Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Friday, May 30, 2003
Ok, I'm laughing my ass off.
I was talking with one of my student helpers a while back and I accidentally mistook the movie "Kull" with "Krull". "Kull The Conquerer" was a 1997 barbarian movie starring Kevin Sorbo that apparently is from a script originally meant to be the 3rd Arnie "Conan" movie but Arnie got too famous to make more. I never saw it, but I meant to. "Krull" on the other hand is a craptacular 1983 fantasy movie that I saw in the theater when I was 15 but haven't thought much of since. I had forgotten everything except there was a magic throwing star and a big ugly tower. Anyway, earlier this week I was handed a CD with a DivX version of it, and I watched it at lunch the past two days. hahahahahah. I'm nearly in tears it's so funny. Such a bizarre combination of fantasy and future, just bizarre. Bad bad bad. Fun though. Seeing it reminded me of the Krull arcade game, I need to get my MAME cabinet going. I've got video going, but it's upside down so I either need to flip the monitor that came with the cabinet or re-wire the X and Y feeds. Blegh. Plus I need to get DOS sound card drivers working and set the WayBack Machine(tm) to when I knew how to do DOS memory management and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. I was also remembering the string of craptacular fantasy movies from the early 1980s. Ones I can remember include: Clash of the Titans (1981) Dragonslayer (1981) The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) Conan The Barbarian (1982) Hercules (1983) Beastmaster (1983) Conan the Destroyer (1984) Krull (1984) Red Sonya (1985) Of these, I know I still like Beastmaster and the two Conan flicks. Thursday, May 29, 2003
I have a dentist appointment this afternoon to get a small cavity filled. I haven't had a cavity in a long time, I'm not really looking forward to it, but then again, I don't mind nearly as much as some.
Ugh, I watched some live TV last night, it was painful not being able to skip through ads. TiVo rules, I need to find new stuff for it now that regular TV is over. Wednesday, May 28, 2003
I forgot to mention I got that repair kit from Moen, and installed it on Saturday morning. Didn't take long, and now the faucet no longer drips and it moves about 3x as easy, which will take some getting used to. The first time I re-installed it I got it in backwards (there really isn't an easy way to tell) and the hot was on the right instead of the left, so I had to do it over. Nice to have that monkey off my back.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Grrr! Ok, so the Doc sez that Harry needs to see the specialist. B calls the specialist, they say they won't set up an appointment until all the insurance referral paperwork comes though, and not only that, the specialist doesn't have an open appointment until SEPTEMBER! Motherfuckers.
I may have to open up a can of whoop-ass. Sunday, May 25, 2003
On Friday afternoon we took Harry to the ENT (ear/nose/throat doc) to have her see if he needs tubes in his ears or his adenoids/tonsils removed. She said she'd do tubes in the ears of a 1 year old, but she draws the line at 2 for adenoids/tonsils, but thinks he's a strong candidate for the procedure, so she bumped us along to see a 2nd tier specialist at Children's Hospital who specifically does that procedure in infants. (God, he's such a big lug it's hard to think of him as an infant) Sigh. Anyway, time to make another appointment.
Afterwards we went to a friend's house for a bring-yer-own-meat impromptu BBQ cuz the weather was awesome, and in Seattle you do not ignore glorious weather. I picked up a 3-pack of gorgeous ribeye steaks, and cooked them to perfection, and ended up eating two of 'em. Mmmm, MEAT! I love red meat. We had to go home way too early because it was already past the kids' bedtime. Harry had managed to fall off a giant hammock onto concrete, poor little guy, got a scrape on his noggin but no real damage other than scaring B to death. When I got home I noticed my brother and his friends were hanging out at his place, so I wandered down there and had some beer with them and their neighbors, all of which are in their early-mid 20s. They were all passing a pipe around, but I just never got into that, having been in the Marine reserver for six years between 18 and 24 meant I took drug piss tests almost every other month, and afterwards I just never tried it. I've actually never tried any of the recreational drugs other than the legal alcohol. That party broke up around midnight when one of my brother's friends used the phrase "roast beef curtains" in mixed company. All the women immediately left. I laughed my ass off then went home. Saturday morning I got up with Harry, and when Isabel woke up I stuck them both in our new double umbrella stroller and we went for a walk since it was beautiful and sunny. There is a ravine near my house with a creek and trail in it, it's SO freaking beautiful. It's like being up in the woods, yet you're in the middle of a city. Lush green growth everywhere, towering cedar trees, babbling brook, people walking their