck, using it almost every other weekend. We're having a blast, getting to use it the rest of the time. We went out tubing (being towed behind the boat on a large innertube with a nylon outer wrap with handles) and both Johnny and my Dad took turns totally trying to dump me. Man oh man do you get sore on the tube if they're trying hard. Uff-da! Bam bam bam bam bam WHOOOP caught some air bam bam bam bam aieeeeee glug sucking down lake. heh. My brother-in-law Kyle recently bought a used two-man jetski. He brought it out Saturday. It was having starting problems, but man oh man is that sucker fun when it's running. WooooooooOOOooooO! I managed to catch some air jumping boat wakes. What a blast! Right now my head is pounding, I drank most of a bottle of merlot with dinner and was dehydrated to start with. NOT GOOD. Blogging while sucking down gatoraid and allowing the alka-seltzer to cut the headache. Friday, July 26, 2002
Off for a 10 day vacation to my parent's log home on the shores of beautiful Spirit Lake, Idaho. Wooo!
Amazing how much crap it takes to go someplace with babies. Thursday, July 25, 2002
Big Brother Is Watching Me
Well, I found out via Slashdot that starting in 1996, and in pretty much every GM vehicle since 1997, GM (aka Chevy, Olds, Pontiac, Buick, GMC) has been putting Collision Data Recorders in all their vehicles, including my 2000 Chebby Silverado pickup. This blackbox records the last five seconds before an impact, and reports if you had your seatbelt buckled, what the vehicle speed was, what the engine RPM was, when you pressed on the brakes, etc. I'm sure the insurance companies LOVE this. Maybe I should stick to driving my 1971 Olds Vista Cruiser. Speaking of my truck, the dealership tried to bone me by giving me just a copy of the ignition key. No keyless entry keyfobs, no copies of the canopy key, no copies of the locking center console key. They claimed the keys were "lost", and gave me a recommendation for a local locksmith. I checked with the Chebby dealer, new keyless keyfobs were $63 each, and the bastards wanted like $40 to program them for me. (It's a pretty simple procedure involving turning the ignition key on and off a few times, then hitting a sequence on the keyfob... should be free you bastards!) Also, when we bought the truck, after we'd agreed on a price with the sales manager, we went to see the finance manager. We paid half in cash but half was financed, to be paid off when we get paid for selling our old truck. The finance manager kept trying to sell us extra crap. I explained to him in plain words that we were in a hurry, B had to get HG back home to change his diaper (we weren't planning on it taking so long, stupid me, buying a car always takes hours) and feed him. He kept plugging away at it, pissing me off more and more. He'd want to tell me about extended warranties. I said I was not interested. He said he was obligated to explain the details cuz I obviously didn't know them. I explained that he was pissing me off, and I doubted his job included deliberately pissing off the customers after they said no. He kept at it, fuck I was pissed. We could easily have chopped 10 or 15 minutes off the paperwork process if he'd just done the paperwork. Anyway, I was pissed about that so I wrote a letter to the owner saying how nice my saleman was but how mad I was about the finance motherfucker for dragging out the paperwork and going out of his way to make me angry. Then I mentioned how their web page says they follow the golden rule (the "do unto others as as you'd have them do unto you", not the "he who has the gold makes the rules") and that I didn't have any of the keys that normally come with a vehicle. On Tues Bridget got a call from the general manager, apologizing like crazy. We dropped the truck off Tues night, and picked it up last night. Full set of keys to everything, and two keyless entry keyfobs. Sweet! Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Ok, I need to remind myself again why I bothered to put a "search" feature on my blog. I know I use it occasionally, but here are the search results for the past month:
- 1 for "denim shorts" - 1 for "love sick" - 1 for "what to do about love" Creepy! I often forget that the internet is full of weirdos. It's been freakin' roasting hot here, 87F yesterday. We had friends over for dinner and B wanted to make a pork loin roast, but we didn't want to use the oven so I cooked it in the BBQ outside. After dinner we fired up the sprinkler for Isabel to play in, her first time. She ran up to it, reached a hand out, and figured out it was water, and it was actually spraying through the air! She squealed really loud and started to clap! Then she'd run up to it, put her hands in, and splash around. Sometimes it would sweep over her and she'd run away really fast, it was very cute. She loved it. She's gonna LOVE playing at the beach at my folk's place next week. Funny, I am selling my old exercise bike on eBay. With two days to go, it's selling for a whopping $1. Ha! I need to get it out of the house anyway, and I bike to work now so I don't forsee ever needing it again. Tuesday, July 23, 2002
It was a busy weekend.
