Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Monday, June 30, 2003
Mmmm!! Yesterday we had our annual "Turkey Day in June". Waiting until Thanksgiving for turkey dinner requires too much patience, so around this time every year we have another turkey dinner with all the fixins. I cooked a whole 16lb bird classic style (next time I am going to brine it first), and a fresh turkey breast got rotisserated on the BBQ. Mashed taters, gravy, cresent rolls, home made stuffing, both kinds of cranberry sauce, black olives, bacon salad, rum-glazed carmel sweet potatoes and yams, and green beans.
There were 11 adults there, four bottles of wine were drunk as well as a bunch of Bridgeport IPA, and a good time was had by all. Then Harry got cranky at 11pm last night and basically didn't sleep more than an hour or two, damn we're both exhausted. Sunday, June 29, 2003
Harry continues to improve. He's nearly normal now except he needs to eat softish foods.
Yesterday I went to Fred Meyer to buy a new large kiddie pool, Toys Backwards R Us to buy a sandbox, and a nursery to buy bags of landscaping bark. Hauled all this back home and cleared out the undergrowth in the back corner of the yard behind and around the cherry tree so there would be room for the sandbox. The kids LOVE it, it was well worth it. I still need to do a lot of work on the landscaping, but every bag of bark spread makes things look nicer! Thursday, June 26, 2003
Harry was doing MUCH better today, eating like a trooper and drinking some, so they finally discharged us from the hospital and now we're all home and happy.
Uff-da. Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Wow, what a stressful day. I don't wish visits to the pediatric intensive care unit upon anyone. Uff-da.
It all started at 4:45 am, when my alarm went off. Harry had his surgery scheduled for 1:30pm, so the last time he could eat solids or milk was 5:30am, and he could only have water until 9:30am. I crawled out of bed, went into his nursery, turned on the light, and looked into the crib. It's relatively hot (no, not freakin' texas hot!) so he was just sleeping in his little onesie. He woke up, looked up, smiled at his daddy, and tried to go back to sleep. I picked him up, changed him, and brought him downstairs. He was blinking really heavy like, "Whoa Dad, what the fuck is going on? Why am I up?!?" I gave him some cheerios to chomp on, he halfheartedly ate a few, and then I started feeding him some yoghurt. He was still only half awake, and confused as hell as to what was going on, but ate 6.5oz of yoghurt. He then took 3oz of milk from a bottle and basically announced that he was full to the gills. I popped him back in bed and went to bed myself. Ugh. I don't feel like typing much right now. Long story short, he had his surgery late, he wasn't breathing well afterwards, so he's in the pediatric ICU. B and I are sorta a mess right now. Isabel was at a friend's house all day "on a sleep over" and was a total angel. Harry's doing much better, but uff-freakin'-da. Owowoowowowowowowow. Monday, June 23, 2003
Uff. Haven't blogged for a few days, blogger was fighting me last weekend so I gave up.
Everything is going great. Harry's getting fixed this Weds, I've told work I won't be in on Weds and Thurs. Hopefully his tonsils are fine so things heal up faster. I had a grand time on saturday making fish-n-chips. I'd never really tried deep frying fish before, bizarre since I love fish-n-chips. It turned out awesome. I learned a few things: A) Just use frozen tater tots (my pref) or french fries and heat those in the oven. Homemade french fries take too much time for what you get. B) Two pounds of cod is enough for eight adults or maybe ten. Uff-da. C) I really need to install some form of vent hood in the kitchen when/if I remodel the kitchen. Wednesday, June 18, 2003
We took Harry into Children's Hospital yesterday to see an ear-nose-throat specialist that the last specialist recommended. They gave him a hearing test which he passed with flying colors, and the doc scoped his nose to confirm that his adenoids are huge and nearly blocking his sinus passage.
Lucky for us there was a surgery opening next Weds, so he's scheduled to have his adenoids removed, tubes put in his ears, and they'll check his tonsils to see if they need removal then or not. They have to keep him overnight, but one of us gets to stay with him. It'll be stressful, but hopefully two weeks from today he'll be all clear and able to breath normal and not get ear infections all the time. Wooo! Tuesday, June 17, 2003
A while back, B started watching Stargate:SG1 reruns on SciFi after I fell asleep. Pretty soon she got hooked and was having TiVo record them. I figured it'd be fun to watch 'em together, so last night I rented the DVD with the pilot and next two episodes.
I'm re-re-re-refinancing my house, this time to 4.875%. My house payment will have dropped $633 since we bought the place in 1999 at 8.125%. Uff-freakin'-da. I can't even wrap my mind around long-term interest rates this low. Monday, June 16, 2003
Turns out the truck bus that they were going to buy was a rust bucket with a bad engine, so they went all that way and didn't buy it. They're not exactly happy.
Had a great weekend, BEEEEEEEER at the Beer fest was awesome. Saturday, June 14, 2003
Ha ha. My crazy youngest brother and his friend flew to Vegas yesterday. They were going to rent a car, drive to somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Utah, buy a mid 60s VW truck bus, drive both back to Vegas, turn in the rental car, and drive the truckbus back to Seattle. 1400 miles in an unknown bus.