dogs (harry freakin' LOVES animals, and I mean WAY more than the normal baby love of animal reaction). I figured out that I was over halfway to the local farmer's market which opened this weekend for the summer, so I called B and told her to meet us there. The farmer's market is awesome. We got some incredible tomatoes, some goat cheese with basil, some fresh basil, some radishes, a loaf of crusty french bread, and fresh garlic. I love slices of tomato with a slice of cheese, some basil leaves, and drizzled with good olive oil, it's divine. Around noon my mother-in-law Peggy showed up for the weekend. The kids love their grandma so much. While Isabel went down for her afternoon nap B and Peggy and Harry went shopping at Target. They got Isabel the absolute perfect birthday present, a little doll-sized stroller. Isabel loves her baby doll (named "baby"), she carries her around all the time, she puts newborn diapers on it (we've got leftover too-small diapers of all sizes, sheesh, our kids were newborn sized for only a few days) she sits down and pulls up her shirt and puts the baby's head to her chest to breastfeed it, she combs the doll's plastic head, it's pretty funny. Anyway, when she got up from her nap Peggy said "Isabel, I got you an early birthday present!" Isabel said "Oh? Thank you very much Grandma!" B has taught her to be so polite! Her eyes got huge when she saw the box, and after I got it assembled (kudos to the designer, it was a snap!) she immediately put her doll in it and pushed it back and forth, back and forth. Uff. We went for a walk up and down the street and she had a blast pushing her stroller. (B reported that first thing this morning she wanted to play with the stroller before even getting out of her crib or having her diaper changed!) After the kids when to sleep last night B and I tried to go out and find something do to. We wanted to walk along Broadway in the eclectic Capital Hill neighborhood, but there wasn't any freakin' parking to be had, so we went downtown then along the waterfront. I knew the upstairs bar in a fancy fish restaurant is never full, so we went there for some drinks and to watch the boats out on the water. Gorgeous view, especially with a nice glass of Lagavulin 16yr. B had a whiskey sour, which tastes much better than the ones we make at home. B was having loads of fun laughing at all the kids in fancy dress for their proms. One of the proms was being held at the conference center next to us, and we laughed that the older couple at the other end of the bar pounded a few drinks then a minute later were walking up the stairs to chaperone the prom. I'd probably want a stiff one myself if I had to do that. Mmm, gotta go, B made fresh cinnamon rolls! Friday, May 23, 2003
Bah! B and I have babysitting for Saturday night, and we wanted to go see a movie, but I'm not interested in anything that is playing right now. I could barely stay awake during X-men so I have zero desire to see X2 even as a rental, and I seem to be the only geek in geekdom who doesn't slobber over The Matrix. The movies I want to see this summer haven't opened yet. (Including The Hulk, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Italian Job, and probably others, I haven't paid much attention.)
B wants to see Chicago, but it really screams chick-flick to me and I dread going to those. I suppose we'll just go out for drinks somewhere. Thursday, May 22, 2003
Ugga. I got my ass completely kicked at poker last night. We've all been watching waaay too much World Poker Tour and this week is the finals for the World Series of Poker, so we set up a no-limit poker tourney for next saturday night. In anticipation of this we played limit texas hold'em all night, and I was out $44 in very short order. I did alright for a little while, then I just kept getting pretty good cards but not good enough. Bah!
I started out drinking a 22oz bottle of Stone 20th anniversary porter (very tasty), then I got cleaned out and started dealing for the gang. While dealingh I had some 10yr old Balvinney private reserve, then finished off the Chateua St Michelle Late Harvest Riesling, and finally had the last of an open bottle of Charles Shaw (aka 3-buck Chuck) Merlot. My edge was completely off, and I definitely had that "not so fresh feeling" this morning. I'm so going to lose that poker tourney next week. Fortunately there will be beer and "Rounders" and "Maverick" playing on the DVD player. Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Took the kids to the pool last night, it's been nearly a year for Isabel and Harry's only time in a pool was six months ago when B and I were on our anniversary trip, he hated it. Well, last night he wasn't really sure at first, but then he really got into it. Isabel loved it, she did NOT want to get out. They're so cute in their little swimsuits. It was a hassle getting swim diapers, we thought we had some but couldn't find them, then went to two grocery stores before finally finding them at a drugstore. We also had to drop off our absentee ballots at the polling place cuz we forgot to mail them in and the election (a park levy, I voted for it) was yesterday.
