Babes and Beer |
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Drinking beer, being married, and raising kids.  A Nosuch affiliate. 
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
B and I both wanted to talk about the scandal surrounding Joseph Wilson's CIA operative wife being outed for petty political revenge by a White House staffer who richly deserves jail time for treason.
I because I'm outraged, she because she has met Joseph Wilson. He was Ambassador to Gabon when she was there in the Peace Corps, and he swore her in as a Peace Corps volunteer. The Peace Corps folks called him Surfer Joe. Apparently after he was #2 in Iraq during Gulf War 1, he was allowed to write his own ticket afterwards so he picked a nice relatively rich stable African country with good waves. B was surprised to hear his wife was a CIA operative, since she was a French national, but the best operatives are the ones you least suspect, and if you can come across as stupid it's even better. Damn, my friend painted his kitchen cabinets lime green, and the walls canary yellow. It hurts my eyes to enter his kitchen. He's very proud of it, but it makes me shudder. Monday, September 29, 2003
Wooo! My Huskies beat Stanford 28-17, so now they're 1-0 in the Pac-10 and 3-1 overall, ranked 18th in the nation. I watched Cal beat USC in triple overtime and laughed hard, as well as laughed that the Cougs beat Oregon by making 7 interceptions and 2 fumble recoveries, as well as 2 blocked punts. Uff!
Seeing as how the Mariners didn't make the playoffs, *AGAIN*, I am glad I didn't pay that much attention to them. At least they're not Texas or Detroit. I took the kids to the zoo yesterday to give B a few hours to rug doctor the carpets, they look awesome. We were very remiss in not doing it for so long. My stupid TiVo died on Friday. It started stuttering the playback, and the background animation on the menus stuttered as well, and after a reboot it wouldn't start. I yanked the 80gb disk I'd installed last January out and replaced it with the 40Gb it came with and it came up fine, although it was sorely confused as to why it was 9 months out of date. It was funny seeing what shows were on it from last year. Wheelie Ambulance Monster Garage, for one. I need to find a cheap 120 or 160Gb disk for it, I can't live with only ~13 hours of TiVo. My bike's rear axle exploded on my Thurs on the way home, so I pushed it to the bike shop. Unfortunately for me, the days I miss happen to be excellent weather days... oh well. Friday, September 26, 2003
Ah, I spoke too soon. Of course, Not Jeff correctly figured that with the painful headaches, the changed voice, and the light flashing eyes she's been possessed by a Gua'uld. (geeky SG1 reference)
Today we've been having fun, Harry has diarhea and Isabel is trying to learn potty training, so B's already had to wash both kids in the tub to clean 'em up. Uff. Tomorrow my Huskies play the Stanford Cardinal, and B gets to go since we have babysitting. It'll be her first time at a football game in two years, since we used to bring Isabel as an infant. Thursday, September 25, 2003
B's MRI results came back clean, thank goodness. Her 10 day migraine has also come to an end, we think. Tuesday, September 23, 2003
If you see one Elvis vs Mummy movie this year, see Bubba Ho-Tep. I went to see it last night after the Raiders got their ass handed to them by the hated Broncos.
Bubba Ho-Tep was awesome. A great premise, well thought-out, well-presented, Bruce Campbell at his best since Army of Darkness. Tons of great dialogue. It's too bad it hasn't been picked up by a major distributor, IMDb says it's only playing on two screens, one here in Seattle and one in Portland. I brought a few airline bottles of booze with me, a chocolate tequila which was awesome, and an 18yr old Glenlivit with was pretty smooth, if lacking in character or flavor. I think Glenlivit is the most popular single malt scotch for the same reason Budweiser is the most popular American megalager. Speaking of beer, I got a hankering to try some Yuengling beer, so I called up Bottleworks (aka Beervana) but they sadly didn't carry it. I guess there IS a limit to their beer greatness. I'd already told Isabel that we were going to the beer store, so we went to Safeway instead. I bought some Newcastle Brown Ale, and told Isabel "Daddy loves beer". She responded with a rather annoyed "I know you like beer, Dad." She just needed to add the sarcastic "geez" to complete the phrase. Yesterday for the first time ever I saw a woman on a recumbant bike. Normally 99% of the people I see on them are mid-40s to mid 50s geeky engineer-looking types. B had her annual physical this morning. She's had a pretty nasty migraine going on about 10 days now, sometimes painful and sometimes not. Excedrin hasn't helped, and when it was really bad she got some extra-strenght vicadin last week which barely helped. Anyway, today her doc gave her something new, plus she wants her to have a MRI tomorrow to make sure she doesn't have a brain tumor or anything like that. Uff. That makes me nervous. Monday, September 22, 2003
Had a reasonably fun weekend. Went to the Husky game on Saturday, which sucked for most of it, we were beating Idaho 17-14 in the 3rd quarter, then after a short pass our wide receiver cut back around and was going to be tackled for a huge loss when the tailback came at full speed out of nowhere and BOOOM laid the linebacker out with a huge crash that echoed through the stadium, waking everyone up, including the Huskies.