Friday afternoon some friends were bored and decided to go hit a bar with $2 happy hour appetizers including half-pound burgers, so I called Bridget to see if she wanted me to watch the kids so she could go out. I'd forgotten we were hosting a dinner party for our downstairs roommate at 7pm. She said since she couldn't eat (cuz of dinner) and couldn't drink (cuz of breastfeeding) that there wasn't much point in her going, so I got to go instead. Wooo! The restaurant was sorta sentimental to us, they have a banquet room where we held our wedding reception. They had a tasty Full Sail pilsner on tap, ice cold and damn good. We basically ordered one of each of the appetizers, but I only tasted, since I knew I had homemade tacos in two hours. On Saturday I had to get up early to help Bridget's sister Judy and her boyfriend Bill move into their newly purchased home. Felicity, you think YOUR new house was dirty? This place was three times as much and the fridge was filled with moldy rotting food. Nasty! The place gave me the heeby-jeebies. Judy owns this big-ass heavy couch. It doesn't have an event horizon like a hide-a-bed, but it's still damn heavy cuz the two outboard seats are recliners. I have moved it twice so far, this was the third. Grrr! I hate moving. I hate moving other people only slightly less. Blarg. They didn't even have breakfast beers for me. Eh, I like Judy so it wasn't THAT bad. We got them moved in near-record time, just under 3 hours. That afternoon we went to the Bite of Seattle down at Seattle Center (where the Worlds Fair was 40 years ago, under the Space Needle). We go every year and grub down on the $2 tastes each booth offers, skipping the lame ones that offer only lemonade or salad. Pshaw. Unfortunately, this year half the place was under construction, forceing the huge crowds into even less space, that sorta sucked. Saturday night I bailed with my brother-in-law down three houses to play pool at my brother's place. The three of us played "cutthroat", a billiards game I hadn't played before. Three players, slop counts. If you make a drop you can pick low, medium, or high, playing to NOT lose all your balls (1-5 low, 6-10 med, 11-15 = high). It's weird to shoot at the eight ball anytime. You get another shot if you sink ANY ball by any means, so sometimes the right thing to do is sink one of your own to set up a shot on the last ball of someone else. If you scratch the other two guys get to extract one of their balls if available. I won a ton, probably because I am by far the worst pool player of the three. They were gunning for each other, not considering me to be much of a threat. I ended up winning more than them combined. Heh. On sunday was B's baby group grand one-year birthday party meeting. We met at the zoo, which sounded like a good idea but after paying for parking and most people aren't members, and we just sat on the lawn playing with babies, it didn't really make sense, a free park would have been a better idea. Oh well. Only 3 of the 8 babies are walking, and HG is almost as big as some of these one-year-olds. A bunch of them made cute babies but now they're some pretty ugly toddlers. Funny how the cutest kids have the coolest parents. I re-read Red Storm Rising in the gaps on Sunday and Monday, staying up late to finish it. This was the second time I read it, the first being when I was in the Marines in August of 1990, on my two-week active duty which got changed to having us help the Air Force ship out tons of people from Norton Air Force Base to Saudi Arabia for Desert Sheild. The whole two weeks I was sure I was not going home for a long time, it was quite a surprise to go home. As for the book, it's still a fun read, I love Clancy's writing. It's amazing how much the world has changed in less than 20 years. Last night we took Isabel to the wading pool near Greenlake. She was a bit shy at first, but after a few minutes she figured out that it was WATER (after reaching down to splash it) and then she started running around in it having a grand old time. She locked on to every ball or other toy there, but fortunately most seemed to not have owners. I was impressed at home many languages and accents I heard, I mean there might have been 30-50 adults there but almost half didn't speak English natively. Good level of diversity. They pulled the drain plug at 8pm each night which was the only way we got Isabel out of there. She is going to LOVE playing at the beach at my parent's place next week. Friday, July 19, 2002
Babies. Man, it's funny how life bunches things up. "When it rains, it pours".
