Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
Hrm. Something strangely addicting about Shadowbane. I mean, it's all about sitting around "camping" at a monster spawn spot to earn experience to gain levels. I strongly suspect it'll get boring pretty soon, but I'm not sure. There certainly isn't the communication and interaction you get in Clan Lord.
Man, the weather here at just been glorious this week. Clear sunny skies. Relatively cold (30F lows and 50F highs) but beautiful. One of the guys in my drinking club (err, "investment club") had his car stolen recently. It was a newish Honda Accord. Every day he leaves it running when he runs into a Quick-E-Mart for coffee and a newspaper on his way to work. One morning it got stolen while he was inside. After not being recovered for a month, he'd bought a new car and was in negotiations with his insurance company for the value of the loss. They were within a few thousand of an agreement when he got a call from the police, they'd recovered his car during a meth lab bust. When he went to pick it up, he barely recognized it. They had totally rice'd his car out. New uber wheels and tires. New exhaust. New trim bits added. Supercharger under the hood, plus new manifold and headers and basically the top half of the engine rebuilt. Trunk was filled with monster subwoofer. Several thousand dollars worth of stereo equipment. Radar dectector built into front grill with control/readout on steering wheel. Plus, one of those CD case thingies with a few hundred DVDs, and a larger one with nearly 400 CDs. Crickey. Only he gets his $8,000 car stolen and gets it back worth over $20k. Tuesday, February 25, 2003
The house is nice and clean now, I hosted my monthly drinking club (err, "investment club", yeah, that's it) last night and cleaned frantically before they showed up. Isabel knew something was up seeing us both cleaning instead of playing with her.
I got Shadowbane to work, finally. It's kinda fun, my character Humbaba is now a lvl 11 Half-Giant Barbarian. The Battle Rage skill he gained at level 10 almost doubles his strength and constitution, heals his hitpoints and stamina to max, and lasts two minutes. Only drawback is it gives him a 75% reduction in defense, but what good beer-swilling Barbarian cares about pansy defense? Monday, February 24, 2003
I've added a link to my old poker buddy Luke, he recently found me and is a damn funny guy.
Another busy weekend. Friday we went to one of B's friend's house for dinner. Saturday we spent the day in Olympia for B's mom's 60th birthday party, and when I got home I made the tail end of a friend's housewarming party, not leaving there until midnight. While touring his house I stepped out his sliding glass door into his backyard. My night vision was trashed by a car with highbeams following me too close, so when I turned around to re-enter his house I failed to notice the sliding glass door was closed. D'oh! I bonked into the glass, spilling beer all over myself and giving myself and the other guests a good laugh. Sunday we went to a friend's birthday BBQ. Last night at the BBQ a bunch of us guys were standing around in the kitchen when the decision was made to crack open the box of La Gloria Cubana cigars. Needing something tasty to drink with the tasty cigars, we decided to open a bottle of vintage tawny port that had been brought with the cigars for just such a purpose. At this point, the comedy of errors began. First, Mike, the guy who brought the cigars and port tried to use a knife to cut the foil seal on the stopper, but accidentally pressed too hard, and his knife was too sharp, so it cut the cork and stopper off the bottle, leaving half the cork in the neck. Next, the corkscrew we tried to open it with succeeded in pushing the cork down into the bottle too far to extract, yet not far enough to let us get the port out. We sent a couple guys to find a decanter to pour the port into (they turned down my suggestion to use the blender pitcher sitting in front of us) while we tried to get the cork down the last inch. I tried my pinkie finger, and stupidly got my finger stuck. D'oh! Fortunately a better grip and I was able to extract my finger, just as Chuck showed up with a crystal decanter filled with vodka. He wanted us to drink the vodka but it was a freakin' sunday night, so we poured it into a glass for storage. Finally we had our booze, which was a most excellent port, and complimented the cigars nicely. Thursday, February 20, 2003
I put some new movies up, they're linked under Family Pictures in the column on the left. Harry playing with a ball, Isabel chasing a laser pointer, and Isabel singing.