The whole time in the pool Isabel was holding onto this doll that floated by, she barely let go of it when we got out. Afterwards she was saying "Daddy, did you put the dolly in the bag? Oh thank you. That was good thinking daddy. You are a smart daddy." Ha! I didn't get a chance to say anything, but of course I didn't steal her a pool toy. Crazy girl. She's not even two years old yet. She didn't eat enough dinner, and so after being in the pool she was starving. I was eating a bratwurst, and she wanted some. In fact, she ate over half of mine and wanted more, and she ate well over half of the second one as well as the cinnamon toast B made her. Crazy girl, doesn't like hotdogs, likes brats... She's got good taste. Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Alrighty.
Scene: Five guys on a deer hunting trip in the Blue Mountains outside Walla Walla Washington, standing around a campfire, a couple inches of early snow on the ground. One of the guys looks up at the sky, starts pointing his finger at various stars and mumbling. Then he points his right arm straight ahead at Polaris, and extends his left arm out straight. "Let's see. If that's the North star, that means that is due west. If it's winter in the northern hemisphere, Venus is rising, the moon isn't out yet, and Orion is up, that means... Oh shit! We're all going to die!" We all burst out laughing. Dunno where that came from, I thought of it in bed this morning and it made me laugh. Musta been 7 or 8 years ago... On Friday B decided she wanted to have a romantic dinner after the kids went to bed. We needed to spend $35 at a local grocery store we don't normally shop at to get a $25/$50/$75 off airfare coupon which we'll need for our trip to Cabo this December. At the store, I picked out Mr. Snappy, a lovely 1.5lb lobster. B prefers Dungeness crab, so we got her a nice dungie, and picked out a new york strip steak to complete the turf part of surf-n-turf. Adding a salad, some crusty french bread (err Freedom bread heh), some cambezolla (I'm sure I mispelled that!) cheese, a couple of desserts and a bottle of wine and we were set. When we got home and I pulled Mr Snappy out of the box Isabel was NOT happy. Apparently lobster looks creepy to her, dunno how that could be... heh. Harry wouldn't friggin go to sleep, but he finally did, we got the lobster steamed, the steak cooked to perfection, and the dinner was awesome. That's only the second full lobster I've ever had, living here on the deprived West Coast. I've scuba dove for dungeness crabs lots of times, my buddy and I would each get the limit of 6 and have 12 of the friggin' things, but there aren't any lobster species here. After we ate we watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" which I'd never seen before. It was a pretty good movie, but I couldn't believe how offensive Mickey Roonie's character was. Holy crap. I also couldn't stop saying "I love it when a plan comes together" every 15 minutes. We'd cracked open a bottle of dessert wine (Chateau St Michelle Late Harvest Riesling) as well, it was awesome. Sweet, crisp, it was perfect. On Saturday I got up early to be with the kids, but Harry slept in until 8am and Isabel slept in until 9am, amazing. Once B was up I began work on fixing the leaky kitchen faucet. It is one of the old style with the two supply pipes coming out of the back wall instead of out of the back of the sink, and the pipes are buried in the wall with no local shut-off valves, so I had to shut the main water supply valve off in the basement. Taking the faucet apart I couldn't get the ceramic cartridge out, so finally I called Moen to see if they had any advice. They said that since I wasn't the original owner I didn't qualify for their lifetime free replacements, but they'd send me out a free kit anyway with a special tool to remove stuck cartridges. Sweet! I put everything back together to wait until the replacement parts arrive. I'm definitely only buying Moen faucets from now on, that's great customer service. I sometimes wonder why more companies don't get it. I spent a bunch of time on Saturday reading "Sahara" by Clive Cussler. What utter mind candy dreck, but kinda fun. B and I cleaned a bunch that afternoon since we were having friends over for a dinner party. I also finally got started working on converting my JAMMA arcade game cabinet over to be a MAME cabinet, MAME is arcade game emulation software so it'll be able to play all the arcade games from the 80s. I took the old control panel apart to remove one of the trackballs and make room for a joystick. I need to figure out the dimensions to give my brother for a new metal panel with proper spacing for both trackballs, both joysticks, and more buttons. Dinner was fun, we had 5 friends over for lasagna, afterwards we sat in the back yard and smoked cigars and drank single malt whiskey (I drank 16-yr Lagavulin, my friends drank 10yr Lammerlaw (NZ malt whiskey) and Aberlour Antique) and watched Isabel and Harry play on their jungle gym. Afterwards most of my friends left while I was putting Isabel to bed, man they just don't stick around like they used to. Sunday was super busy. The weather was beautiful and sunny. We got up