NO, we're not pregnant AGAIN. We made that mistake once, she's now got an IUD, and they're 99.9% effective. However, since Isabel was born last year, and not counting the baby group people I know because of that, I know of at least ten babies being born, two of which are our own. I also currently know of at least six pregnant women. This vs two years ago when I didn't know anyone pregnant. Of course, to offset this I don't think we have a single wedding to attend this year, vs a few years ago there were a zillion. On Tuesday we found out that a good friend of mine and his wife had their baby and that Bridget's youngest sister is finally pregnant, she's been trying for a year. Here's some newborn baby pictures and some one-day-old baby pictures. With the last name of Simpson I have to admit I am disappointed they didn't use Lisa, Maggie, or Marge for their daughter's name. " Thursday, July 18, 2002
Must... Get... TiVo... I'm trying to not bug Bridget about it much, she is sorta of the opinion that I want it just to "win", which is so totally not why I want it. I am just totally fed up with ads and poor programming. I need to run a long enet cable to where the TV is so if I get a TiVo it can update over the net. Looks pretty easy to add a 120Gb second disk to the 60Gb one that comes with a TiVo series 2 as well.
Last night we went to Costco and bought a BigAss(tm) mirror for the living room. It's 1.75m by 1.25m. Very nice! We've got it above the fireplace right now, it definitely makes the living room look larger. Costco also had a set of 8 one-liter beer mugs for $15. Wooo! We also finally got a rain jacket for Isabel, it's got a fleece lining and is purple and gold, perfect Husky colors! Speaking of which, Husky football starts in a mere 44 days! Wooo! Costco had Warcraft III for $50, $10 off. If it had been $40, I'd have bougth it, but as it is, I think I'll wait until it's cheap. Harold is getting good at kicking the bar to his floor gym that makes the music play and the lights flash. He's funny, he's much happier lying on the floor than being held. He just loves being on something perfectly flat and allowing him to stretch. If he's held he wants to be thrown over your shoulder (like a Continental soldier) in the burp position, or else held close and tight, which is hard to do cuz he generates about 30,000 BTUs of heat, causing you to sweat instantly. A little hotpocket. This remake of Bruce Lee, a classic game for the Commodore 64, rocks. Too bad it's for Windoze instead of Mac, but I bet it runs fine under emulation. Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Yesterday when I got home our next-door neighbor had 3 pallets of 80lb bags of concrete in his driveway, and he was moving them to his backyard. I borrowed my brother's wheelbarrow and helped out, moving a couple tons of concrete. Holy moley. Moving a wheelbarrow with 240lbs in it isn't a big deal, but picking up 80lb bags to put them in, and removing them at the other end, is a lot harder. My arms were toast by the time we were done, I wouldn't have been able to help if he'd had a 4th pallet of 'em. He's putting in a new slab of patio and a walkway in his backyard.
I need to read up more on TiVo. I'm pretty sure there is a way to connect to the service via a USB ethernet dongle, but I need details before I continue my campaign to get one. There isn't a phone jack near my TV, and I don't have any desire to put one there. If I'm going to that much trouble, I'll put ethernet there instead. Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Well, Bridget came to her senses and figured out that there isn't any way she would find the time to paint the living room, so that project is out.