Good thing his buddy is an accomplished VW mechanic. Thursday, June 12, 2003
Yesterday afternoon the weather was beautiful, and right before I got off work at 4pm B called and suggested we all go to the Zoo, so we did and had a great time. It being late afternoon there was hardly anyone there. We need to do it again soon but bring a picnic dinner.
I got cleaned out in poker. Near the end I was down $10 and *almost* won $10 to break even, but the last guy had an amazing hand to beat me and put me down $20 instead. Ah well. One of my buddies is all psyched to buy a new 2003 or 2004 Chevy Tahoe as his new fishing rig, so I'm having a blast vicariously purchasing a new car. Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Last night B left me and the kids alone so she could go shopping for a dress. We've got 3 weddings to attend in the next two months, and she needed a new dress to wear to them.
Being a guy, I have clothes for attending weddings, but I didn't yet have my advance tickets to the Washington Summer Brewfest this weekend, so I loaded up the kids and went down the hill to University Village, a mall less than a mile from my house within sight of the UW campus. Back when I first came to the UW in 1986, this mall was a crappy run-down outdoor mall with a cheap clothing store and a hardware store being their anchor. At some point in the past decade, new management took over and threw out everything that lacked hoit or toit, remodled the hell out of the place, and filled it up with stores like Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, Eddie Bauer, etc. The cheap clothing store got thrown out and replaced with a large Barnes and Noble, and the hardware store is long gone as well. Every freaking year that mall gets more hoity-toity. Very few tenants are left from before, but it's now very pretty. Anyway, one of the old tenants was a cool old dingy sports bar called The Ram. They were told to get the hell out, they weren't appropo to the management's family-friendly mall image. They apparently argued the point, and the compromise was they knocked down their building and rebuilt a fancy new one, one with zero dinge and now they brew beer onsite. This was where I was going to buy my advance brewfest tickets. I noticed that the women's sports store that used to be next to the Ram had moved into the new giant parking garage they'd built, near the new Crate & Barrel. Where it was was boarded up with plywood, all painted black, with a large white Apple logo. Ah-ha! This must be where the new Apple Store is going to be. I got to the Ram and tried to buy tickets, but ticket sales were cash or check only. I don't carry a checkbook, since I almost never use checks, and I didn't have $90 cash to buy 6 tickets for myself and my friends, so I had to go to the opposite side of the mall to my bank cash machine. On the way there, I passed The Gap. Glancing in, I thought it'd be kinda fun to be able to shop there. You know, my whole post-college life I've been house-poor. That is to say, most of my income has gone to pay for housing. Even now that I make a healthy middle class income, we bought a larger house, and are still paying over 50% of our income towards our house. Not that I really mind, since I love living here in Seattle and the value on both of my houses keeps skyrocketing, so it's sorta like an incredibly lucrative forced savings plan. However, I sometimes wonder what life would be like if our budget had an extra $1000/month instead of being planned out to within $100. Monday, June 09, 2003
B and I just finished watching Band of Brothers on DVD last night. Awesome awesome series. That it is about true events makes it all the more powerful.
It was hot as hell last weekend, Saturday reaching 90F. (Sure, that's mild in Texas, but in Texas they have air conditioning.) We set up the kiddie pool in the backyard and let Isabel and Harry play in it, they absolutely LOVED it, especially when I set Isabel's slide up so it landed in the pool. She'd do lap after lap of climb the ladder, slide down SPLOOOSH huge splash, laugh, get out, repeat. Friday, June 06, 2003
This morning we took the kids in to the doctor for their regular checkup. Isabel is two, Harry is one. Isabel was 37.25" and 33lbs, Harry was 33" and 26lbs 10oz. Big strapping babies.
If Isabel follows that old axium that their adult height is double their height at age two, she'll be my height, 6'2". Heh, I won't have to worry about her dating, but I will have to worry about her being able to buy booze at age 14... Harry got his MMR (measles, mumps, ruebella) shot as well as chickenpox vaccine, Isabel finally got her chickenpox vaccine, we'd waited cuz when she turned 1 Harry was only a few weeks old and we didn't want to risk him getting it. Thursday, June 05, 2003
Dammit! My stupid stupid STUPID head coach of the Washington Huskies football team is a friggin' mouth-breathing moron. He was in a March Madness betting pool with his neighbors, to the tune of $5,000 (ah a neighborhood of millionaires!) when it's a strict violation of NCAA rules to gamble ANY amount on ANY NCAA event. I'm sure he's going to get fired over it. God what an idiot. Glub only knows who we'll have to hire to replace him. Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Isabel had a grand time on her birthday. She spent all day singing "Happy Birthday To Isabel" and when you asked her how old she was, she would proudly say "Two!!!". In addition to the balloons, we got her some of those wooden puzzles with pegs on each piece, one of farm stuff and one of zoo animals. She also got some bubble wands, a whole mess of clothes from grandma, another puzzle, a stuffed animal, and a Winnie the Pooh cup. She loved opening presents, and ate too much cake so she was totally jacked up.