12 yard gain on the play, plus a fired up team that proceeded to score 28 unanswered points for a final score of 45-14. We play Stanford at home next week, hopefully a good game. The Seahawks are doing well as well, starting out 3-0, with a 2-game lead in their division. Amazing. Miracle win, too, we were being owned the first three quarters. Uff-da. Fortunately Home Depot and Nextel bought 6000 tickets and donated them to local charities so the game would be a sell-out and thus not blacked out locally, which meant I got to watch the game. I've got a new student helper starting tomorrow. The current ones are cackling as they load up his PC with DOS 6 and Windows 2.11, but they're looking for DOS 3.3 and Windows 1.0. They're laughing at how old-school it looks, I'm laughing at the blast-from-the-past. Crickey, we should put a Mac running System 6 on his desk as well. Mind you, these are operating systems from when the new kid was 3 years old. Thursday, September 18, 2003
Last night at poker I had what I think is my best night ever. I was winning like 1 in every 3 games, and turned $20 into $74, so I won $54. It also marked the return of Luke, a poker buddy from way back who has been off traveling to every remote library in the country that got Gates Foundation money training them on their new stuff. It was really good to see him in person instead of just reading his blog.
This morning I had my first eye exam ever. I've had the eye chart tests as part of physicals in the Marine Corps, and the eye test at the dept of licensing when renewing my driver's license, but never a real eye exam. After I had a physical exam in March my doctor recommended I go see one because they can indentify some medical conditions by looking at your retina. Anyway, I got my eyes tested, everything is fine, I have basically 20/25 vision, nothing that needs correction. Funny to think that of my entire peer group, B and I are the only two who don't need vision correction. Hopefully that means our kids will have good eyes too. Wednesday, September 17, 2003
One of my closest friends is a Vice President at a major investment bank. It's not as big a title as it sounds, since like all banks they have more vice presidents than you can shake a stick at, in this case I think 1000 of their 12000 employees are VPs.
Anyway, he loves to travel, and has been itching to go scuba diving in Palau for quite a while. Today he sends me a copy of a letter he got from the government of Palau asking him to come meet with them to discuss some bond issue or another. That lucky SOB is going to get a free first-class flight to Palau. I'm jealous. Last night B had a pedicure scheduled, so I took the kids to the REI flagship store to buy some waterproof biking gear. Wooo! I am stylin' now. The cashier gave the kids each a little carabiner keychain, they love 'em. That was very nice. Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Gah! So I watched three quarters of a lame Monday Night Football game, where Dallas sucked, but the Giants sucked incredibly, so Dallas was kicking their ass, never a good thing. I turn it off in disgust. Lo and behold, the Giants come back with 18 points in the fourth quarter, but allow Dallas to make a last second field goal to tie the game and send it to overtime, where they kick their seventh field goal of the game to win it. Bad Dallas! Stop scaring Smithers! (smack them with a shovel)
I am currently completely drenched, I need good waterproof rain gear for biking in this kind of weather. Uff-da. My friend who came over to watch MNF with us is an amateur photographer. He's got this high-end 6 megapixel digital camera with lenses etc, and he's really getting to be quite good. Anyway, he took some boudoir shots of a 27 year old who he used to date but never got out of the friend zone with, and they turned out really good. (She doesn't care if others see them as long as they're not posted on the Internet) Certain angles definitely don't work, but that's part of working with a real human body. Harry has been a terror lately, throwing tantrums left and right. He just cut a tooth, and it wasn't the one of the pair we expected, so potentially he's got 3 more bothering him. Monday, September 15, 2003
For some reason, most likely because my Huskies had no game this weekend, I got very motivated. At 8am on Saturday I was down in the garage, finally realizing how to rearrange it.