However, now we want to find a shelf to put on top of our fireplace mantel. The fireplace is tan brick, with a 2m by 40cm by 10cm thick slab of rock on top of it. Nothing above it, the actual chimney is hidden behind the wall. We have a ton of pictures on the mantel now, but we'd like to find a shelf that was slightly smaller than the mantel and about 1.2m high. Preferrably mexican style honey-colored pine, but I'd take unfinished pine and stain it myself. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything that was that wide and yet shallow. Sigh. I watch Pleasantville last night. Wow, Toby Mcguire either can't act or just this role was too close to Peter Parker in Spider-Man. Boring movie, kinda fun concept but way too long. I have GOT to talk B into TiVo. Monday, July 15, 2002
Hmmm, lessee. On Friday there was the work kegger, I had two quarts of Elysian IPA, then a group of us went to our house. After an hour long debate over food, finally deciding on pizza, another hour long debate on what to do ensued, and we finally ended up playing Trivial Pursuit. The teams were me, a friend, and my mother-in-law Peggy vs everyone else. Basically it was me vs everyone, since my friend and Peggy gone none of the questions right. Peggy could often visualize the answer, but that wasn't much help. 'He was a white guy, kinda tall, brown hair, medium build' doesn't cut it. Heh. I ended up getting all the pie wedges first, but couldn't get the center question despite 3 attempts. I totally chocked on the question asking which character turned out the lights on the last episode of Cheers. I knew it was Sam but forgot his last name. Bah!
Saturday we went to the farmer's market again, got lots of tasty veggies and some spinach linguine. I shucked some peas, and B made a cream sauce with peas, fresh basil, and walnut chunks for the linguine, it tasted awesome. That night we went bowling with a few friends while Peggy watched Isabel. We took HG with us, he slept through most of it, our babies get sleepy when they experience loud noises. I suck ass at bowling, I got a 104, but that was enough to win the first game (vs a 77, 77, and 69). Bridget even played four years in college but was totally off her form, probably due to pregancy-related tendon loosening. She was trying to correct my horrendous form, but when I tried her advice I'd throw gutter balls. Powering the heaviest ball available straight down the middle worked best for me. BOOM! The second game our one friend came out of his funk to win with a 114. I totally blew it out my butt and got a 99, I had 86 in the 9th frame but got a spare and should have easily gotten 100 or just above but chocked! I still beat B by 1, she got a 98. heh. After that we went to Red Robin and had burgers, and I fed HG a bottle of breastmilk. It was nice to get out with only the one mostly-immoble kid. Sunday I mostly vegged, watching Die Hard With A Vengance again as well as The Longest Yard. The Longest Yard kicks ass. I have a weakness for both football and submarine movies. Friday, July 12, 2002
Ah, nice to feel good again.
Yesterday we took the lil guy to his two-month appointment. Holy freakin' cow! He's now 16 pounds and 25.5" long, that's an average size for a six-month-old. He's freakin' HUGE! Uff-da! Big freakin' baby. Isabel has been great fun lately. When I wake her up in the morning she gets a huge smile on her face, then climbs to a standing position with her arms reaching up to be picked up. When I pick her up, she wraps her arms around me and pats my back a few times, then points to the kitchen and makes her sign for milk. Man that girl can hoover down 8-9oz of milk in about 60 seconds. Crickey. A very sweet girl. She is SO proud of being able to walk. She loves going for walks up and down the sidewalk. Very fun. Last night we went to see Minority Report. I mostly liked the movie just fine, a few things were dumb but not enough to really bother me. I don't know what Mr. Nosuch's problems were. I was surprised that not a single critic I found would do anything but rave about it. C'mon, it's not THAT good. We saw it in a glass-walled cry room at the back of the theater, a local theater has one for their main screen only. HG slept through the whole movie (or fed) which was nice. Sophie, our downstairs apt renter, babysat Isabel for us. Thursday, July 11, 2002
Uff, I am hung like a french monkey today. Thank glub for alka-seltzer.