It's amazing how smart that girl is. She can sing all of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, (well, all of the first verse, there are a bunch). It's amazing to hear her sweet little voice say "Like a diamond in the sky". Most of her friends are grunting and saying "da!" and "moma!". It's totally freaking her out that Harry is now crawling and mobile. Her whole life as she knows it, Harry was immobile and she dictated what toys he got to play with, and she could play with impunity. Now she yells out "No Harry! Isabel toys!" when he's crawling towards what's she is playing with. So damn funny! He grunts as he crawls, he just needs the Jaws theme music playing to make it perfect! Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Prologue:
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive far, far away, amongst the stars. Epilogue: Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest -- for a shining planet known as Earth. Man oh man did I love Battlestar Galactica when I was 10. The SciFi channel has been running it this week M-F from 11am to 4pm, 5 hours a day to get all 24 TV hours of it. I hooked up a VCR and have been taping the whole thing, and watched 3 hours of it via my TiVo last night. Wooo! Sometimes I wonder why I love BG and hate Trek. (Well, all Trek after the original series). Is it because I saw BG at age 10 and ST:TNG was when I was 19? Both have their own variants of stupid science, but transporters and replicators in Trek drive me nuts, but the bogus physics of Colonial Vipers doesn't bother me a bit. Vipers are way cool looking, as are the wide beat-up variety of ships in that rag-tag fugitive fleet. Tuesday, February 18, 2003
For Valentine's day I got to remove the toilet in the main floor bathroom. B wanted to paint, and decided she wanted to replace the crappy 1' linoleum squares in that bathroom with a solid sheet of linoleum. Someday we'll have the whole bathroom redone and slate tiles put in, but this will do for now.
As I was turning off the water line that feeds the toilet, I noticed that that damn valve leaked out the valvestem. If you jigger it just right you can get it to not leak in both the on and off positions, but it's a cheap piece of crap valve, and I figured I may as well replace it. Ugh, I fucking hate plumbing. Stupid leaky crap. Gah! Anyway, Friday night the toilet was removed and put in the kitchen. Saturday B painted the walls some grey-blue shade. It looks nice. On Sunday I removed the valve, which attached to the bare copper pipe via a compression fitting. There are two pieces that screw together with a little brass compression ring between them, and I could not get that damn ring off the pipe. I could get it to twist, and to go up and down maybe a millimeter, but not all the way up and off the pipe. I didn't want to use TOO much force, possibly crushing or breaking the pipe or causing a leak at the next joint which is somewhere in the wall. I ended up using a dremel tool to cut the old compression ring off. I installed the new beefy valve and new high-quality toilet connector hose, and when the water to the house was turned back on, miracle of miracles it didn't leak! Wooo! On Monday (holiday for me) we went to Lowes and bought a piece of linoleum. B cut it out to match the bathroom, we test-fit it, using a utility knife to trim it to fit exactly, then glued it into place. New wall cove molding was glued into place, and the toilet re-installed. Holy smokes, the toilet worked, and nothing leaks 24 hours later! Woooo! I knew it was theoretically possible, but this marks my first plumbing project that involved only 1 trip to the hardware store for parts and everything worked the first try. The bathroom looks a lot nicer. B wants to get her sister to paint a mural of a bunch of fish etc on the walls, with the blue acting as water. Thursday, February 13, 2003
Today marks the sixth anniversary of my beginning to date (and subsequently marry) Bridget. I suppose a little story is in order...