At noon I went over to my not-brother-in-law Bills place to borrow a post-hole digger and Bill, but before we could go we had to watch the overtime for the Ohio State/NC State game. We then left for Home Despot, where I bought a few 4x4 posts, some brackets for them, and swing hardware for an infant swing and a regular swing. We got home, dug a 3' hole, put one of the 4x4s in, attached the other 4x4 across the top with the other end attached to my deck, and mixed up some concrete to fill the rest of that hole. Attach the swing brackets, and voila, Isabel and Harry now have swings. Isabel's is about a foot off the ground, so she can climb into it by herself, she freakin' LOVES it. She spent at least an hour on Saturday and an hour on Sunday swinging. Yesterday I watched my Seahawks destroy the Cardinals 38-0. It was a little bizarre because before the game started I told my friend Corey who was over watching with me that I hoped the score would be 38-0. Too bad I can't be psychic like that in Vegas. Friday, September 12, 2003
Ah, today is the last day for one of my student helpers here at work. He's been here 3 years, one of the longest, and one of the most skilled. I'll miss him. He leaves for graduate school in Chicago. So far my student helper graduation rate is much lower than the freakin' football team, I don't know what it is about slackers that make them great at troubleshooting computers but terrible at graduating. Out of nine students I've hired so far, six have now left, only two of those due to graduating. One other left for a highe paying job and he eventually got a degree too, so I'm at 50%. Tuesday, September 09, 2003
I'm having a hard time writing this up, but the short form is I really no longer feel comfortable around my parents, and I think it's going to be a while before I see them again. (A while being, maybe 3-5 years or more).
My mom had a rough childhood, her mom abandoned her when her father died when she was two, and she had a variety of good and bad people raising her, then she got married at 19 and started having six kids immediately. I think she could use a good decade or more of therapy, but she's seemed so much better the past ten years or so, now that her kids are out of the house. However, events over Labor Day have shown me that it was all the same facade she has always put on, and that nothing really has changed. They have this awesome huge beautiful log home on the lake, and she constantly acts like she's running a bed and breakfast, but in reality she hates having visitors. I'm just fed up with her saying one thing and meaning the opposite, it drives me crazy, and I see no reason to tolerate it. Monday, September 08, 2003
Everyone is better except Harry still has nasty diarhea. I mean, don the hazmat suit cuz his room is destroyed type epic diarhea. EPA Superfund cleanup site. Ugga. Strangely, it doesn't seem to bother him much except give him bad diaper rash. He's still eating and drinking and acting happy. We took him to the doctor today, the doc we saw (ours doesn't work mondays) said as long as he's hydrated we shouldn't do anything unless it lasts more than a week or so, so we'll keep an eye (and a nose!) on him and do laundry 35 times a day.
I'm totally paranoid right now, wiping everything with baby wipes and washing my hands 37 times an hour and spraying lysol on everything. I was happy to hear my Hawks kicked ass yesterday, a rare thing. I hate the NFL "blackout" rule if your home team doesn't sell out no local TV coverage, I think that contributes to fans ignoring the team and thus not buying season tickets. Years of sucking hasn't helped. I watched the Raiders/Titans game on ESPN-HD last night. I can't explain how much I love High Definition football. The game was pretty sad, however, nearly 300 yards in penalties, and the Titans won on a bad touchdown call, which is always disappointing. It was pretty cool seeing Marcus Tuiososopo in for one down, scrambling out of a sack and throwing a not-so-good pass. I hope he ends up doing well in the NFL, but I suppose being paid to be a backup QB and never playing (and thus never getting hurt) is a better deal than I have. A funny stat was that Jerry Rice has been playing in the NFL so long that he played for two years with Marcus' *father* Manu, and now this is his second year with Manu's son. I watched Die Hard for the first time in quite a while this weekend, it's nearly as good as I remembered it. Saturday, September 06, 2003
Ugh. We were supposed to go to Ocean Shores this weekend, a group of B's friends with babies had all rented condos there, but Harry has bad diarhea on Thurs night and Friday so we didn't go so we wouldn't infect anyone else.
Last night I started ralphing like crazy, and all of us feel like crap. This morning B called our doctor who thinks we have the Norwalk virus that is going around bigtime around here. She gave us a prescription for an anti-nausea drug that is helping a lot. Fortunately the kids only have diarhea, they're not puking, and they're happily drinking watered gatoraid. At least my Huskies won! They looked terrible, and Indiana is a craptacular team, so I think it's not going to be a good season. Sigh. Friday, September 05, 2003
Holy freakin' mother of glub! High definition Monday Night Football (even on a Thursday) is SO freakin' awesome. After 30 seconds I think I needed a cigarette.
Totally totally awe inspiring. HDTV is so the way to go. Thursday, September 04, 2003
Quick update.
I got digital cable installed yesterday (all they did was give me a box and I hooked it up, cuz the guy was clueless) and now have a few HD channels. HDTV is awesome. Simply amazing. I can't wait to see an HD football game. Note to parents: The baby Habitrail that some McDonald's have (big hamster tubes for the kids to climb in) SUCK if you have shorts on. I had to climb in after Isabel and I don't think I have a hair left on my knees. Ouchie. They aren't good for claustrophobic adults either, but that wasn't my problem. Isabel LOVES it. |
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