There were only four of us for the bachelor party. We started off at one friend's house having a beer on his upper deck where you have views of the downtown skyline, the Space Needle, and Mt. Rainier. After polishing off our first beer, we went down to our local Jillians for some billiards. Man, we all suck ass at pool. It was pretty funny, we sucked SO bad. Oh well. We had many more beers there, and started ordering drinks for the groom-to-be. I was kind and didn't order him a cement mixer (a shot of Baileys held in mouth, add a shot of Rose's Lime Juice, shake mouth side to side so milk in Bailey's curdles, yuck!) After a few hours of pool and cigars, we went to the video games and played a bunch of 4-person driving games. Fun fun fun. We also played some air hockey, some foosball, and a cool VR version of Beach Head 2000. It had this armature that held a drop down helmet you wore, and you could move up-n-down and twist around 360 degrees to shoot stuff. Pretty fun, I'd like to play that some more. Then we went down to the oh-so-trendy Belltown neighborhood to see what was up. I've determined that the bar scene in Seattle on weeknights is pretty lame. We tried the Croc cafe but they wanted a $10 cover for some terrible-sounding band, plus they were full, so we wandered down to the Frontier Room. Now, I hadn't been in the Frontier room for almost a decade, but it used to be a large set of rooms, wood paneled walls, sorta like the inside of a barn. Old old old, sorta crappy, but their idea of a rum-n-coke was a glass of rum with a can of coke opened up near it so some of the vapors got into the drink. Nice 'n strong, good value for the money. A nice dive. NOW, however, it's about half that size, and oh my god trendy fahncy hoity-toity remodeled. Crickey, I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen it. Blarg. Fortunately, I was wise enough to take today off preemptively. Wednesday, July 10, 2002
We drove down to Olympia yesterday to drop off my old truck at B's aunt and uncle's place. I was sorta sad to see it go, I'll definitely miss that truck.
It was a glorious hot sunny day, clear blue skies, Mt Rainier was looking totally amazing! Tonight I've got to plan/run a bachelor party. Tuesday, July 09, 2002
Dinner on saturday DID rule. We picked up some fresh spinach fettucini and a pound of mussels, and B made a sauce out of the fresh garlic, tomatoes, onions, and basil. The mussels were steamed with cilantro, and the goat cheese had the consistency of a light fluffy cheesecake. Man oh man. For dessert our roommate who rents the mother-in-law apt in the basement had made a cherry-apricot cobbler from fresh fruit she'd bought at the market, plus we had a flat of raspberries and whipped cream.
On Sunday Bridget went to see "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" with her friend, and I stayed home playing with the kids. That evening our friend Thommer had one of his famous pizza feasts. He makes his own dough from scratch,and had a zillion toppings. One was marinated flank steak strips, one pizza was fresh cilantro, chicken, and thai peanut sauce. New this time was two pan pizza trays in addition to the classical "throw it on the pizza stone with the wooden pizza spatula" style he normally makes. Another friend brought a carmel apple cheesecake she'd made, we were stuffed. I'd opened a bottle of Bridgeport IPA shortly before B announced we were leaving, so I wrapped some plastic wrap around the bottle and took it home with me to finish "later". Beer to go! Yesterday was my old college roommate's birthday. He's visiting from Munich where he's lived for the past 10 years. We went out to FX McRory's, a bar who's claim to fame is the world's largest collection of bourbon. They've got like 150 different ones, pretty impressive. They're right near the ballpark so normally they're crowded, but with no game last night they were dead. There was a small collection of 45 year olds doing a "speed dating" thing set up by some single's group, it was pretty sad to watch. Man am I so glad I found B. (shudder). By 10pm we were the last customers, so they locked the front door and we were told to leave via the emergency exit door by the restrooms. Bizzare feeling closing down a bar and having it not be 2am. Saturday, July 06, 2002
More talk about food.