We met at our high school 10th reunion in August of 1996. Neither of us had known the other in high school, our graduating class was about 400 (of whom I knew probably 90%) and as an Air Force brat, she was only there the last two years. I was still in a relationship that was ending, and she was single, but she was interested in a friend of mine, a fellow classmate that she did know. We both lived in Seattle. My friends were getting sort of stuck in a rut, and I was bored with the same old thing. Bridget and I were emailing a bit, and started hanging out some and doing things together. I was single by this time, but I wasn't really thinking of dating Bridget, she was just a cool friend. Going out to dinner or seeing a movie together was a lot of fun, with none of the stress of dating someone new, so all the pressure was off. In mid December I went to Albuqueque to spend a week with my brother Lance who is an Archy grad student there at UNM. I figured out that I missed Bridget, and had an epiphany, that whoa, I was hot for her. Crickey! When I got back, we got together at her apartment, it was right around christmas, maybe christmas eve or day. Anyway, I told her how I felt, and we kissed and made out on her bed for a while, then I went home. I knew I was doomed when she didn't call the next day. I figured, "eh, I tried", and mentally moved on. We were going out with some other people to a big New Year's bash, but just as a group of friends. I had a good time, it didn't seem to have hurt our friendship any. All through January we did stuff together off and on. Her and her roommate couldn't wait for cinco de mayo to roll around, so I threw an Ocho De Fevraro (Feb 8th) party, which was pretty successful, we had around 45 guests and much booze was consumed. (No way can I get that kind of attendance anymore, I'm happy to hit half that these days). Interestingly, one of my housemate's bitter ex-girlfriends came up to me and asked "What would piss him off more, if I slept with you or if I slept with (our other housemate)?" Holy cow! She was a stone-cold fox, but for some unknown reason I had the inner strength to turn that offer down and sic her on our other housemate. Probably for the best, I suspect that if I'd had sex with her I wouldn't have ended up with Bridget. As another aside, my ex-girlfriend from the previous summer was in town that weekend and at the party, and ended up sleeping in my bed with me (no tomfoolery happened, we were over each other). The next day (Feb 9th, 1997) I was pretty hung over, but B and I were going to go see Dante's Peak at a matinee. We were both suckers for crappy disaster movies, something none of my other friends would go see. She was griping about how much she hated Valentine's Day, so I asked her out to dinner on Valentine's day as friends, mostly so she'd stop griping. Being ornry, I was planning on getting her a rose, too, just for humor value. However, as that week progressed, we'd spend 11pm to 2am on the phone with each other, and I figured out that maybe she liked me after all. On Thursday the 13th, after meeting some friends for drinks at a bar I gave her a call and went over to her place to watch ER together. She was talking to a friend of hers from college when I arrived, all in code, but I could figure out the code pretty easy. Anyhoo, let's just say we didn't see much of that episode of ER. The next day when we went out on our Valentine's date, we were a couple. We went to Cucina Cucina, which sucked, we waited several hours for a table. Crickey! Anyway, the next year to avoid the crowds and celebrate Feb 13th, we went back and had a great dinner. Restaurants are MUCH less crowded on the 13th. We've been going back every Feb 13th since then, and will be going there tonight. I'm excited! Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Holy smokes! It was relatively cold here (cold for Seattle) and foggy. After I biked into work, I looked down and my arms were covered with frost build-up! Apparently it was cold and wet enough that as I biked I collected it and was going fast enough for it to freeze. Never had that happen before.
Today I was looking out my office window and saw a dude on a Segway! Pretty darn cool. It had two custom-built holster/saddlebag thingys over the wheels, and the guy was reading water meters. He'd hop off, and it'd rock a couple of times before stabilizing. Damn coool. First time I've seen one with my own eyes. Speaking of my office, it's a concrete pod that sticks out of the side of my building. The height of 1960s architecture. What this means to me is half of my office is exposed to the elements on all sides, floor, ceiling, both side walls and the all-glass exterior. No insulation, just six inches of concrete. No real heat reaches my office, right now it's a balmy 65F. It's often 63 or 62F. I shudder to imagine how cold it'd be without the three computers running. The University is trying to cut back on energy costs to save money, but man is it cold. To put it another way, I finally stopped wearing a woolen hat at work cuz now I wear long underwear under my jeans. My coat never gets taken off. Brrrr! Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Well, as happens every six months or so, I finally updated my blogger template again. The links should all be current now. Unfortunately for me, Mark's blog, which may be compliant html, crashes my web browser. Hopefully Apple will update Safari soon.