Pretty funny. Such a sweet girl. Monday, June 02, 2003
Today is my little girl Isabel's 2nd birthday. Last night after she went to sleep I went down to the local Safeway and got her two huge mylar helium balloons, one just a big round one saying Happy Birthday, and one shaped like a whale, very cute. We stuck them in her room so she'd have them in there when she woke up.
She really loved them. She decided immediately that the whale was hers and the big round one was Harrys. We went into the living room this morning and she asked for her cup of milk and wanted me to read her some stories, so while I got the milk she pulled out her current favorite book, a huge hardback compilation of 10 or 12 children's books. We read 4 of them, then I had to shower and go to work. B's babysitting group is having a birthday party for her today, and tonight we'll open presents and have cake and ice cream. The past two years are a bizarre combination of a week long and 15 years long. So short and yet so long. Sunday, June 01, 2003
Ok, I'm upstairs working on the computer that goes inside my MAME cabinet, and Bridget yells up the stairs, "You are DEAD MEAT, I am going to KILL you!!!".
I go downstairs. B says, "Your daughter just went to the lid drawer in the kitchen. She started pulling out all the lids until she found the two smallest. She then proceeded to place them both over her chest, and run around the living room yelling something about the Man Show and 'Way to Go, Juggies!' " D'oh! Being able to time-shift TV isn't *always* a good thing.
Wooo! Last night we had our "World Series of Poker"-style No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournement. $20 buy in, no re-buy-ins. We had 14 players for a total cash pot of $280. First place was 60% or $168, second place won 30% or $84, and third place won 10% or $28, barely more than their buy-in.
(By the way, NotJeff, you went all-in on a unsuited 2/7, lost, and owe us $20. ) We started it out at 9pm last night with 2 tables, one of 6 players and one with 8. We drew lots to see who was at which table, and I ended up at the smaller one along with three newbies and two of the guys from my weekly poker night. Despite being sure I'd be out nearly first, I did alright, nearly getting hosed a few times, but with savvy play staying in the game as the three newbies made insanely stupid bets and slowly dropped out. We'd lost two players before the other table lost any, and we lost a third in short order. After the big table lost a third person, we were down to eight total players so we took a break and all joined to make one big final table. Taking a read on the standings, I at $61.50 in chips actually had the most going into the final table. It was just after midnight at this point. A particularly badly played showdown with Dee, the guy who cleaned my clock at Texas Hold'Em last week cost me over $40 of that, putting me at great risk of going out, but at least I'd made it to the final table. Waiting for the right cards, I kept folding and wham wham wham three others went out in short order, and suddenly I was in the final five, with Dee and Thom both hording huge chip piles (over $100 each) and the three remaining each with somewhere around $20. Funny that all five were from our weekly poker group. The three of us figured those two for first and second, so we entered a mini battle to see who'd get third and $28. However, Thom ended up going all-in against Dee, who had barely more chips, and Thom won, requiring a lucky draw to do it. Uff-da! One of our two titans was down to under $5, which wasn't going to last long! Suddenly there was one mega titan, Thom, aka Mr Chips, three lowbies, and poor Dee with barely anything. Corey went all-in with some good cards in an attempt to double his stake, but got hosed, and suddenly there were four of us. I couldn't believe it, I was one player out from being in the money, and Dee was still down to about a quarter of the chips I had. Did I mention that I'd been drinking heavily all night? I was by far the only player still in that had been. At this point I'd had at least 8 beers, Bridgeport IPAs , which are like 6% alcohol, not like 3.2% Budweiser or Coors. I was very buzzed, they were all stone cold sober. Dee went out shortly after that, the most embarrassing position, he'd out-lasted 10 other players but was one position shy of earning back any money. Jack, Thom, and I were all for-sure winners, and Thom looked like a lock on first. Jack and I were basically dueling for who'd get the extra $56 that second brought over third place. Thom tried to take me down, and I got SUPER lucky on the draw to beat him, and suddenly I was up over $100 in chips. Thom still had over $150 in chips, and Jack was down to between $5 and $10 in chips. Woooo! We battled FOR freaking EVER, nobody willing to commit to much of anything. Jack kept getting whittled away, then he'd win $10. Repeat. Finally, just shy of 3am, we took him down. Thom and I were pretty close in chips, probably $125 to $155. At this point we figured it would take many hours of play to settle this hash, and we were both tired, so rather than keep it going, we split the $252, each getting $126. I mean, glub, we'd been playin' for six hours already, and with how conservatively we were playing, it could be another six before we finished it off. So, that's how I ended up winning $106 last night at poker, and now I'm miraculously only mildly hung over. We'd had friends with kids over for a BBQ last night (I finally got the baby back ribs with jalapeno jelly glaze PERFECT) and B has us going to a dinner party again tonight. |
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