I'm now reading the sequel to "A Year In Provence", called "Toujours Provence", by Peter Mayle. In it he described a french hunter talking about his favorite way to eat Camembert (a stinky cheese like brie). He took the cheese out of the wooden package, out of it's wrapper, put it back in the wooden package, and on the coals of the fire. The wooden box would burn away, and the rind would turn black, but inside the camembert would turn molten and tasty. He'd split a baguette and poke a hole in the camembert rind, and let the molten cheese pour over the bread. Anyway, I got a hankering to do this so we went over to our friend's house. Instead of a fire I wrapped it in aluminum foil and put it in the oven, it was excellent on the baguette. We also made chicken fajitas and had some lovely ripe avacados sliced to eat with them, and an apple pie left over from the 4th for dessert. We watched "Quigly Down Under" on DVDVDVD, hadn't seen that movie in quite a while. The main actress is the annoying chick from, um, that show I rarely watch, um, Just Shoot Me, that's it. She's apparently older than I would have guessed, and apparently always annoying. This morning after I fed Isabel we went to the local farmer's market. We bought some fresh basil, cilantro, mixed salad greens, a small goat cheese, some lovely tomatoes, fresh garlic, an onion, sugar snap peas, some zuchinnis, and a crusty loaf of french bread. Dinner tonight is going to rule! Friday, July 05, 2002
Typical non-work day yesterday. We went to meet some friends and walk around Greenlake at 9am. One of our friends was late, so I finally called him, he'd totally spaced it. It was a beautiful morning, kinda overcast but still nice. Not too crowded. HG slept in the stroller, and Isabel ate her breakfast (pancake bits, OJ, cheerios) as we went along. At the end we got her out to walk the last bit, she didn't want to stop walking, she took off down the trail away from the car, seemingly saying "Hey, all the people are over this way!" She treats the stroller like she's on a float in a parade, smiling and waving at everybody.
After her nap we went to Home Depot. I wanted to look into those screen doors that retract into the door jam, I'd like one for my front door. B wanted to look at paint color chips for the living room. She ended up with some Ralph Lauren textury ones, "denim" which requires one paint rolled on as a base coat and another brushed on some weird way. Whatever, painting is her gig, I'll move furniture but that's it. The other one was "sandstone", it apparently has actual sand in it. The look was pretty, but I'm not 100% behind the idea of my walls turning to sandpaper. Ouch! She's trying to color-match the grout in the fireplace now, it's a nice grey shade. Our current walls are damn near the color of the fireplace brick AND the wall-to-wall carpet, blah. Makes the room monochrome, which we've got to change somehow. She wants a sage green color for the dining room. In the evening we went to a friend's house for a BBQ. He'd smoked up a pork loin, plus a bunch of chickens. The meat was shredded, then served with slices of white bread and three kinds of BBQ sauce, a mustard one, a "mild" one, and an "angry" one. This from a guy who once made "Uncle Chuck's House of Pain Habenero Sauce", the main claim to fame of which is after nobody could eat it, it was discarded, and later that night a dog knocked over the trash can and was heard yelping in pain down the alley. The next morning a rat was found a few steps away from some chicken coated in UCHoPHS, it had evidently eaten some, taken a few steps, and died. SO, I asked him on a scale of 1 to "The Man" (hawt sauce from local BBQ joint) how the angry sauce rated. He gave it a 5, but I think it was closer to a 3. It was delicious slathered on the pork. To quote myself, Mmmmmmm tasty! We left before the big fireworks show because Isabel was long past her bedtime. We found out that I get a great view of the two major Seattle fireworks shows from my computer room window, pretty cool. Waking up to go to work today was painful. Wednesday, July 03, 2002
For the past 20 years, when I've been really happy I've sang the Bob & Doug McKenzie "koo loo koo koo koo KOO koo" theme. I've got their Great White North album on CD, and I'm still waiting for Strange Brew to come out on DVDVDVD.