Last Friday Bridget and I got a chance to go see a movie, after the babies were in bed her mom babysat for us. We went downtown and tried to see "Shanghai Knights". It wasn't on either of our "must see" lists, but it wasn't on our "no %$*# way" lists either. (B wanted to see Chicago. Yeah right, I wasn't falling for that!) Unfortunately, when we got to the theater they told us there were only 14 seats left so we'd be stuck in the front corners. That was really nice of them to tell us. Once in college I saw the Arnie flick "The Running Man" in the front corner seats, they sucked ass. Never again. Anyway, so we went across the street to a bar and had a drink or two. B used to work across the street at US West (aka US Worst) now known as Qworst (aka Qwest), and they'd go to this bar all the time. B knew the waitress, she'd been there for at least the past 8 years. Dang! Last night we watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on DVDVDVD. I'd seen it in the theater and am glad I did, it's amazing. Our TV did a good job, but it really deserves a larger screen. The stupid DVDVDVDVD started skipping during the last 20 minutes, it was like watching the storyboard version. Gah! At least it wasn't my DVD. Monday, February 10, 2003
On Saturday I helped one of Bridget's friend's husband Justin. They wanted to install a Sink Beaver (aka in-sink garbage disposal) in their house that had never had one, and there wasn't power under the sink. I told them I'd take a look before they went out and paid for an electrician, and sure enough, they had extra space in their breaker box, and their basement was unfinished so getting a new circuit to their kitchen was pretty easy. All told it took us three hours, and in the process I showed Justin how to do house wiring. It's pretty simple stuff, really. MUCH easier than plumbing.
I didn't help him install the actual Sink Beaver, cuz I hate plumbing. (shudder) Saturday night we had some folks over for dinner with B's mom, celebrating her 60th birthday which is this week. We made a standing rib roast, artichokes, baked potatoes, and sourdough bread, with cherry pie for dessert. Yum! On Sunday I got drafted to help my not-brother-in-law Bill build some fence to keep his new puppy in their backyard. He'd already dug the holes and put the posts in on Friday, leaving the concrete to set on Sat. so we were ready to install boards on Sunday. We got the boards cut and installed, and were trying to install a gate when his wimpy 9.6v cordless drill crapped out on us. I had to go home and get my *real* drill, a Milwaukee, which went through the wet wood like butter. It may need a cord, but it *always* has enough power for the job. We got the gate installed and they were quite happy. So was the dog, new exciting territory to explore! Wednesday, February 05, 2003
C'mon Apple. Come out with a new beta of Safari already.
Man, I need a new Mac game. I'm getting pretty bored with Clan Lord, I can't take more than a few hours a week. I wish there was a competing MMORPG, or that Master Of Orion III was out already. Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Kind of a freaky morning.
I was heading out of my house this morning with a bag of lunch in one hand and a bag of garbage in the other hand when I noticed an older couple on the porch of the house across the street. As I dumped the garbage into the can, they called out to me, "Sir? Call 911! There's a woman in medical trouble locked inside this house!" Whoa! I went back inside, grabbed my cordless phone, and handed it to the guy so he could call for an ambulance. Apparently she'd fallen and was acting all confused or something. Hope she's OK, she was only recently married. The fire dept got there in maybe 3 minutes. Of course, they're just a few blocks away. Monday, February 03, 2003
I've been thinking about this whole Iraq situation.
I'm all for the US being the world's police. Actually, I'm all for every nation being the world's police, but almost nobody else seems to want the job. When it comes down to it, there should be more wars. Somebody should have stepped in whenever genocide is happening, whether it's the Kurds in Iraq or the people in Rwanda. The fact that horrors like that can happen WITHOUT military action that makes the Wrath of God seem mild means that evil petty dictators across the globe can keep it up, knowing they probably won't get in any trouble. I'm not trying to say the US is perfect, on the contrary we have a lot of things we should be embarrased about, but if we let a lack of perfection stop us from doing what's right, nothing will ever happen. Bush's action in regards to Iraq are pretty much correct. Use the threat of force to try to persuade Saddam to comply with UN regulations. If he decides h can get away with it, he will. Having someone who can actually use force is the only way anything will happen. Aw hell. Reading this, I don't think I am really getting my point across very well. Oh well. Saturday, February 01, 2003
Uff. I've been in shock and crying most of the morning. Such a terrible thing.
I'm alone with the babies right now, Bridget flew to Spokane for her sister's baby shower, she'll be back tomorrow. Last night I went to see The Two Towers again at the Cinerama with my friend Nate who's over from Spokane. Unfortunately for some reason they didn't show it in digital projection, they used 35mm regular style. Not as good, but huge screen is always nice. I think this is the only time I ever saw a movie in the theater three times. Afterwards we went to a dive bar in Wallingford called Al's, where we drank little 11oz stubby bottles of Olympia beer. Cheap, $1.75 each. Those poor families. I'm still in shock. |
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