early, got the kids fed and we went to the Zoo. Harry was so excited bouncing up and down in the stroller as we approached the main gate, he knew he'd get to see animals. What a nutcase. Cute though. We went into the Reptile house for the first time in a long time, Isabel had a great time running from cage to cage to see various lizards and turtles and snakes. One dark cage looked like a couple of logs, but looking closer you'll noticed that every square inch is covered with giant brazillian cockroaches crawling all over each other. These suckers are like 3-4" long, maybe 1-1.5" wide. Bridget shuddered and ran away from that cage. heh. After the Zoo we went home, fed the kids, put them down for their naps, and our downstairs roommate agreed to watch them while we went shopping. We quickly headed out, I bought 3 pairs of levis and hawaiian shirt, B bought some clothes for the kids and herself, and we stopped by an open house for a house that was recently remodeled near our house. $620k for a 4 bed 3.25 bath. It was well done, but if I was going to spend that kind of money I'd want to make the decisions, not accept what someone else decided. Crickey, for under $200k we could remodel our own house to be as nice as that one. When the kids woke up from their naps we loaded up again and went to the University Street Fair. Every year they close down University Way for a weekend and line both sides with booths they rent out to all sorts of craft venders, plus there are food courts, people playing music, tons of people to see, all sorts of stuff. We didn't end up buying anything but food this year. Yesterday they had a little soiree at work because one of our faculty had recently been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and I had a beer and a glass of wine. Bike home, have dinner, and I was off to my investment club meeting at one of the member's law firms down in Tacoma. There I had a glass of bourbon (Woodford Reserve) and three beers, and for snacks the host had bought spray can "cheese" stuff. Man I never buy that stuff but I do love it. After the meeting to make up for not having a bottle of single-malt whiskey in his desk like he normally does, the host took us to the bar next to his law firm for drinks, where I had two glasses of Talisker. Uff-da, it was a good thing I wasn't driving. Friday, May 16, 2003
Holy smokes. There were at least five times as many bikes on the ride into work today. Turns out it's Bike To Work day. I stopped off at a schwag booth and got a free water bottle, a sample energy bar, a bag of starbucks coffee beans, and an "Ouch Pouch" first-aid kit. I put the kit in with my bike-repair kit (aka a rag to fix the chain if it derails, I don't carry any other bike repair stuff) in the off chance I ever hurt myself biking. Zero accidents in 3.5 years of daily biking, but I don't bike in traffic so it's a lot safer. I also entered to win a new commuter bike. That'd rock.
Cooked up some thick marinated pork chops on the BBQ last night. Damn, I love using my BBQ, and stuff just keeps turning out good. More practice and I'll have things besides beef turn out consistently great. I still can't believe after six months of sleeping through the night Harry has added a 4am feeding back in. Fortunately now I can just hand him a bottle and go back to sleep, he can feed it to himself. Uff. I didn't like last night's season finale of ER, I never like the ones that are off-site. B liked it, but she's is very familiar with that region having spent two years in the Peace Corps. Thursday, May 15, 2003
Was down to $3 (of a $20 buy-in) last night at poker, but ended up with $35 (up $15). Half the table was sure that Luke had shown up, but I was laughing at them because I knew he was in Alaska. The guy outside who parked in front of my house sure did look an awful lot like Luke however.
After poker I watched the season finale of The West Wing on my TiVo. Man do I love being able to watch things on my schedule and not the networks. It's really too bad that Aaron Sorkin quit the show, without his writing it just won't be the same next season. Hopefully he starts a new show next year. I've loved everything he's done. Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Harry had a good time at his birthday party. B's aunt came up with her two daughters and their new 8 week old basset hound puppy. It was really funny watching Harry play with this gentle puppy. Harry would grab great handfuls of skin and the puppy barely noticed. Harry would crawl around and the puppy matched speeds with him and licked his face as he traveled.
Isabel has been super cute herself lately. On sunday when I got her up, she stretched really big and said, "What a great nap Daddy!" I almost died laughing. Having kids is so much fun. B got a laser printer for mother's day, and we did our normal routine of going to a friend's house for mother's day brunch. Two years ago the only actual mother there was our friend's mom, now there are 5 mothers and 5 babies. Next year all five will be walking around, it'll be a madhouse. Friday, May 09, 2003
Last weekend Isabel climbed up on my lap, pointed at my shirt, and said, "oh look, daddy! Trodgor!" Bridget wasn't happy.