I starting making those noises for HG recently, since looking at the cute lil guy makes me smile, and he really likes it! He will smile big and sometimes try to coo himself. I guess I'm raising a hosehead. Speaking of Bob & Doug's Great White North album, a few years back I held a Beerhunter party. We got french crullers (twisty round buttermilk donuts), fried up some backbacon (known in the Yoo Ess as canadian bacon), wore touques, and went out to the back deck for the actual event, Beerhunter. In Beerhunter, we got a flaming metric buttload of cans of Kokanee, or maybe it was Labatts, some canadian beer. For each round, we would take one can per remaining contestant. One can would have the holy hell shaken out of it, and they'd all be dumped into a bucket of ice and water. The bucket was stirred, so nobody knew which can was the "live" one. We'd each reach in, extract a can, and hold it up to the side of our heads. On the count of three, everyone would open their beer. One person got foooshed with beer, we'd all say "towel off wethead!" and they'd be out. We'd drink our beers and move on to the next round. Take off, eh! Monday, July 01, 2002
Shameless plug:
If you are in NYC, Winnepeg, or Saskatoon, check out The Habit, a Seattle sketch comedy troupe that are doing a summer tour. My plug is too late for their Montreal date. They're pretty damn funny, I go to all their (local) shows. I've been playing poker with their leader, Jeff Schell, for years and years, but lately his career has been taking over so he never gets to play.
Another fun weekend.
On Saturday Bridget went to see a movie, The Bourne Identity, with her sister, her mom, and a friend, leaving me at home with the two kids. HG slept the whole time, he's such a great little guy, and I played with Isabel. They're both doing awesome and are so much fun. I weighed him last night at 14.5lbs with his diaper on, uff-da! That's a big seven week old baby. Isabel is learning to run, and has two new tricks this week, she can point out her ear, and if you ask what a cow says she will moo. Very cute. After they got back from the movie I went to the Mariner's baseball game Saturday night with B's sister's boyfriend Bill. I call not-Uncle-Bill, since he's not Isabel's uncle, yet at least. They're buying a house together, so I suspect they'll be together a while. The game was awesome, Ichiro hit a homer on the second pitch of the game, and we won 8-1. I brought a couple beers in the truck with us, so once we parked we chugged those to take the edge off, then went to the stadium. We had outfield seats, but Safeco Field really doesn't have any bad seats, it's well worth the tax dollars in my mind. Here is the view from those seats. On Sunday I turned 12,500 days old. I had to have a party to celebrate, so we did. Bridget made delicious coconut cake for me, from scratch even. Uff-da! We had a dozen adult guests plus a 1-yr-old baby, and two of the guests were pregnant. Uff. I braved the rain squall to man the BBQ where I cooked up some Johnsonville brats that I'd boiled in beer for an hour or so, and some hamburgers and a veggie burger for the vegetarian. One of our friends brought over some fresh steelhead (salmon) as well as some razor clams he'd caught on his last fishing trip to Alaska. We whipped up some tempura batter and deep fried the salmon and clams, they were quite tasty as well. We had tons of "fixin's", like tater salad, green salad, macaroni salad, baked beans, and buffalo wings. It looked like we had WAAAAY too much food, but fortunately a roving mongol horde descended upon the table and consumed everything that wasn't chained down. I spent part of the weekend reading A Year In Provence by Peter Mayle. It is about a British couple retiring to the south of France, but mostly it's about food. Fun light read. Isabel saw me sitting in the comfy chair in the living room reading, so she went to her little bench with some of her books and sat quietly for almost 15 minutes, slowly turning the pages (sometimes the books were upside down) and sometimes making quiet comments to herself. It was VERY cute! I really enjoy my life. |
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