Tomorrow Harry turns 1. He's not walking yet, but he's starting to stand without holding onto things. He'll be walking in a few months. Thursday, May 08, 2003
Lost $15 at poker last night
Today we took Harry back to the doctor for his continual ear infections and heavy snoring. We got a referral to an ENT (ear nose throat) specialist who will be able to hopefully figure out what's going on with the poor lil guy. B swears his snoring is getting so bad he has apnea events. Crickey, he turns 1 in 2 days, not 41. Babies shouldn't snore like that. Wednesday, May 07, 2003
2 seconds divided by 15 minutes = 0.22%
I was on TV last night, on the Howard Stern show on E!. He'd recorded a show at the Hard Rock casino in Vegas when I was there, and I was clearly visible in the audience near Joey Buttafucco for about 2 seconds. I'm slowly using up my 15 minutes of fame. I got my new cell phone yesterday, a Sorny-Ericsson T68i with service from T-Mobile (aka Voicestream). Of course, any story involving a cell phone has to involve getting fucked over by the cell company. T-Mobile is no different than Sprint. I wanted a shared-minutes family plan for me and B. They offer one. However, buying the phones through Amazon ($270-$300 in rebates +tax = $0) it turns out Amazon only offers single-person plans. Checking with both Amazon and T-Mobile, they both said it would be no problem to convert it over to a family plan once the phones arrived. The phones arrive, I charge 'em up, then try to convert my service plan. Nope, sorry, turns out you can only do that by going to a T-mobile store, you can't do it over the phone. Motherfuckers. Not Jeff was asking about our old poker buddy Kurt who lives rent free. He had an apartment in an old building in the University district, it was 2 story brick, with apartments above and retail below. (A nice pet store and plant store, and usually a ski shop). A developer bought the place up and was going to knock it down to build a massive condo complex to go with the dozen other massive condo complexes within 3 blocks that have gone up in the past few years. The tenants and some neighbors protested, as well as friends of the pet store and plant store, both of which have been there for longer than I've been here, at least 15 years, quite an accomplishment in the turnover-frantic U-District. To buy off the tenants, they were given a deal. They'd get $6,000 in cash for their moving expenses, and their rent would stop, but they'd have to be willing to leave with 2 weeks notice (or maybe less...) Anyway, that was two years ago. He still lives there, no rent to pay, everyone else moved out as they found apartments that are more stable. He's perfectly happy since he can always move home temporarily when he gets booted on short notice. Crickey, with the local economy in the dumps and the serious overbuilding of apartments and condos recently, the project might not happen for a long long time. Tuesday, May 06, 2003
So my youngest brother works at a gutter and window cleaning company. The company is something like this: An owner, some lady answering phones, dispatching jobs, and doing the paperwork, and seven guys with trucks festooned with ladders and cleaning stuff going from place to place all day. Kurt is one of the guys, and at the moment 4 of the other drivers are his friends that he got hired on. They're sorta taking over the company.
Anyway, Kurt and one of his buddies are trying to either buy out the company, or part of the company, or just bail and start their own company. Their idea, since they love old VW buses so much, is to buy VW dual-cab truck buses to use, giving their company a visually unique way to stand out from other gutter-and-window cleaning places. Monday, May 05, 2003
Later this month it'll be two years that I have been blogging. I went to a friend's Cinco De Mayo party on Saturday night and Not Jeff and Luke Thayer were both there, and Not Jeff mentioned my blog to a bunch of my other friends. Heh. Well, any of them who now read, welcome! It's a little weirder writing for people I see in person than it is for the faceless masses (well, masses is maybe being a tad optimistic...)
The party was a blast. B got drunk for the first time in three years now that she's not pregnant or breastfeeding, she had loads of fun. We had left the kids at home with grandma babysitting. Bridget bought Harry a hawaiian shirt, it's so damn cute. I'll have to get a picture of it. Friday, May 02, 2003
Grrr. My watch is losing between 5 and 25 minutes a day, which is driving me crazy. All I can tell from checking it is what time it ISN'T. Crickey. I guess it needs a new battery, but the ratcheting disk around the dial stopped clicking a while back, and it has an 11 year warranty, so I think it's time to take it back and hope the new one has a new battery as well.
I decided to just dump the Vegas cash into my savings account, since I couldn't decide what to get. I really wanted the Canon Digtal Elph D400 compact 4mp camera, but I wasn't positive I'd use it, having never owned a camera before. I should just borrow my brother's D200, see if I use it enough to warrant one. Mmmm, work kegger in an hour! BeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEERRR! Cold sweet beer. Thursday, May 01, 2003
Holy freaking cow! I won $53 at poker last night, it was pretty amazing. A good start loading up my poker wallet for Vegas next year.
I ordered a pair of Sony Ericsson T68i bluetooth phones with t-mobile service from Amazon yesterday. $270, with $300 in rebates. Net cost after tax is free. Having bluetooth to sync my phone numbers onto my phone will be a godsend. I love having a new West Wing on my TiVo at home, waiting for me. |
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